When I Was Seventeen....

I started school early, entering kindergarten at age four.  (This was for a very practical reason.  My mother had two younger children to care for.  Three little ones at home was just too much).  I moved forward each successive year and became a high school senior at the age of sixteen.  (All of my classmates, with the exception of one, were either 17 or 18 as they began their senior year and all had their driver’s license).  

In February of that senior year, I celebrated my 17th birthday and finally got my driver’s license in April.  The license didn’t do much for me, because we only had one car, which was used daily by my Dad to go to and from his work.  

My goal was to attend college.  I applied to four different schools and was accepted by three, in spite of my average grades.  My older sister was in college at the time. My older brother had enlisted in  the Navy two years before.  My parents urged me to join the military, because they could not afford “two” in college.  (By that time, they were the parents of seven kids!)

The National Defense Education Act of 1958 (student loan program) was just getting off the ground.  In fact, my sister, was enrolled in the program, and I figured I could do the same.  However, there was also the Selective Service, better known as the military draft.  Young men of 18 years of age, who were not farmers or college students, were  subject to being “drafted” (involuntarily) into the Army for two years.  Even Elvis Presley, in spite of his fame, was drafted in 1958 and spent two years in the Army.  

I graduated high school in early June.  I tried to find a job (without having any skill, or a car to get to and from a job).  Everywhere I went, I was encouraged to get my military service out of the way first.  No one wanted to hire an unskilled 17-year old, who would probably be drafted in a year!   My parents were urging me to do the same.  Unable to get a job, discouraged about finding the funds needed for college,  I finally ended up at the Air Force Recruiting Office.

Sixty-three years ago, today, July 11 (1960)  I was on my way to Texas and basic training…when I was 17!  When I retired in April 1999 as an Air Force Reserve Chaplain, my father told the Base Commander:  “I don’t know what would have happened to Harold, if it hadn’t been for the Air Force.”