03/03/2018
Jerry Jones (909) 222 – 3337 [email protected] February 28, 2018
“How Serving America Has Impacted My Education”
I was sick almost as soon as I was born. I think Mom said I was diagnosed with asthma and /or allergies by the time I was 9 months old. We lived in central Ohio and my cousins lived just across the Ohio River in Kentucky. We visited often.
The air hangs very heavy with moisture over the River and the valley it cuts, especially during the cool of the nights. All this moisture would enter my lungs each evening and stay there. Asthma doesn’t allow moist air to exit the lungs. I sat up in bed every night of my childhood trying to get enough air out of my lungs to breath in some fresh oxygen. Gasping with all my might for every breath… all night, every night… for 13 years.
That same moisture is perfect for growing an amazing number of different plants. This is the land where a squirrel could travel from the east coast to the Mississippi River without ever touching the ground until after the arrival of the white Europeans. The land of thick woods, lush vegetation, and greenery as far as you can see. I’m allergic to all of it.
When the doctors finally gave me up for dead, my parents packed up the family and took me to a very dry climate where nothing green grows, the deserts of Southern California. It worked.
I made up for lost time during my junior high and high school years. Perfect attendance was possible now. I did that for the first few years, then the party person boiled to the surface; guitars, then cars, then girls. I remember mostly the outside of the school buildings, dropping off my sisters and picking up their girlfriends to head to the beach or the mountains for the day. Eventually, I decided to calm down and start acting like a grown up. I signed up for junior college.
BORING!
My uncle came home from ‘Nam… wearing Marine Corps dress blues. Women followed him around. Men showed respect. I asked him about the military. He said, “If you’re gonna go military, do it right. Marine Corps! OORAH!” He explained how tough it was. He mentioned war, and how much it cost so many people. Nothing easy about any of this; no games. This is about life or death, pain and suffering, earning what you get and paying very high prices for every ounce of it.
If this sick little kid was gonna grow up… really grow up… here’s some serious reality; a true challenge, a REAL test.
Asthma almost kept me out of the military. Seems I just barely cleared the time period since my last episode. I’m on the yellow footprints at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego; shaved head, everything you brung you send home in a box. Into ill-fitting rough cloth “Utilities” and jump in a bunk just in time to have all the beds dumped on the floor with recruit “pukes” spilling out of them all over the polished concrete floors. The harassment is constant all night. Time for breakfast, then a full day; for 13 weeks without stepping outside the training. Phone calls, ci******es, letters, candy bars were more valuable and rare than gold. Finally worked our way up to three miles before breakfast wearing sweatshirts and tennis shoes. Aren’t we proud! Whoa! On the way out we meet the Drill Instructor school COMING BACK from a ten-mile overnight march with loaded backpacks, boots, rifles, and full combat gear!
Some idiot parked a full-size car right in the middle of our drill field. Man, is our Drill Instructor peeved! He finally lost it. Ordered us to fall in on that metal monster. What can he be thinking? Pick it up? Just cuz it ain’t possible don’t mean we hesitate to obey. Amazing how light this couple of tons is when you got a few dozen totally fit men all working together! The DIs did a shift change right after we took the car all the way to the end of the field. Then the man that ordered us to carry that car got in it and drove off. Lessons learned all day every day. Intense stuff, now we graduate and go to a real war… today.
I ended up as an Air Traffic Controller, and a few dozen other assignments as needed or ordered. Success and survival is not enough. Excellent is a “B”. OUTSTANDING is absolutely required if you want to compete in this world. We visit a few places that are really cool, and many that shame us horribly for being so privileged and fortunate to be Americans. There is so very much we take for granted until we see what others have to endure and do without.
Service to our nation is an education. I recommend it for anyone that wants to truly appreciate being alive; learning to strive, learning what is possible, meeting people you can’t wait to help. Our schools are palaces of information. People can accomplish amazing things if they just decide to put in the amount of effort required to achieve the desired result.
The most meaningful impact service to my country has had on my education has to be “appreciation”. Appreciation for who we are, who we can be, what we have, what we can give, what we can accomplish; how blessed America and Americans are. Education is the tool that solves the world’s problems, starting with each of us individually and ending with all of us together.
Respectfully submitted, Jerry Jones SSgt USMC
