The story behind the ‘American Dream’ photo at West Point that went viral

You do not have to be born her to be a true American! This new 2LT shows us that.

Idrache’s father, Dieujuste, immigrated to America and was able to bring the rest of his family with him in 2009, one year before an earthquake leveled much of Port-au-Prince. The family didn’t have much, Idrache said, but his father always stressed the importance of education.

“My dad always said, ‘Education is the only gift I can always give you, because I don’t have any anything material to give,’” Idrache recalled in the Army news release.

Idrache enlisted in the Maryland Army National Guard in 2010, serving for two years in the 231st Chemical Company with headquarters in Greenbelt, a suburb of the nation’s capital. The Army said his hometown is New Carrollton, east of Washington.

Idrache was a leader in his class of 950 cadets. According to a West Point news release, he was named a regimental commander last summer. Army officials at West Point said that he was on leave and not available for comment, but Idrache said in an Army news release Wednesday that he grew up in Port-au-Prince watching U.S. troops perform humanitarian missions in his native Haiti. He became West Point’s top graduate in physics, earning the school’s Brigadier General Gerald A. Counts Memorial Award.