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By Nick Sellers | Staff Writer 

MADISON – North Alabama native David Shelly’s career in the military, which can be described as out-of-the ordinary, began while he was a graduate student at the University of North Alabama in the early 1990s.

Shelly was looking for financial help to complete his degree, and so he turned to the college’s ROTC program and the state’s National Guard.

“I might have been the only one to ever be a grad student and serve at the same time,” Shelly said.

Shelly received a delayed commission so that he could finish his Master of Business Administration degree, and in June 1992 Shelly was sent to Fort Lewis, Wash., for advanced camp.

“I just took it and ran with it,” he said.

Soon after, Shelly was given an assignment overseas in Germany in the 1st armored division, where he spent only eight months before coming back to Fort Lewis.

After his second stint at Fort Lewis, Shelly had four years of infantry experience and started his transition to military intelligence. He attended transition courses at Fort Huachuca in Arizona for nine months before accepting an assignment in Panama in 1997, two years before military installations installed there by the U.S. were turned back over to the Panamanian authorities.

Shelly held a company command in Panama, helping lead jungle operations training military intelligence officers.

After leaving Panama, which he described as “the most rewarding and unique experience,” Shelly took an assignment in Colorado Springs at Fort Carson before deploying to Bosnia for a brief period.

After undergoing a slight change from military intelligence to intelligence operations, Shelly deployed to Iraq for a year starting in September 2005.

In September 2011 Shelly made it back home to North Alabama to take care of his father and worked at Redstone Arsenal for two years.

He is a president of the North Alabama British Motoring Society and has two children who attend Madison City Schools.