Most sixteen-year-olds can count the number of homes they’ve lived in on one hand. Sophomore Joseph Langan needs both hands. By the time he arrived at Minot North High School last year, Joseph had already moved nine times, attended eight different schools, and rebuilt his life from scratch in more cities and states than most people visit in a lifetime.
He has lived in Florida, Alabama, Illinois, Arizona, Kansas, Alaska, and now North Dakota. His favorite was Illinois, where he was closest to family and the schools felt especially welcoming. For Joseph, that is simply what growing up has looked like, and he wouldn’t trade the person it has made him for anything.
Joseph is part of a tight-knit family: his younger brothers, Nate (13) and Alex (10), his mom Meghan, and his dad, Lt Col Daniel Langan, 5MXG. Together, they have built a life defined by movement, resilience, and constant change.
Ask any military kid what the hardest part of the Air Force lifestyle is, and the answer comes quickly: the moving. Not just the boxes and the trucks and the unfamiliar bedrooms, but everything that gets left behind. The friends who became family. The sense of belonging that took months to build and can vanish in a single conversation with a parent who says, “We have orders.”
“The hardest part of having a parent in the military is having to move so often and having to restart your life every few years,” Joseph said. “The moves can come as a surprise, and you’re never ready to leave your current place. Sometimes, that’s just when you’re finally settling in.”
“Being a military child has caused me to grow in many ways,” he reflects. “Like being able to adapt to change easily, make new friends, and prioritize what’s important to me.”
When the Langan family arrived in Minot, Joseph wasted no time. Knowing that staying active was important to his sense of self and well-being, he joined the cross-country team within weeks of arriving in town, before school had even started. It was a deliberate choice, a lesson learned from years of navigating new places: don’t wait for the world to come to you.
That decision paid off almost immediately. Through the team, he made genuine friendships before he had ever walked through the doors of Minot High School. By the time fall classes began, he already had a group of people he could call his own.
Joseph remembered a bonfire shortly after moving to Minot, where he expected to feel out of place at his father’s work gathering. Instead, a group of cross-country runners—other military kids—welcomed him warmly and encouraged him to join the team. In that moment, surrounded by people who understood what it meant to be new, he no longer felt like an outsider.
“I have multiple stories similar to this,” he said, “with people being so welcoming and bringing me in, despite being a military kid who would likely be gone in a few years.” That last part matters. These were people who knew the friendship might be temporary, who understood that Joseph could receive orders and be gone before the next season ended, and they chose to invest in him anyway.
These days, Joseph Langan laces up his shoes and runs through the flat North Dakota streets, alongside teammates who started as strangers and became something more.
“Throughout all of this, I’ve met many amazing people, seen incredible things, and really learned what is important to me,” he says.
In the end, that might be the most remarkable thing about military children: not that they survive the uprooting, but that they bloom anyway. Joseph Langan is blooming in Minot. And this April, we take a moment to recognize him, and every other kid who knows what it costs to start over, and does it anyway.
