VETERAN OF THE WEEK: Leila Morehouse
Leila Moorehouse (Record Photo/Nick Sellers)
By Nick Sellers | Staff Writer
MADISON – Leila Moorehouse is a Madison product, having come to the area in 1985 with her parents and graduating from Bob Jones in 1995. She attended the nearby University of Alabama-Huntsville and participated in Alabama A&M’s Army ROTC program.
“The scholarship part of the military was attractive to me,” Moorehouse said. “Paying for school was a big plus.”
After graduating in 2001 with a degree in nursing, Moorehouse was commissioned into the U.S. Army. Not long after, she was sent on her first deployment to Iraq as a Combat Health Support Officer in 2002 with Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Moorehouse was sent back to the States in 2003 and found herself somewhat close to home in Fort Stewart, Ga., serving as a Treatment Platoon Leader through 2004, when she was again deployed to Iraq.
Tikrit, Iraq was where Moorehouse spent most of her time in her second overseas deployment. She oversaw all medical functional areas of the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division.
Moorehouse also helped coordinate with the Iraqi Provincial Minister of Health in the rebuilding efforts in the region.
After her second stint in Iraq, Moorehouse left for another overseas deployment – this time to Korea, where she met her husband, Dwayne, who was in the same unit as her sister.
Moorehouse’s last round of tours were in Texas, with an assignment in 2007 at Fort Sam Houston, Texas where she worked in the Army’s Medical Department and School. Not two years later, she transferred to Fort Hood, Texas where she served as the Chief of Materiel at the Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center.
She continued in the Army’s medical area until her discharge out of the military, relocating back home to Madison in 2013 where she still runs into old friends from her service in and around Redstone Arsenal.
“You’ll find some connections anywhere,” Moorehouse said. “The military really is crazy small, and the camaraderie is very tight.”
