MARION - Even if you grow up in a small, rural community, you can go on to be highly successful and do great things with the right attitude and goals.

That was the message given Friday to about 300 Marion High School students by Maj. Gen. Kathryn Frost.

Frost, a Latta native, is the highest-ranking female officer on active duty in the U.S. Army. She spoke to the students about her accomplishments and her duties as commander of the Army Air Force Exchange Service, which provides retail goods, fast food and personal services to American soldiers, airmen, military retirees and their families stationed at military installations around the world.

Army Air Force Exchange Service is partnered with companies such as AT&T, Burger King and Taco Bell.

“I grew up on a tobacco farm in Oak Grove,” Frost said. “It is communities like this, with the teachers you have that care about your lives, who give you the foundation to move forward, and to develop the courage to take the harder right and not the easier wrong.”

Frost told the students she has traveled the world and witnessed several historical moments during her 31-year career as a soldier. In 1989, she was in Berlin and was able to take a piece of the Berlin Wall as it was torn down.

Recently, she has kept busy overseeing her organization in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In conjunction with AT&T, the service established call centers in the two war-torn countries to enable American troops to keep in touch with their families and loved ones.

Frost worked in the White House during the Reagan and the first Bush administrations. She served as an adviser to Gen. Colin Powell when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Members of the school’s Junior Army ROTC seemed receptive to Frost’s speech.

“They are very excited because we’ve never had a general visit us, much less the highest ranking woman officer in the Army,” said Maj. Edward Holmes, who is in charge of the school’s JROTC program. “I don’t think they even knew there was a woman general in the Army.”

The general, whose maiden name is George, spent the rest of Friday afternoon visiting her relatives in Marion and Oak Grove. She is the sister of Gwen Strickland, a physician assistant practicing in Marion County.

Frost’s nephew, George Strickland, is a student at Johnakin Middle School in Marion.

Frost is married to Martin Frost, a former U.S. Congressman from Texas. Her husband is a regular political commentator and guest on Fox News Channel.

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