After spending his youth on military bases around the world including Panama and Germany, Downers Grove resident Donnie Fields said he often felt like he “grew up in the military.”

His dad ran military officers’ clubs around the country and the globe including the West Point officers club and took his family with him.

When Fields was 17 and living in Florida, some teenage shenanigans led his dad to suggest he join the military himself.

Two weeks later, Fields did just that.

He enlisted in the U.S. Army with the intention of following in his dad’s footsteps in the culinary field.

Running his first two miles in training as an enlisted person “pretty fast, they offered me a ranger contract,” Fields said.

Fields served in the Sergeant Weapons Platoon at Alpha Company of the 3rd Ranger Battalion of the 75th Ranger Regiment in a military career that spanned from 1993 until 2000.

As a ranger, Fields said his team’s primary mission was airfield seizures.

“Our job is to drop in territory that is not ours and take over the airfield and call in the rest of the troops to come in,” Fields said.

During a nighttime training mission – about his 200th in the service – Fields was injured due to a “Mae West” parachute malfunction, which happens when a suspension line crosses the main canopy and makes it look like a woman’s bra.

With about “100 pounds of equipment in front of me, I hit the ground harder and faster” than anticipated, Fields said.

Fields broke his femur and after months of surgeries and rehabilitation, he was medically discharged from the Army.

Fields’ first job out of the military was working as a veteran service representative at the Veterans Benefits Administration.

From there, he was recruited into the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs prosthetic interns’ program, a job he held for 15 years.

In addition, Fields served as the assistant chief of prosthetics at both the VA Portland Health Care System and the Miami VA Healthcare System before retiring as the chief of prosthetics at Hines VA Hospital in 2021.

The move to Hines led him to Downers Grove.

After 30 years of service in different capacities of government, Fields made the decision to retire.

When his wife began to encourage him to tackle home repair projects, Fields joked that instead he decided to try several other new business ventures – selling real estate and investing in properties to remodel.

After years of helping veterans with disability claims, Fields also set out to help veterans with home buying.

With experience in veteran benefits for home buying such as no money down or lower interest rates, Field is part of Keller Williams Experience Realty in Downers Grove.

He also continues to help veterans through a venture he began with his sister, Margie Fields, a former U.S. Air Force veteran. The venture is the Vet Home Collective.

“We help veterans with almost anything,” he said, including VA loans, disability claims and disability equipment.

Fields makes time to volunteer coach both wrestling and softball. He also takes time to watch his son who wrestles at Elmhurst University.