Eric,
I don't know whether you are in or out of the service, but I would look into all the details of the GI Bill. If I had it to do over again I would have paid more attention when they were explaining the benefits. I got discharged in '68 after four years in the AF, two of which was in the Fareast with the 1st Mobile Comm. Group. Once back to civilian life I played around with racing a fuel dragster, then ran around in a circle chasing midgets, went through a few women and finally got caught by one that wanted to marry me. We bought a fixer-upper house, a few motorcycles and to make my life story a little shorter, after 9 1/2 years I decided to look into the GI Bill.
My wife and I wanted to take flying lessons and I figured the GI Bill would pay for mine, however, when I looked into it, I found that the GI Bill would not pay for basic flight lessons. If I earned my private license they would pay for advanced training. I also learned that my benefits were only good for 10 years. I think I had heard that before but wasn’t paying attention at the time. A bonsai run at the flight training got me my private in the minimum amount of time and I started training for my Instrument/Commercial ticket with the GI Bill finally picking up the tab. I got a lot of free flying out of it but the problem was that I only had around four months left on the benefit. So when it ran out so did my dream of being a commercial pilot, I just simply couldn’t afford the lessons and had to drop it.
Anyway, I wish you more luck with your GI Bill than I had.
But then, from the way Jane and her band of dissenters cursed me and threw rotten eggs at me in San Francisco when I got off the plane from RVN, it’s a wonder that the Government gave me any benefits at all!
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL
