The Voice

Issue date: 5/24/07 Section: Inside WCC

Media Credit: Voice Archive WCC student Andrea Rendziperis is pursuing an Associate's degree in biology after her tour of duty with the Army.

Anyone who remembers bouncing on the knee of a grandparent who served in a war knows that veterans often have an interesting story to tell. Whether they have feelings of glory or bitterness or recall their memories with enthusiasm or trauma - hearing their unique perspective is usually both interesting and enlightening.

Veterans come in all ages and persuasions and some of them are currently attending WCC. According to Andrea Reilly, WCC's certifying official for veteran affairs, 150 veterans attended the school during the most recent semester and the majority of them are recent vets who served during war times in Afghanistan and Iraq. Three of these students - Robert Kontz, Andrea Rendziperis and Jessica Willoughby - recently shared their stories.

Kontz is a Specialist in the Army National Guard, where he has served since 2004. After completing a 10-month stint in Iraq that lasted for most of 2005, Kontz took a leave to return to his home town of Pinckney and started attending classes at WCC in the spring of 2006. He is majoring in Biology and will attend classes at the University of Michigan's Flint campus this coming fall, where he will look into the ROTC program.

His service to the guard may be ending very shortly, and although he's excited about the future, there are still things he misses about military life.

"It's mostly the camaraderie of my fellow soldiers and a structured day that I miss," he said.

Willoughby was a Private E-2 in the Army from 2000 to 2004, serving in Iraq shortly after the war's inception in March 2003. While home on leave in December of that year, she became pregnant with her first child and had to return to Iraq the following month.

"I tried to hide it for about a month before I said 'OK, I have to get a blood test and find out what's going on,'" she said of spending her early stages of pregnancy in a war zone. "They noticed something was up and said I can't be in Iraq while I was pregnant, so they sent me back."

Later that year, Willoughby was discharged a few months early for maternity. She started attending WCC shortly after the birth of her child and received an Associates Degree in Elementary Education after the fall 2006 semester. She is currently enrolled at Eastern Michigan University.

Continued...

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