June 6, 1994, on the 50th anniversary of D-Day, United States Army Infantryman Jesse Jenkins soared thousands of feet above the Panama Canal, preparing to jump out of a moving airplane. What seemed to be thousands of spectators from his vantage point awaited his arrival on the ground, cheering him on. It was a ritual Jenkins had executed countless times throughout his 24-year military career, spanning deployments in Korea, Panama, New York’s Fort Drum and Virginia’s Fort Eustis.
But this time was much different from the others.
“We had some guys that did the actual jump in Normandy, they came and jumped with us,” Jenkins said. “It was pretty fun, those guys were very motivated.”
Jenkins’s career trajectory eventually carried him to the College of William and Mary, where he has worked as a facilities manager for exactly four years as of Friday, Oct. 10.
Although Jenkins didn’t originally intend on lacing up his work shoes again — he had just retired from working on Virginia-class submarines as a pipe fitter at the Newport News Shipyard after nine years — he decided to give the old College a try.
“My wife decided she wanted to move to Williamsburg, and I didn’t know anybody,” Jenkins said. “And I just felt like my house was getting small on me, so I had to find something to do because I was bored. So I said, ‘let me try William and Mary.’”
Since 2021, Jenkins has grown to love the College, which he said he was familiar with growing up in Norfolk, but had never visited before then. First assigned to the Green and Gold Village, Jenkins soon moved to Fraternity Row on Ukrop Way. It was there that Jenkins started to form close bonds with students whom he saw daily.
“I liked the brotherhood,” Jenkins said. “We were real close, and they were real close with me. I would sit down and talk to a lot of the guys. They respected me, I respected them. And there’s much love.”
Jenkins said he has deeply enjoyed watching the students he’s grown close with develop over the years, especially those who started at the College the same year as him. Showing up to support them at last May’s graduation ceremony was a given.
“I had seen a lot of the guys grow from being a teenager to being a grown man,” he said. “I was really proud of them.”
After graduating from Oscar Smith High School in 1988, having played on both the basketball and football teams — sports he still enjoys watching today — Jenkins enrolled directly into the army, where he served for 24 years. As an 18-year-old fresh off graduation, Jenkins said he felt obligated to make that bold decision for his future.
“For one, discipline,” Jenkins said. “I didn’t have any discipline, I was kind of a wild dude, a hard guy. It taught me more about life.”
Jenkins’s time in the military featured way more airplane jumps than he could ever remember today, he said. But the anticipation he felt during the 50th anniversary D-Day leap into the Panama Canal closely rivaled another occasion from the year before, when his 11 Bravo unit was deactivating from Panama and took on a final challenge.
“We did a water jump in Panama, and it was canalled off into the number one breeding grounds for the hammerhead shark,” he said. “It was kind of like, ‘Yo, are we going to do this for real?’ We did it, and nobody got hurt, so it was pretty good.”
Jenkins said he sees a parallel between his time in the military and his time working on Fraternity Row at the College.
“It’s just like being in the frats, it’s a brotherhood,” he said. “We serve together, we sleep together, we walk together, we run together, we do everything together. It’s a bond.”
Jenkins’ 50th anniversary D-Day jump earned him a certificate of achievement award from the army, something he only discovered again recently while sifting through old paperwork. He said he was amazed at the retired D-Day soldiers’ tenacity on that day, referencing their willingness to take on a task that even active soldiers didn’t find easy.
“They had more energy than the young guys did,” Jenkins said. “I’m like, he’s still got it!”
Jenkins currently works at the Kaplan Arena after the College moved his assignment there last year. While he misses having daily interactions with the fraternity brothers, Jenkins still stops to chat with them whenever he has a chance — or they come to find him at his new location. However, Jenkins’ time at Kaplan has enabled him to build relationships with a new group on campus: the D1 basketball team.
“I know all the guys,” he said. “I guess you would call me a people person. I speak with them, talk to them, laugh with them.”
Jenkins’ daily interactions with those guys remind him of his high school basketball days at Oscar Smith, where he vividly remembers successfully landing an in-game dunk.
“I mean, I could get up there, but I had only dunked once in the game,” he said.
Among the conversation topics that arise most often between Jenkins and his students, fear of growing up takes the cake. He shared the advice he has given to countless students who have opened up to him about being afraid to step into the real world.
“My experience being around the students was that they were scared to grow up,” Jenkins said. “So I heard a lot of them say that. And I said, ‘You’ve got to grow up one day. There’s no Mom and Dad; it’s you paying bills now.’ But I told them, ‘it’s not as bad as you think it is.’”
In his free time, Jenkins enjoys rooting for the Dallas Cowboys and logging on to play NBA 2K or MLB The Show after work. His love for Dallas stems from a jersey that his dad bought him when he was growing up. While Tribe Football has certainly become a staple at the Jenkins household, he admitted that another unnamed team also captures his fandom.
“If I say my college team, a couple people might be mad around here,” Jenkins said.
