District News | Middletown City Schools

High School yearbook photo of JD Vance, next to U.S. Senate photo of Vance

JD Vance, a 2003 graduate of Middletown High School, is set to become America’s next vice president.

The vice president-elect was born in Middletown in 1984 as James Donald Bowman. In 1990, the same year he enrolled for kindergarten at Middletown City Schools, his mother renamed him James David Hamel. This is the name Vance would go by for his entire time as a Middie.

While at Middletown High School, Vance was elected vice president of his senior class. Vance graduated from Middletown high School in 2003 with an honors diploma.

After graduating from high school, Vance joined the United States Marines Corps and served as a public affairs marine in Iraq. He then attended Ohio State University, graduating in 2009. He graduated from Yale Law School in 2013.

Vance rose to national prominence in 2016 with the publication of his best-selling memoir "Hillbilly Elegy," which was adapted into a Netflix film in 2020.

He was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022 and began representing the State of Ohio in January 2023.

VP-Elect Vance Facts:

Vance will become the third-youngest vice president. (He is the youngest since 1953, when Richard M. Nixon, who celebrated his 40th birthday just days before the inauguration, was sworn in as Dwight D. Eisenhower’s vice president. John C. Breckinridge, who was 36 when he assumed office in 1857 as James Buchanan’s vice president, holds the record for the nation’s youngest vice president.)
He will be the first millennial vice president
He will be the first vice president to have served in the Marine Corps

Ohio VP Facts:

Before Vance, the last Ohio-born vice president was Charles Dawes, from Marietta, who served from 1925 to 1929 under President Calvin Coolidge. Before that, there was Charles Fairbanks from Unionville Center, who served from 1905 to 1909, under President Theodore Roosevelt, and Thomas Hendricks from Fultonham, who served in 1885, under President Grover Cleveland from March until his death in November.

While Dawes, Fairbanks, and Hendricks were all born in Ohio, they built their political careers elsewhere before becoming vice president.