A trip down memory lane shows purpose in community-driven education

On a picture-perfect October Sunday morning, on the campus of the University of New Hampshire in Durham, you survey the foliage in and around the iconic buildings of your highly valued alma mater. Coffee in hand, your appreciation of the autumn ambiance is matched by memories of classes in each building you encounter.

Your three degree programs, beginning with your return to college on the strength of the post-9/11 GI Bill in 2009, have featured educational and entertaining discussions with valued faculty members and also the wonderful students who were — and still are — considerate of my military experiences and point of view as an older, nontraditional student.

Dimond Library is looking majestic on this fall morning. Bathed in golden sunshine and surrounded by blasts of color in the surrounding wood line, it will soon be filled with students who have spent the first part of the weekend socializing and then use Sundays to get ready for their busy week.

Murkland Hall, which houses the language programs on campus, reminds you of the Arabic and Spanish classes that you enjoyed there over the years.

DeMeritt Hall is nearby, invoking images of calculus lectures that — although challenging — were fun to partake in with the younger students. The Memorial Union Building is your favorite spot on campus, as a student and alum, as it features supportive staff, and the food court and movie theaters, as well as the campus radio station and student newsroom. Not to forget the game room and the basement club where the students of Improv Anonymous put on a great show every Thursday night. Nearby Memorial Field and Wildcat Stadium facilitate both memorable sporting events and commencement ceremonies.

As an imbedded student, you have had a front-row seat to everything that is great about UNH. Attending classes from 2009-2023, you have witnessed outstanding students developing into successful professionals, in the fields of business and medicine and nursing and anthropology journalism and all types of engineering and sports.

You witnessed an incoming university president stand up a nationally recognized management plan for the pandemic. UNH students not only energized the COVID-19 testing program on campus, but there were also chemical engineering students who helped manufacture the vaccine when the pandemic was at its most threatening.

You have seen iconic buildings on campus restored internally while retaining the historic look of their exteriors.

These thoughts surround you on this golden Sunday morning; you continue walking toward your Durham apartment to continue your personal archaeology.

A few months ago, you finally retrieved your vast personal belongings from local off-site storage. Finally, you have begun — with the help of the local community center and its helpful storage options — the task of going through a lifetime of storage containers and boxes. Some items to be thrown out, some items like clothing and shoes to be donated to students, some items cause a revival of old interests such as scuba diving. All of it sharpens your awareness of your journey as a veteran and as a student. It is, indeed, personal archaeology.

Buried in some of the cartons you find carefully annotated notes from favored classes in anthropology, oceanography, civil engineering and journalism. You find stories written for fiction and nonfiction classes, taken both as an undergrad and in grad school. These stories remind you of your mindset when you wrote them years ago, what you cared about and what you were concerned about in the world. You find articles written for The New Hampshire (the school paper at UNH) as well as Main Street Magazine, in which you displayed the courage and work ethic of the UNH Rowers. (Gold medal recipients in the head of the Charles Regatta in Boston in 2015 and 2017).

You recall how you told students in class over the years that they can compartmentalize and support the troops, even though they are opposed to war.

You realize how much of your work in college is rooted in your military experiences. You continue your personal archeology and find long-forgotten mementos from your three Iraq deployments with the U.S. Army Reserve. You are grateful that you saved your mail from the deployments. These include supportive handmade posters in crayon from younger cousins who, now in 2023, are grown up and have children of their own. And books and sports magazines. And pictures of family and friends who stayed in touch while you were away.

You dig even deeper into your personal strata and uncover relics from your first four years in the military, as a member of the U.S. Air Force stationed at Pease Air Force Base.  You find some Army papers from 1987-1990, then your reenlistment papers from 2001 when you joined the Army again, compelled by the 9/11 attacks.

You think of all the support you have had as a student-veteran, from entities such as UNH Military and Veterans’ Services, and the Veterans Administration, and family and friends, and your Army Reserve unit, and fellow soldiers, and professors and administrators and all the outstanding young people you encounter every day at UNH Durham. You believe that the future of the country, and the world, is brightened by the torch of hope carried by the students of today.

You reflect, not for the first time, on how important it is for you to be part of the UNH community. And you appreciate how your alma mater has acted as a portal through which to channel all the threads of your life, in a way that is both energizing and meaningful.

Doug Rodoski is recently retired from the U.S. Army and received his B.A., writing MFA and master of arts in liberal studies at UNH Durham.