By Marilyn Tinnin
Lt. Col. Allen West Visits Pro-Life Mississippi
Lieutenant Colonel Allen West will be in Jackson on April 5 to keynote the Pro-Life Mississippi Banquet. First Baptist Church Jackson will host the event. Festivities will begin at 5 p.m. with a Silent Auction. The dinner will begin at 6:30 p.m. Individual tickets are priced at $25 each and tables can be purchased for $200. Information on more underwriting sponsorships can be obtained by calling the PLM Office at 601.956.8636.
Retired Lt. Col. Allen West is a United States Army veteran, a former Florida congressman and an American political commentator. He is also a great American and a champion for the rights of the preborn. Lt. Colonel West’s older brother served in Vietnam
Retired Lieutenant Colonel Allen West is a familiar face and a familiar voice to most Americans today. We don’t think of him as “retired” since he is a frequent political commentator on cable news. He spends his time these days traveling, speaking, writing, and working on public policy. He is deeply committed to frontline battle in the deep culture war raging in our world today.
West grew up during Jim Crow in Atlanta in the very neighborhood where Martin Luther King, Jr. pastored the Ebenezer Baptist Church. With a father who was a World War II veteran, a mother who worked in the Marine District Headquarters, and an older brother who had served in Vietnam, Lt. Col. West never considered anything other than the military as his calling. At 16, he eagerly joined Grady High School’s Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC). Following graduation, he went on to participate in the University of Tennessee’s collegiate ROTC program. From UT, he entered the Army commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant.
West was deployed during the Gulf War in 1991 and the Iraq War in 2003. He served as one of Florida’s Representatives to Congress from 2011-2013, and his reputation as a champion for the rights of the preborn has made him one of the pro-life movement’s most sought after spokesmen.
Love for his country and the American ideal were instilled in him as a child. “There is something about our country, what it stands for, and what it represents that at the core are the best human beings strive for.” He believes nothing strikes at that core more forcefully than the easy access to abortion that has become an accepted part of the fabric of the present day.
Close to 60 million babies have been aborted since 1973 when Roe v. Wade made abortion legal in the United States. About 19 million of those babies have been black, he explains. That grieves the heart of God, but it grieves Lt. Colonel West, too. He is a devoted husband and father who is also quite vocal about the importance of strong families where children know the love, nurture, and involvement of a mother and a father. He is not shy about calling Christians to engage and become a part of the solution.
While assigned to Kansas State University as an ROTC instructor, he received a master’s degree in political science. He also met and married the love of his life. Dr. Angela West’s undergraduate degrees are in Marketing and Finance, and her postgraduate work earned a Masters and a PhD in Adult Education Psychology.
Today, the Wests make their home in Dallas where they are active in Watermark Community Church. They are the parents of two daughters, one who is in West Virginia in a Physicians’ Assistant program and the other in her junior year at a university in South Florida.