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My father served two tours in the United States Marine Corps during the Vietnam war. I may have been born fifteen years after the war ended but there was never really a time in my life that the war did not affect my life. My father to this day thirty four years after the war, still has the carnage written on his face. He was not abusive or crazy in the tradition of the Vietnam Veteran stereotype but that war is still a huge part of my life.

I grew up in poverty. Not in a ghetto or a street somewhere but I remember quite vividly the years where my father couldn't even hold a job because of the pain he carried back from that place. We practically lived from paycheck to paycheck and here were times when my parents went hungry to make sure my sister and I could eat. Not your usual image of the life of a serviceman.
I am attending college now and majoring in English Literature. But it is not for me or the other children like me that I support this proposition. It is for the Veterans out there who struggle to put their children through a decent college after what they have already been through in their lifetimes. My father now is a truck drive who spends weeks at a time out on the road so we can afford the insane interest on my ever rising student loans. I work long hours to try to afford food while I live six hours away from home and my mother puts up with a job and a company she can't stand to be able to afford our living.
Vietnam may never have come and blown up buildings in our heartland but my father still volunteered to serve his country. And yes they paid for him to attend two year college but now in that we need help so much it's as if his service never happened.
I feel that a discount on tuition for the children of servicemen is truly a break for the servicemen themselves. If a student is a dependent of a servicemen or veteran the relief would be most likely felt by the servicemen not their children. This is just a reward for a job well done, it is not a show of favoritism or prejudice towards other students. It would just be a way to say thank for everything that had been sacrificed, especially for the children who have lost their parents for their country. Every man and woman who signs up for the military knows that there is a sacrifice they may have to pay. This is just something to show that even if we don't support the war they were in we are still grateful to them.

Learn more about this author, Roberta Weth.
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