This is Ashley Stone and you're listening to the Comeback Podcast.

I'm really excited to have you on. I don't know a whole lot about your story but I'm I'm super

excited to hear it and yeah so if you want to just get started from the beginning it goes back about 30 years

okay 30 years I was in the military for about 16 years. I got out in 1990. 1998 my life fell apart my stepdad who I was close to passed away.

My marriage failed and my career ended all within the year.

I'd been severely injured in the military.

They did I didn't have enough years to retire,

so they medically discharged me.

And I had been a combat soldier for 16 years.

That's what I, for 12 of those years that's all I knew.

When I got out of the military the best job I can get was six bucks an hour doing landscaping.

Didn't have a college education, didn't.

My skills were not in high demand in the civilian world.

So, you know, I got to know what hungry was real quick.

And the VA wouldn't pay for college an out-of-state rate, which means I couldn't go to college for the first year.

I ended up living in a government subsidized apartment. I had been divorced.

In 1989, I got my endowments.

And I thought everything's going well, everything's going to be okay, they're going to let me reclassify, I'll retire from the military like I had planned, that didn't work out that way.

My whole life fell apart.

So I came to Virginia because the community college

system was the best in the country in 1990. I knew I had to get education to survive.

The Veterans Rep got me a job working for Bryars Ice Cream in a factory, but it was better than six bucks an hour.

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