2007 EHS graduate Chuck Berry quarterbacked the Eddies football team.

EDWARDSBURG — Folks who remember Chuck Berry as an Eddies quarterback might be surprised to learn he’s become a Ranger.
Not a Cassopolis Ranger — a U.S. Army Ranger who will wear a tab on the upper left sleeve of his uniform emblematic of successfully completing a grueling 62-day combat leadership course that took him through Georgia and Florida and exposed him to venomous snakes and an alligator sloshing through swamps and fording rivers.
Ranger is known as the toughest combat course in the world and the most physically and mentally demanding leadership school the Army offers.
Berry, who graduated from Edwardsburg High School in 2007, attended Kalamazoo Valley Community College for a year for criminal justice before deciding to join the Army.
“Individual discipline” and “mind over matter” are Ranger keys, said Berry, who will be returning to Alaska after this leave, which ends Friday, and possibly deploying to Afghanistan.
“It’s not about you,” he said Tuesday. “It’s about your buddies to your left and right, looking after them.”
His training at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., prepared him for his job as a CBRN, which he pronounces “seaburn” — a “chemical guy.”
“Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear specialist,” Berry said. “I wanted to go in for three years for military experience, but last year I re-enlisted for another four and volunteered to deploy to Afghanistan. I find out next week. I want to go.”
The infantry unit was “surprised” when he volunteered for Ranger school.
Proof that Ranger school prepares participants to “adapt to whatever the weather throws at you,” Berry left hot Fort Hood, Texas, for Alaska.
“I went to airborne school in June before Alaska,” Berry said. “Then we did deployment training in Louisiana because my guys left in December and I went to Ranger school in October,” undertaking his first phase at Fort Benning, Ga.
“You learn how to lead soldiers and know their limits and capabilities, and you learn a lot about your limits because you’re outside the whole time,” Berry said.
“You have to waterproof everything or you won’t have dry socks and you get foot problems. Snow, sleet, rain — you go through it all. Their goal is to make you as uncomfortable as they can because you don’t not fight a war because it’s raining, you drive on with your mission.”
“I get teased, but not by guys my age — people my parents’ age” about sharing his name with the rock ‘n’ roll legend.
The first time, “I had to go figure out who he was,” he said.