Written by Tammy Hensley, American Red Cross communications volunteer

Although Raina Benz does not remember her dad’s first two Army deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, his third one when she was 4 years old has molded her into the young woman she is today.

“He gave me a stuffed animal (when he was deployed) and I love that stuffed animal. It was my favorite thing ever,” said the 15-year-old Fort Knox girl. “Although it was something I didn’t understand, looking back on it, it had some very definite unique positives.”

Raina met a girl her age from Kansas City whose dad was also being deployed and whom she still visits on occasion more than a decade later.

“As a kid, you don’t really understand where he is, why isn’t he here,” she said. “It’s a very hard experience especially because I didn’t understand it at the time. It definitely allowed me to bond with other people in the same situation that I wouldn’t have if it weren’t for the deployment.”

Raina lives on the military base at Fort Knox and is heavily involved as a military child. She serves as the president of the Red Cross Club at Fort Knox and has previously served as its publicist. Raina also volunteers with Red Cross organizations and community projects around Elizabethtown and Hardin County, such as helping organize the Military Child/Family formal dance, helping operate the Warrior Warehouse - a free thrift store ran by the Red Cross - and presenting information about the Red Cross to Hardin County Schools students and Protestant and Catholic women at the base.

Last year, she was nominated as the Kentucky delegate for the International Humanitarian Law Conference in Washington, D.C. where she spoke on International Humanitarian Law. At the conference, she was given a topic and had to discuss how it was connected to international humanitarian law and its protections.

“I met so many cool people and like everybody just became fast friends. We were all interested in learning,” she said. “It was very easy to make friends with these kids. It was really cool because we had kids my age and others who had studied humanitarian law. I learned stuff not only from the people who were there to speak to us . . . but also from the delegates there.”

While in Washington, D.C., Raina also toured the Red Cross headquarters, visited the National Mall, and met several Red Cross executives, including Allison Leader, who is in charge of Red Cross logo protection, and Dr. Michael Jordan, the Red Cross vice president for Service to the Armed Forces and International Services, who spoke on a variety of international topics. She also met and was inspired by CNN journalist Clarissa Walker.

“She had a lot of interesting stories about going into the Middle East, especially as a woman and covering wars,” she said. “She talked about how that presented unique challenges but was yet purposeful. I thought that was very interesting."

When she’s not involved in military projects or volunteer work with the Red Cross, the high school sophomore enjoys being active in jiu jitsu and mixed martial arts like the Derby City Mixed Martial Arts in Louisville and being a member of “The Stampede” Hardin-Elizabethtown Composite Mountain Bike Team, an award-winning youth cycling team for grades 5-12 in Elizabethtown, KY.

And as for the legacy of service she’s building at such a young age, Raina said she doesn’t know life any differently.

“I just don’t think of it as being anything out of the ordinary, just because I grew up in it,” she said. “I realize how fortunate I am to get to live in places like Washington and Italy . . . I realize how unique those opportunities are, but I don't think about them as being super different because I don’t know anything else.”