Fort Douglas program will highlight opportunities for veterans

SALT LAKE CITY — Gregory Hale is the type of young man that a Saturday event at the Fort Douglas Military Museum is intended to showcase.

So is the type of older man who is his teacher, history professor John Reed.

The two are a contrast in terms of places in life.

Hale is 26 and recently got out of the Marines after a four-year stint.

Reed is a 50-something retired lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves with 26 years of service.

It is in a university classroom where their paths meet — one searching for knowledge, the other anxious to pass it on.

Both are examples of why veterans and institutions of higher learning can be a good fit, a remarkable success story and continuation of a tradition forged by the GI Bill of 1944.

Describing it as "the last beautiful gasp of the New Deal," Reed said the GI Bill democratized and transformed colleges and universities — once reserved for the rich — into equal-opportunity bastions of learning.

From 9 a.m. to noon Saturday at the military museum, an event called "Veterans in Transition — Soldiers to Students" will highlight the educational opportunities available to veterans, address the education programs of the past and discuss the benefits of what happens when veterans go back to the classroom.

That notion has not always been popular, and early fears were that battle-hardened veterans would be disruptive in the classroom and were not education-worthy.

Leaders at some prestigious universities even concluded that the measure would result in the destruction of the American education system.

Despite those fears, by 1947 more than 70 percent of people enrolled in four-year-institutions were World II veterans. What educators came to learn, Reed said, is that the best students were those who were the oldest, who had been away from school the longest and were married.

More than 2 million World War II vets seized the opportunities provided by the GI Bill, embarking on new pathways that remain available to the veterans of today — such as Hale.

The Salt Lake City resident works part-time and is carrying 18 credit hours in his first semester at the University of Utah, where he hopes to obtain a bachelor's degree in history and go on to teach.