Frederick Folson – Son of Frederick Folson & Ernesteen Maddox – Grandson of James Folson & Jessie Mae Culbreath
Hello family, I’m ‘Lil’ Paco, as many of you remember me by. I was born in June 1968 at Grady Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. I spent my early years with my mom and dad at Bankhead Estates apartments, and at grand mama’s house after grand daddy died at 592 Whitaker St. I have so many great memories living there with her – with our white duck in the backyard, apple, pecan, and peach trees back there too. My brother, Jarrett Folson was born in December 1973, and we began our series of moves out to the suburbs. We ended up in College Park, Georgia in 1979 where I finished elementary school, and attended high school at M.D. Collins High where I met my high school sweetheart, Lavon Folson. We attended Senior Prom together in 1985 and have been together ever since.
After graduating high school in June 1986, I enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and left home for Marine Corps Boot Camp in November 1986. I came back to marry Lavon after my MOS school, and she joined me at my first duty station in Camp Pendleton, CA just north of San Diego. We left Cali in 1989 and moved to Oahu, Hawaii where we spent the next 4 years. While there, I deployed to Middle East for the Gulf War and many other deployments throughout Australia and the Far East. After the war, I was selected to be a commissioned officer and moved back home to Atlanta in 1993 to get my bachelor’s degree. Our oldest daughter, Symone Folson, was born in June ’93 and I found myself juggling the rigors of college and being a new dad at the same time – it proved to be almost as challenging as war itself. I graduated from Southern Polytechnic State University in December 1996 with a B.S. in Computer Science and returned to active duty as a Communications Officer. We moved back to Camp Pendleton in 1997 where our second daughter, Jasmine Folson was born in January 1998. We stayed there until 2001, where Kaylah was also born in August 2000.
In January of 2001 we began my tour of duty at the Marine Corps Logistics Base in Albany, GA where I stayed until my retirement in December 2006. Throughout my 20 year career in the Marines, I traveled everywhere except Antarctica and Europe and I met a lot of great people along the way. I gained experiences in peace and war that continue to serve me well to this day, and I would not change anything about the choices I made along that path.
When I retired, I used my Post 9-11 G.I. Bill benefits to get my M.S. degree in Cybersecurity at the University of Maryland, and have been working as a defense contractor in the D.C. Metro area ever since. Today I work as V.P. of Cybersecurity for my company and get an opportunity to work with some of our most advanced technology every day. It’s not what I would do for free, but it pays very good money, allowing us to travel together as family and spend some really high quality family time seeing cool sites.
I hope to move back home to Georgia in the future – my grand mother on my mother’s side left the family some land in Washington, GA that my mother now owns that could very well be the place where I hang my hat when I get out of the D.C. “rat race” up here. But, who knows.
