With Veteran’s Day looming, Cougar News profiles a member of the pride that served in the armed forces.

“Service” tends to define Adam Oldaker.

He’s piggybacked three-and-a-half years of service with the U.S. Army to a lifetime of service as a firefighter and paramedic.

Soon after you read this story, the 24-year-old Allen resident will have graduated from the Collin College Fire Academy.

“(Firefighting) is something I’ve always wanted to do since I was a kid,” he said. “I get a real satisfaction out of helping people and there’s no other career that provides that like being a firefighter.”

The pressure and the fleeting moments between life and death are something Oldaker and a lot of other members of the military are used to.

From October 2007 to January 2009, Oldaker was stationed in Iskandariyah, in Iraq, about 25 miles south of Baghdad and just east of the Euphrates River.

Iskandariyah, named after Alexander the Great, was one of the major cities located within Iraq’s “Triangle of Death,” what the Washington Post called a “lawless and seething region” due to Sunni Muslim insurgency against police, the National Guard, military, foreigners and rival Shiite Muslims.  

Nevertheless, Oldaker survived and once back in the states he set his sights on his career and education pinpointing Collin College’s Fire Academy as one of the best.

Oldaker is not alone. Veterans are filling college and university classrooms in record numbers.  

For the fall 2009 semester, more than 500 veterans registered for classes at Collin College marking a 20 percent increase over last year. That number is expected to go even higher.

According to a Washington Post report in September 2009, the Department of Veterans Affairs expects the number of student veterans receiving benefits to increase by 25 percent to 460,000.

Collin College notes that at least $1.5 million in GI Bill money and veterans benefits were used to pay for an education this semester.

The increase in veterans hitting the books is at least partially attributed to $78 million in federal money set aside for veterans under the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which went into effect Aug. 1.

The GI Bill – or the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act of 1944 – was enacted for veterans of World War II to receive a college education, vocational training, loans to start businesses or to buy a home.

Over the years, the bill has undergone various alterations leading up to the passage of the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008, one in which Oldaker himself is using to pay for his education.  

The main differences between the new bill and previous bills are that benefits are based on the cost of the most expensive institution in one’s own state.

Also, after 10 years of service (or a pledge of 10 years), benefits are eligible for transfer to a spouse or children. The bill also allows benefits for housing and books.

Veterans Day – Nov. 11 -- was initially called Armistice Day or Remembrance Day to commemorate the end of World War I. Hostilities in the first great war eneded on the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month when Germany signed the armistice in 1918.

President Woodrow Wilson formally proclaimed Nov. 11 as Armistice Day in 1919 and in the mid-1950s it was summarily regarded as a day to honor all veterans.

Oldaker hopes everyone takes a moment to remember veterans including those still overseas.

“The American public needs to know that there are still mothers, brothers, sons, daughters and fathers still fighting everyday,” he said.