Every Veteran Blames Their Recruiter. He Was the Drill Instructor Who Became One. / Dr. Jones USN

About this story

Every Veteran has a recruiter story, and most of them end the same way. Dr. Cornelius Jones stood on both sides of it, Red rope at Great Lakes, snapping recruits off the bus at O'Hare at midnight, then a recruiter in charge of a station in Alexandria, Louisiana, deciding which kids got in at all. Ronnie makes him answer for both. What comes out isn't a confession and it isn't a defense. It's the thing nobody on either side of that fight wants to hear.

He enlisted two weeks after the USS Cole was attacked, and stood on the 125th floor of the World Trade Center months before it fell.

And that's the back half of a life that almost didn't make it here. Selling guns on the street at fifteen after watching a friend get murdered standing next to him. Locked up as a juvenile and told to his face by the facility psychologist that he'd be back inside or dead in an adult prison. A high school dropout with a GED out of Job Corps. Then the anthrax shots, open-heart surgery at twenty-six, five days in a coma he didn't know he was in, and four years of leadership telling him nothing was wrong with him. Four master's degrees and a doctorate earned while enlisted and stuck in medical limbo. Twenty books. A scholarship he hands to strangers' kids in person. And the Sunday morning he rolled down every window in the car on the north side of Jacksonville and told his own children to smell what they'd been spared.

Anything this episode earns goes to Tuesday's Promise. Founded in Manhasset, New York in the aftermath of the attacks and known for its first 25 years as Tuesday's Children, the organization rebranded this summer to reflect who it serves now, not just the children of 9/11, but adults, first responders, recovery workers, and Gold Star families who lost someone to post-9/11 military service. Their work runs on case management, peer support groups, and Gold Star youth mentoring. Last year alone they ran 17 in-person programs across eight states and paired 50 kids who lost a parent in military service with an adult mentor.

That mentoring program pairs one adult with one child between 6 and 18 who lost a parent, guardian, or sibling in service. Matches are meant to last a minimum of a year, and plenty of them run until the kid is grown. Right now there are children on the waiting list in states from California to Virginia because there aren't enough mentors. If you've got a year to give a kid who lost their dad / www.tuesdayspromise.org

In their words

“Anyone who has oxygen in their lungs still has an opportunity to make an impact and still should learn.”

“If my education was free and I’m in a position to help somebody else get an education, it would be absolutely selfish to not give toward their future.”

Chapters

1. 0:00 Cold Open: Never Be a Victim
2. 1:37 Welcome to Vegas Veteran Voices
3. 4:50 Fifteen, Selling Guns, and the Night Derek Died
4. 6:56 "You'll Be Back In Here or Dead"
5. 8:36 Job Corps, the GED, and Brick Masonry
6. 9:41 Mississippi to Atlanta
7. 13:28 The USS Cole and the Recruiting Office
8. 16:33 The Last Photos From the 125th Floor

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9. 19:42 The Shots
10. 23:42 Open Heart Surgery and Five Days in a Coma
11. 26:37 Degrees From Limbo: Blocked From OCS
12. 27:37 Earning the Red Rope
13. 28:55 Pulled Off the Quarterdeck, Sent to Recruiting
14. 31:57 Nobody Cares That You Were a Master Sergeant
15. 34:07 Writing His Way Through His Brother's Death
16. 37:46 The Bus, the Yellow Footprints, and "My Rack Is Lumpy"
17. 42:02 The Verdict: Drill Instructor vs. Recruiter
18. 50:10 A Father's Love
19. 54:24 Two Options: Home Tonight, or Calling You From Jail
20. 57:13 "Roll the Windows Down. That's Struggle."
21. 1:03:45 The Cornelius D. Jones Literacy Scholarship
22. 1:08:07 Leaving $90,000 on the Table
23. 1:13:27 Red Rope Weekend Brief