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After I graduated from school, I enrolled in the military college, a cadet school. This is the first stage of military training; it instills discipline and various qualities required for military life.

A person like myself, born and raised in the inner city of Atlanta, Georgia, to lower-middle-class parents. But I had the opportunity to get an education, to go and earn a commission in the United States Army, to serve for 22 years, to lead men and women in combat.

I don't come from a lot of money and wasn't going to get an academic scholarship, so the only way to afford an education was to allow the military to supplement it.

I wasn't a good student in high school. I wanted to go to college, but they weren't exactly beating down my door to offer me admission, and it's so expensive in the U.S. If you join up for a period, the army will pay your school and provide a stipend.

In our post-9/11 world, our Nation's military deserves, at least the same access to institutions of higher education that any other major employer might enjoy.

Well, my father was in the Army and we traveled quite a bit when I was growing up, and I thought that I would like to have a military career, although I was drawn more towards the Navy.

My family didn't have time for me, so I decided to join the Suvorov military academy, which is in St. Petersburg. I spent two years there and studied general military science. At that point, once I graduated, I joined the Chernigov higher education pilot academy.

Military school was great and especially great for leadership and then I spent two years in Vietnam.

I was put in the Air Corps. I was never educated to serve in the military, but soon my activities in the American Air Corps became very interesting to me.

As a son of an airman who was stationed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson and a member of the House Armed Services Committee, it is my honor to nominate young people to our military academies.