An update on a couple of Moorhead brothers who have done well in the military

Those Ritland boys are serving their country well.

Trevor and Bradley Ritland, the sons of Valerie Ritland, Moorhead, are in the military; Trevor is in the Navy and Brad is in the Army.

They’ve been mentioned here before. Now their mom reports that Trevor was promoted to commander last year and has taken command of a Navy diving and salvage team in Virginia Beach, Va., while Brad, a major, earned a Ph.D. last May at the University of Maryland and has been assigned to a research position in the Boston area.

Here’s more on what these brothers have accomplished.

Trevor received his commission from the Naval Academy in 2002. He then attended basic dive officer school and, as a first lieutenant, became administrative officer and assistant navigation officer aboard the USS Ardent in Manama, Bahrain.

This led to his being assistant operations officer and officer in charge of two Army detachments which were deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, then liaison officer and assistant anti-terrorism force protection officer for a carrier strike group out of San Diego, Calif.

Following this, Trevor was the use control programs manager at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency in Fort Belvoir, Va.; leader of interagency coordination between the U.S. Departments of Energy, Justice and Defense on the security of U.S. nuclear weapons and on initial accident/incident emergency response; and, from 2014 to 2016, as executive officer of a unit in Little Creek, Va., he led counter-improvised explosive device efforts across north, west and east Africa.

In 2016, he executed orders at U.S. Fleet Forces Command as the diving and salvage operations officer. Midway through that tour, he was selected as the deputy executive assistant to the fleet forces commander, a post he held until this year.

Trevor has racked up many awards. He has received three Bronze Star Medals (one with Valor), the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal, three Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals, the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal and the Combat Action ribbon.

Trevor’s wife Karen also is a Naval Academy graduate and has completed 19 years of service in a human resources capacity. She and Trevor have four children.

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And Trevor’s brother? Well, Brad has done his share for his country, too.

After graduation from physical therapy school at Baylor University, Waco, Texas, he served as a physical therapist at Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, Wash. He then was assigned to a combat team, for which he was the brigade physical therapist, and was deployed to southern Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom for 12 months.

After returning from this, he became the chief of amputee physical therapy services at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

In his first year there, Brad helped transition outpatient amputee physical therapy services to the new Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. During this time, conflict-related amputations were at an all-time high; some troops had multi-limb amputations.

He is currently in a research position with the Military Performance Division at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine in Natick, Mass. He is involved with various projects aimed at investigating ways to optimize soldier performance and soldier readiness.

During his time in the Army, Brad has published articles in several peer-reviewed publications and has given oral presentations nationally and internationally.

Yes, these two Moorhead brothers have certainly done well. No wonder their mom is proud of them.

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