Helping veterans get to college

JW told me about one inspiring event in particular: during the battle of Falluja a couple of years ago, I was watching this television reading accounts of it, I heard of the sacrifice some of these young Marines were making and someone encouraged me to go visit some of these Marines at our local hospital. So I did in the summer of ’05 and I’ve been going there and other hospitals as well. JW says he’s made 14 hospital visits so far and he encourages vets there to go back to school: I told one man that as tragic as his injury is, he had lost one leg, he could do anything he wants to do and he has to keep focusing on that. JW has been inspiring himself. This undergrad student who was in Falluja and was shot there talks about JW’s impact: I was visited by President Wright in the hospital. I was heavily medicated at the time but I received his business card. He got out of the Marine Corp at the same rank as I got out and it was impressive to see him get up to such a high, prestigious level. The soldier eventually wrote the Dartmouth President a letter. JW called the man and encouraged the man to apply to Dartmouth as a transfer student. The man followed his advice and is now one of three former soldiers to attend Dartmouth and says this is a dream come true. He considers himself lucky. He doesn’t have any feeling left in his injured arm, but because the army considers him disabled, he qualifies for certain benefits. Other veterans are struggling to move on and JW says that’s not the way our country should be treating its veterans. JW has helped raise more than $300,000 dollars to help set up an academic counseling service to help wounded vets apply for college. The program has already helped over 100 vets get into college.