PINNED — Cynthia Wolanski was pinned a staff sergeant in the Marine Corps Feb. 2 at Fort Meade in Maryland. Wolanski, the daughter of Tom and Cara Wolanski of Paris, was a member of the Tri-State Young Marines and was named the 2007 Division 1 Young Marine of the Year. -- Contributed

PARIS — Cynthia Wolanski traveled around the world and was chosen as one of the first women to go on combat duty, but her heart remains in the Ohio Valley.

Wolanski, the daughter of Tom and Cara Wolanski of Paris, was pinned a Marine Corps staff sergeant Feb. 2 at Fort Meade, where she is part of the Marine Cryptologic Support Battalion, in a journey that started when she was only 8 years old.

Wolanski became a member of the Tri-State Young Marines and remained a member until she graduated high school, becoming the group’s master gunnery sergeant and being named the Division 1 Young Marine of the Year in 2007. She praised the group for its focus on community service, noting the group has been the color guard at Christmas and Fourth of July parades in Weirton, Steubenville, Follansbee and Wheeling — and that is just the beginning of projects that ranged from picking litter up along roadways to helping park cars at local fundraisers.

“They really do a lot for the community,” she said. “All these community service projects, and it’s kids from 8 to 18 doing them. It’s a really great way to spend time.”

Despite deployments to Japan, the Philippines, Hawaii and Texas, Wolanski still keeps in touch with the Tri-State Young Marines and continues to drop in on the group.

“They really love to run drills with (active-duty) Marines,” she said. “They get excited to see someone who has come up through Young Marines.”

In addition to giving her a background in community service, the Young Marines also gave Wolanski a leg up when she joined the Marine Corps because she already was familiar with Marine history, marching and drills.

“When I first got there, the first month and a half seemed so slow,” she said. “It’s a mentally intense environment — that’s purposeful — but the marching and the Marine Corps history I already knew and very few others (at boot camp) knew it, so they had to be taught.”

She also had been able to put time in at gun ranges through her association with the Young Marines, in addition to growing up hunting and learning gun safety from her father. That fire arm familiarity was invaluable during boot camp. Wolanski was the honor graduate at her boot camp and achieved the rank of private first class immediately on graduating, thanks to her background with the Young Marines. It was the first of many accolades to come.

By 2010, Wolanski was stationed in Hawaii, where she was named the Marine of the Quarter and became a lance corporal. As a member of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, she was deployed to Okinawa, before returning to Hawaii, where she became the first woman in her unit to be assigned to a combat job.

“It was when they first started assigning combat jobs to women,” she said. “My team was a six-man unit, and I was the only girl.”

She was deployed to Australia for several months, then went through a corporal course, where she once again was the honor graduate in her class. Shortly thereafter, she was named the Non-Commissioned Officer of the Quarter.

In 2013, she spent seven months in a combat deployment in the Philippines, where Wolanski returned to her community service roots as her unit assisted Filipinos after a hurricane and spent time repairing orphanages. The group received the Humanitarian Service Award.

“They were aside from our mission,” she said. “We did a lot of humanitarian work.”

When she returned to Hawaii in 2014, she became the training chief as the senior sergeant in her group, then leaving for a five month training stint in Texas, before joining cryptologic support.

“I love being a Marine,” she said. “Nothing else could keep me this entertained. Every day, it’s something different — I could be on the range, deployed, sitting at a desk, doing Excel spreadsheets, followed by platoon drills.”

Marines have a special sense of community, she said.

“These are more than co-workers, they’re your brothers and sisters — you eat together, you sleep in the same barracks,” she said. “It’s a different kind of community. Marines learn to make light of things. We’re often put in some crappy situations, and we learn to laugh at it. Marines are funny.”

One of the best things about now being in Glen Burnie, Md., is proximity to her family.

“When I was stationed in Hawaii, I didn’t get home as often, but now it’s a four-hour drive and I can come up for long weekends and holidays,” she said. “I have three nephews now — my brother has three kids — and I was away when they were born and I missed a lot of birthdays. Now, they know me — they call me Ninny, because they can’t say Cyndi yet. And I can give back to my parents, and that makes me feel good.”

And her nephews will be part of a new generation of Young Marines.

“My brother says he wants to have them (in the group),” she said. “It’s an opportunity I don’t want them to miss.”