{"id":10973,"date":"2022-10-06T18:24:56","date_gmt":"2022-10-06T23:24:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/?p=10973"},"modified":"2022-10-06T18:24:57","modified_gmt":"2022-10-06T23:24:57","slug":"joining-the-military-in-the-1970s-helped-my-parents-go-from-hungry-in-a-small-apartment-to-generational-wealth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/?p=10973","title":{"rendered":"Joining the military in the 1970s helped my parents go from hungry in a small apartment to generational wealth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul><li>My parents hit a low point financially in the &#8217;70s and decided to enlist in the Army to make ends meet.<\/li><li>Their time in the military ultimately helped them get on better financial footing and go to college.<\/li><li>They were able to get good government jobs and my mom is now comfortably retired.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>My momma wore combat boots \u2014 even though she preferred heels. She fired a rifle \u2014 even though she disapproved of guns. She had to run a mile in under seven minutes, dressed in full combat gear \u2014 even though she carried me in her belly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My mom will tell you the military was a tough path, especially for a woman in the 1970s, but it&#8217;s a path she would unquestionably march down again because of the life it afforded her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;It was critical at the time,&#8221; she told me. &#8220;The Army made a massive change in where I ended up in life \u2014 where we all ended up in life.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2><strong>My parents joined the military when they ran out of options<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>My mom, Christine Knapp, grew up in Detroit and mid-Michigan, helping take care of her six younger siblings. Despite the burden, she graduated from high school a semester early. She dreamed of studying in Italy \u2014 maybe fashion or architecture.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Did it really matter?&#8221; she wondered. &#8220;It was Italy.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My mom met my dad, a Vietnam vet, at a friend&#8217;s house the same day she received her diploma. They married seven months later. She never got to Italy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Life rocketed forward in the following years: College classes for both. My sister&#8217;s birth. My dad&#8217;s graduation. He began a master&#8217;s program through the University of Kansas \u2014 but the US economy slowed their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;It was the early &#8217;70s,&#8221; my mom said. &#8220;Everything started going downhill fast.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My dad lost the job that supported his studies. She lost her job. They had few options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;We had to come back home. There were no jobs. And to top it off, money was so bad for the government, I lost my scholarships and grant that I had previously used to pay my tuition. It was gone. There was no way for me to finish college.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My dad got two jobs at two separate Kroger stores back in Michigan, earning a couple bucks an hour. My mom worked at K-Mart, earning $1.68 an hour. Their unskilled labor afforded them a cramped upstairs apartment in a low-rent part of Lansing. The weeks dragged on with no better days on the horizon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Those were pretty desperate times,&#8221; my mom told me.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They were desperate \u2014 until my mom got an idea. A friend had just joined the Army and moved to Germany for a steady paycheck and college money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;&#8216;What if we joined?'&#8221; my mom asked my dad. &#8220;It was that or go nowhere in that dreary old apartment.&#8221;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My mom had dreamed of living in Europe, but not like this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Imagine pulling up stakes and moving a child halfway across the world.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They imagined it. They did it. And it changed their lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2><strong>2 military incomes made all the difference<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Both of my parents enlisted. They didn&#8217;t earn much at first. After basic training, they studied Army communications to prepare for a move overseas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;It wasn&#8217;t great. We had a trailer in Georgia and a babysitter.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At least they knew they would be together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The Army had this thing they called the buddy system (Buddy Team Enlistment Option). If we went in, we were kind of locked together and they&#8217;d have to put us in the same place.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Army sent them to a critical region during a pivotal time: Germany in the 1970s. The Nazis were gone, but the Iron Curtain remained and armed militants like the Baader-Meinhof Group still terrorized the streets. My parents worked for the Army Security Agency, encrypting top-secret communications between officers \u2014 the same level of classified intelligence&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/kaine-trump-classified-documents-get-out-of-jail-free-card-2022-9\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">making headlines today<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;These were TS SCI files \u2014 the same ones&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2022\/08\/16\/1117455322\/trump-mar-a-lago-documents-fbi-ts-sci\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">taken from Trump&#8217;s home in Florida<\/a>&nbsp;that could land him in jail. We had that clearance. We were not allowed to visit a communist country within 10 years after we left the military. I worked in a vault \u2014 literally a vault.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite their critical work, my parents still didn&#8217;t earn much money. They needed both of their incomes to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know how families do it nowadays living on a single Army income. You&#8217;re getting moved every three years. The spouse can&#8217;t keep a job. It&#8217;s why you have so many people on food stamps.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dual incomes helped, as did a program that paid a little extra to government employees who lived in expensive places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;When we went to Germany, the Army didn&#8217;t have enough housing. We got more money, which we needed to afford an apartment. It made for a much nicer lifestyle, away from the base.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My mom gave birth to me in Augsburg, Germany. My dad earned his master&#8217;s degree in child development through a Boston University program in Munich. A short time later, they headed back to Michigan with a little extra pocket money and a sunnier outlook on life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My parents hit a low point financially in the &#8217;70s and decided to enlist in the Army to make ends<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[254,3421],"tags":[3746,888],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10973"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10973"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10974,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10973\/revisions\/10974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}