Committee of Fifty at Ft. Leonard Wood Honors MSCoE Soldier of the Year 2022

FORT LEONARD WOOD, MO - The Waynesville, St. Robert community along with Commanding Officers from Ft. Leonard Wood and the Committee of Fifty honored SGT. Eric S. Dowler today on earning the Maneuver Support Center of Excellence (MSCoE) 2022 Soldier of the Year Award. SGT. Dowler received accolades and many gifts from supporters for his dynamic efforts.

SGT Dowler is a tuba player with the 399th Army Band and Brass Quintet at Ft. Leonard Wood. Originally from Georgia, SGT Dowler, along with wife Billie, came to FLW in 2019 from the SC National Guard before enlisting for active duty.

SGT Dowler spoke to the audience about what drives him as a soldier. He his favorite quote by Theodore Roosevelt about striving valiantly and daring greatly.

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

—Theodore Roosevelt Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

We wish congratulations to SGT Dowler and expect that we will continue to see greatness from his time with the U.S. Army. "HOOAH!"