The Bell Curve:

Sixty-four years ago, I showed up in Columbia, Mo., with a wife, a child and an ancient, battered Studebaker that had coughed its way across the country. I was in Columbia to resume my education, which had been interrupted four years earlier by a war. I was in the middle of my junior year in the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism when I enlisted and when I returned.

I needed a job, but first I needed a degree that would allow me access to the publications that turned to Missouri to fill staff openings. Problem was, even with back military pay, I didn’t have enough money either to pay an out-of-state tuition or to support my family while I finished my degree.

Then, into this fix I shared with millions of other returning citizen-soldiers, came — like a post-war angel — the GI Bill of Rights, offering to pick up the tab for my education and even providing 90 bucks a month for living expenses. And so I gratefully accepted, graduated, had a choice of three jobs, and started a lifelong connection with the field I had coveted since boyhood. God knows when, if at all, any of this would have happened without the GI Bill of Rights.

Now history is repeating itself. Hundreds of thousands of young Americans who have been fighting a miserable war full of broken promises from which they will hopefully be relieved soon are being told by their president — who sat out his war in the security of a Texas Air National Guard unit that he refuses to discuss — that he will veto efforts in Congress to provide them the same benefits veterans of my war were given. And our Rep. John Campbell, who has never served in the military, tells us he also opposes a new GI bill and offered six reasons for this position recently in the Pilot (“Do you back GI Bill changes,” That’s Debatable, May 29).

Campbell calls the veterans’ educational benefits “counterproductive” with an explanation that doesn’t even come close to making up in tough reasoning what it lacks in heart. A veteran seeking help to finish school after surviving the agonies of Iraq is not looking for a handout from his country. He’s looking for a chance. You might want to remember Campbell’s views in this matter in November.