NATCHEZ &8212; Sammy Lee Rice rarely has all his daughters home at the same time. It&8217;s a good thing.

Who would be in charge, he pondered. Four are sergeants in military service &8212; five until only last year, when one of them married and left her military position.

&8220;I&8217;m a man surrounded by 10 women,&8221; he said with a big grin, showing off photographs of his family at his home on Lamar Street. And that is not including his wife, Ceola.

With two daughters living at home, three granddaughters in the family to date &8212; and the five daughters who have joined the Army, Air Force and Navy, he is quick to brag on their accomplishments.

The military daughters are special to him, as he believes they chose that life to follow in his footsteps.

&8220;They were all over my military stories,&8221; he said, as he recounted his years in the Army, which took him overseas and throughout the United States, as well.

Three of the military daughters &8212; Tiffany Young Rylander, Tamika Young and Tabatha Young &8212; are nieces he and his wife adopted when his sister, their mother, Gloria Jean Rice, died in 1990.

The other two military daughters are Ceressa Rice Brunskill, who recently was nominated for Airman of the Year, NCO Category, at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C., and Samina Rice, a member of the White House Color Guard and named Sailor of the Quarter in 2005.

Two have served in Iraq recently. One may return there in the near future.

&8220;Tabatha, a combat medical tech, has seen nothing but the combat environment since she&8217;s been in the Army,&8221; Sam Rice said.

&8220;I&8217;ve got two girls who woke up with shells beside their sleeping quarters in Iraq. They were that close.&8221;

The daughters rose in the ranks quickly, their father said.

&8220;They are so unique. They are all tall girls, stately, very intelligent and with good sense of humor. They are worldly girls. They are very professional and take pride in the military and are intense about their jobs.&8221;

The military daughters&8217; older sister, Antoinette Rice, &8220;is the one who made them so smart,&8221; the father said.

When the first cousins became sisters in 1990, the households merged easily, Antoinette Rice said. &8220;We had always wanted to be sisters.&8221;

In the mid 1990s, the Rice home burned. The family was safe, but the house was destroyed.

&8220;These girls decided they would help. They would supplement our income by selling pralines,&8221; Sam Rice said. &8220;Everyone all over the city knew them as the praline girls. Everybody liked these children.&8221;

His own military experience began in 1974, when he joined the Army.

He went to Germany for four years, to California and then to the East Coast to be reclassified to qualify for promotion.

His most memorable years were with NATO, where he was assigned on special duty to Izmir, Turkey.

&8220;I got top secret clearance and was the NCO in charge of the message center, all incoming and outgoing documents. It was important and serious work,&8221; he said.

Today, he sees the irony of having his family in a location only a few miles from the Iraqi border.

Two of his girls were born there, and his family was the target of terrorism during that time.

&8220;My house was attacked, and a Turk drew a gun on me and said, &8216;go home, American pig.&8217;&8221; The Army reaction was to remove him and his family from the danger, not knowing the extent of the threat.

New challenges, including teaching young soldiers the basics of defending themselves, continued for the next couple of years, until he completed his military service in March 1985.

He then came back to Natchez and spent another year in the National Guard.

&8220;These girls got it from me, wanting to serve in the military. They idolized me. And I was proud of that,&8221; Sam Rice said.