Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Don Keelan, a certified public accountant and resident of Arlington. The piece first appeared in the Bennington Banner.
Southern Vermont College has launched an educational program that if it comes to fruition next January, will be so valuable to recently discharged veterans of the U.S. armed forces.
The Veterans Scholar Program is the creation of SVC President Karen Gross, who is extremely passionate to have Vermont and neighboring states’ veterans take advantage of what the college is offering. This writer witnessed her passion for veterans during a recent hour-long meeting at her office.
While President Gross was expounding on all of the program’s virtues and how it would work, I couldn’t help but think back to 1959-60 and how a similar program would have been so beneficial to me and to many of my fellow Marines.
On a cold winter’s night in late 1959, I was standing guard duty at the gatehouse at the presidential retreat, Camp David. With me at the time was the head of the White House Secret Service detail. The agent had been aware that I was close to the time when I would be leaving the Marines and asked me if I had any desire in joining the agency. I told him I did. He responded, “Well, first you will need to obtain a college degree.”
A thousand pound weight was placed on my back that night — attending college (assuming I could get into one) was as foreign to me and to my fellow Marines — many of whom were also completing their third year of service.
With the veterans program being planned, SVC has opened its doors to the candidates who 25 years from now could very well be leaders in health care, the social services, criminal justice and business.
The day’s apprehension evolved because I had no college preparation during high school, had been away in the service for three years and would be somewhat older than many in the freshman class. Close order drill, security protection services and small arms training were not exactly the prerequisites for someone embarking on a CPA accounting major.
One advantage I did have over my Marine colleagues: I was part of the unit’s 50 percent that actually completed high school.
Six months after the invitation to join the Secret Service, I was in college. With the help of an admission director who had served in Word War II, along with three fellow veterans, I was able to decline the Marines’ invitation, to come back within six months, if college did not work out.
President Gross came back to SVC in January of this year after having spent a one-year sabbatical in D.C. It was there, while working as a senior adviser to the U.S. Department of Education, that the idea of aiding veterans who wished to pursue college after their military tour came to an end was discussed.
More specifically, Gross worked with an inter-agency task force — members were from the Department of Labor, Department of Education, the Pentagon and the various branches of the armed forces.
It was a critical assignment knowing that close to 1.5 million service men and women would be transitioning back to civilian life, many of whom would want to explore going to college.
The transition program at SVC will initially have 12 military veterans as students. They will have their own housing, mentors and faculty advisers. They will be offered majors in several disciplines — criminal justice, health care, the social sciences and business.
With the veterans program being planned, SVC has opened its doors to the candidates who 25 years from now could very well be leaders in health care, the social services, criminal justice and business.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a P.S. to my own experience.
In 1985, my wife and I attended my first Marine Corps reunion of the unit that had provided protection to President Eisenhower. On the way to the reunion, in Washington, D.C., I had warned my wife not to expect too much in that many of my former comrades had never completed high school.
On the way home she and I reminisced on how Doug owned a 300-person nuclear engineering firm and that Bill was the chair of the physics department at a major university and Mike had recently been appointed the president of a major bank in Chicago. What we needed was “a door to be opened” and so do today’s veterans. Southern Vermont College is opening the doors.
