PURPLE UP with Brad Keselowski's Checkered Flag Foundation!  During the month of April, Brad Keselowski and his Checkered Flag Foundation will honor military children in a variety of ways:

• Brad Keselowski's #2 Team Penske Ford will carry his name in PURPLE above the door for all NASCAR Monster Energy Series Cup races during the month of April! ​​
• The Checkered Flag Foundation will change it's profile picture to PURPLE on all social media channels
• We have chosen two very special children, whose father currently serves in the U.S. Coast Guard, to be honored throughout the day at Richmond Raceway for the NASCAR Monster Energy Cup Series Race.  Follow us on Instagram to keep up with all of their activities as we surprise them throughout the day!
• To purchase our Kids' PURPLE UP shirt, click here 

The familiar Hollywood trope of the “military brat” brings to mind the notion of military families who constantly move from base to base, overseas and stateside, experiencing a seemingly never-ending series of short-term homes, jobs, and schools.That can and sometimes is the experience of military families, but the “hidden” side to military life includes “with dependents” assignments at bases in Japan, Germany, and elsewhere. Some military children never attend a stateside K-12 school; they grow up getting their education via DoDDS schools on the same military bases their parents live and work at.

The military child experience also includes situations where the family itself never leaves the United States, but the military parent(s) still serve overseas and at remote bases in Alaska, North Dakota, and Montana. Sometimes the entire family packs up and moves, other times the military member goes on assignment or a deployment without the family.

There are many situations that fall somewhere between these two examples; the military child is expected to support the mission by understanding the needs of the parents to deploy, to relocate, and to put the family’s needs second to the call of duty.
Children bear a difficult burden as Department of Defense dependents; they don’t always fully understand what’s going on when the parents deploy or get re-assigned, but they are always part of the military’s attention when it comes to supporting these families at the same time as accomplishing the mission.