“86,400 Seconds in a Day”: Getting The Most Out Of Every Opportunity

Adisa King grew up in Jackson, Mississippi. Following in his older brother’s footsteps, he entered West Point with the Class of 1999 after a year at the USMA Prep School. As a cadet, Adisa played football at the outside linebacker position. After some setbacks as a Plebe, he went home for a year, and then fought to get readmitted with the Class of 2000. He found his niche as a cadet in the military realm and enthusiastically selected Infantry for his branch, with an initial assignment in South Korea. After a follow-on tour with The Old Guard during the early years of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he commanded a rifle company at Fort Bragg. His field grade time took him to Fort Campbell, and a deployment to Afghanistan. He returned to the DC area to work in the Army’s Office of Legislative Liaison, and then became the aide-de-camp to the Secretary of the Army in 2016. LTC King assumed command of a light reconnaissance squadron at Fort Campbell in 2017, and deployed with that unit to Iraq in 2019. He returned to West Point later that year to become the Regimental Tactical Officer for the First Regiment, United States Corps of Cadets. In this interview, Adisa talks about his family-centered upbringing and the values that it instilled in him: hard work, education, and service to community. He addresses the ways that his early struggles as a cadet shaped him, describing how he simply “kept knocking on doors” to gain readmission to West Point. The interview continues by exploring the ways in which those same values have served him as an officer throughout his career. He concludes with his thoughts about what West Point means to him.