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Face on march 22nd. and i m not going to forget that. reporter: kiani was supposed to be in college by now. when i heard news that i was awarded an air force rotc scholarship, the first person i told was momma. and she was so proud. it s tough. reporter: lieutenant colonel martinez now raising four children on his own, grieving his wife and recovering from his own injuries. photos of happier times with gail in europe while lieutenant colonel martinez held a nato job. i later learned i took most if not all of the shrapnel. my son took the secondary wave. he got the burn, the flame. i didn t lose consciousness. i was blasted forward. ....
He was there all the time. so 15 months later he died when. december 1977. so you are the older brother in college. you are 12, 13, 14. i just turned 13. were you here when he died? no i wanted to be a lawyer. i didn t get in law school. i was in the air force rotc. they gave me an educational delay so i could try go to law school finish graduate school and stay in south carolina. try to help my dad and my sister. and i was in graduate school. just started it in september. and my aunt just came and got me out of class and i knew the moment she walked in the door what had happened. because she lived in fear of this. that was the longest ride of my life just thinking about her. she found my dad in the bed. and just, i m just so proud of darlene. so what happened then? you go from being a college student to being almost a dad. ....
Situation. i had a very close friend of mine, a friend from high school, as a matter of fact, who was air force rotc, went to one of the top engineering schools in the country, served in the air force for a few years. a couple years ago, he was unfortunately enough unfortunate enough to lose his civilian job. he asked me do i qualify for these benefits? i informed him he qualified for the five years of free health care, so something that would help him out in the interim, but there was a whole wealth of benefits he may be eligible for as a result of his military service and service specifically in iraq and afghanistan. gretchen: sorry. continue. oh, no. after reading the esquire story, had really reinforced a the lo of the work we re doing. i m glad this really brought it to the public s attention. americans care about the shooter. he s an american hero. gretchen: yeah, so what the vfw is doing is admirable. but why is the department of veterans affairs not doing it? a lot of ....
The feeling that we finally got him. and, steve what about you? what kind of a memory do you have from 9/11 that all these years later sparked that need to go out and show your jubilation? absolutely. i remember sitting in my science classroom in sixth grade and the principal came on and said, hey, switch to the news. and we watched the second plane hit the tower and just watching that was painful and that whole day, we were just solemn and so it is really a great thing to know there is finally justice for those 3,000 plus people that were killed. and while you guys are attending college in oklahoma, no doubt some of your classmates from high school have decided to enter the armed forces. do you guys know anyone personally is who is serving in the military? actually my old roommate was is actually in the air force rotc and is about to get deployed. the thing about ou is there is a lot of military here on campus with the two major bases in ....
Footsteps of my dad and stepdad. what did you do in the military? i loaded bombs and missiles on f-15s before i went into air force rotc. we ve seen a lot of americans have to do repeated tours of duty. and when you look at the afghan war, it s been going on eight years and four months. the iraq war has been going on six years and ten months. when you look at the number of people that have been discharged, outed so to speak, does it make sense to you at all, or are we just so antiquated as a military and a country, that we have just got to change this? yes. i mean, we do have to change it. we are fighting two wars. we can t afford to lose we can t afford to kick anybody out. but for some reason we have kept this law on the books and we keep kicking people out. and i know that gates and admiral mullens said they wanted a year to study this. but while they re studying it, more people are still going to be kicked out. this is john mccain today, the ranking member for the ....