Soldier goes from bombed-out Humvee to college classroom

He dropped out of high school as a teenager because he was “naive,” “immature,” wanted “no responsibility” and “was going to be young forever,” remembers Guillermo Guzman of Addison. Guzman had grown into a determined man with a focused blueprint for his future by the day his life nearly ended.

“A projectile went through the bulletproof window of my Humvee and through the roof,” Guzman says of the roadside bomb in Iraq that hit his convoy on Jan. 5, 2006. The blast ruptured Guzman's right eardrum and sent metal and glass into the left side of his face and body with such force that it knocked off his protective goggles and bent a metal bracket on his Kevlar helmet.

“I couldn't feel anything on the left side of my body. The blast, I was just kind of numb,” Guzman recalls. Sitting next to Guzman in the Humvee was his best buddy, his mentor, the guy who ended up in many of the photographs Guzman shot during his first tour in Iraq Sgt. Jason Reyes Lopez, a 28-year-old father from Puerto Rico.

“I tried to save him, but when I saw his wounds, I knew I couldn't do anything for him,” Guzman says softly, recalling how the shrapnel ripped into Lopez's neck. Another friend, medic Ryan “Doc” Walker, 25, of Oregon, was killed by a second bomb in that ambush. Another 10 U.S. soldiers were wounded.

“Every day I was just getting out little pieces of metal and glass from behind my ear, my face, my arm, my legs,” Guzman says of his recovery. “I still have a little piece of metal on the left side of my forehead. I can hold up a magnet and move it. I show my nephews and they get disgusted.”

In the years after he dropped out of high school, Guzman worked a job installing carpet and knew he had made a mistake.

“My friends were going to college. They knew what they wanted in life,” he says. “I didn't have anything and they were going to college.”

He earned his GED, took some computer classes and knew he wanted to go to college. He saw the Army as the path to get him there, and enlisted in January 2004.

“It was an opportunity to serve my country and qualify for benefits,” Guzman says. Manpower needs forced him to spend an additional fifth year in the Army, leading to two tours in Iraq. When he received his honorable discharge in March 2009, “I had plans to do my life,” Guzman says.

Surfing websites to find veteran benefits, Guzman discovered the national Veterans Upward Bound program, operating in Illinois through Roosevelt University, which has campuses in Chicago and Schaumburg.

“They are very resourceful, very helpful and very knowledgeable about veterans' programs and benefits,” Guzman says. Before the summer was over, the staff at Veterans Upward Bound helped him with admission applications, financial-aid options and all the paperwork required to start his college career at Roosevelt.

“I'm lucky I found Veterans Upward Bound. Without them, I wouldn't know where to go to college or how to apply,” Guzman admits.

In the 15 years since retired Army Maj. Chris Chalko became the first and only project director for the Illinois branch of Veterans Upward Bound, he has heard similar comments from hundreds and hundreds of veterans. Guzman is unusual, Chalko says, because he jumped into the process of moving on with his postwar life so quickly.

Most of the veterans who come to the program at Roosevelt University do so years after their military careers have ended and “they run into a thing I refer to as the civilian world,” says Chalko, 62, who lives in Des Plaines and has three daughters and two grandchildren. “The veterans who keep coming to us tend to be in their mid-40s on average.”

Begun in 1965 as the United States began sending troops to Vietnam, the program was designed to help move veterans toward college, but it also helps veterans “brush up” on school skills, offers tutoring and career counseling, assists those who want to learn a trade and is a “very, very small way” to pay back those who served our country, Chalko says.

“They are looking for a way to better themselves. That hasn't changed,” Chalko notes, rattling through a litany of success stories among the more than 120 veterans they help each year, thanks to a grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

“We have one veteran right now, it's been 12 years since he joined. He got his degree and now he's going to law school,” Chalko says. “I don't care if it takes 12 months or 12 years, he's improving his life. I love doing that.”

Dinu Skariah, statewide counseling and careers coordinator for the program, says, “I don't see it as just helping a veteran, but as we're investing in our community.”

A 68-year-old homeless Vietnam veteran found the program, recently graduated from Northeastern Illinois University with a double major, and is now pursing a master's degree, Chalko says. But another veteran thought to be doing well in the program recently died of a heroin overdose.

“There's a spillover of issues,” Skariah explains. Highly trained soldiers who are good with the weapons of war and confident in their success come home to discover they have to “reintegrate” with family and friends, find a job in a recession, deal with whatever issues they bring home from the battlefield and try to find their way among civilians who often don't understand the sacrifices made by military people and their families.

“It's real easy if you see an arm missing,” says Skariah, 31, who grew up in Des Plaines and now lives in Mount Prospect. But he says civilians often don't realize “some of these guys are coming home with traumatic brain injuries” or other problems.

“I sometimes can't remember simple words. The last time it happened I couldn't remember the word ‘improvised,'” says Guzman, who also suffers from occasional ringing in his ears. None of which deters him from his goal of earning a bachelor's degree in criminal justice.

“It's challenging, but it's worth it. It has to be done,” says Guzman. “It's challenging for every veteran coming back to the United States. Many of my friends call and I tell them about Veterans Upward Bound.”

He has a goal.

“I want to settle down, get married, have a couple of kids, a dog and house,” Guzman says, smiling as he notes, “I already have a dog.”

His criminal justice pursuit might land him in law school, a desk job or possibly in a career that requires a more hands-on enforcement of the law and subjects him to danger.

“I already risked my life a lot in Iraq,” Guzman says. “A cat has nine lives and I don't know how many I have left.”

Ÿ For more information about Veterans Upward Bound, visit the national website at www.navub.org or the state program at Roosevelt University at www.veterans-ru.org.