On Feb 27, 2005, The Austin American Statesman printed a story about a 17 year-old Travis High School (Austin, TX) student Richard Balderas, who had joined the US Marine Corp via the Delayed Entry Program and was scheduled to start training after he graduated high school.
Then on April 20th, the Statesman printed a follow up story about Richard Balderas, and his decision not to join the Marines.
Both stories focus on Richard’s desire to take care of his sister. In the first article, Richard thought that joining the Marines would enable him to accomplish that goal. In the second article, Richard has been pesuaded that the best way for him to support his sister would be to go to college instead of joining the Marines.
With Richard’s senior year of high school behind him now and college classes set to start in the next few weeks, I’m curious if the Statesman plans on doing another follow up story on Richard Balderas.
Some question I’d be interested in finding out the answers to:
Did Richard in fact graduate from HS (remember, he’d already dropped out once before, and this was his second time as a senior in HS)? Did he get accepted to college? Is he enrolled for fall classes? Did he change his mind again and decide to enroll in the Marines after all? Or did he decide that neither the Marines nor College were the right choice for him and chose something else instead.
I wrote about Richard’s story here, and how he came to change his mind about serving in the US Military (and the left-wing organizations who talked him out of it). If Richard is not getting ready to start college in a couple of weeks, and is instead still uncertain as to what to do with his life and how to support his sister…than the anti-war, anti-military Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors organization has betrayed him and set him up for failure.
If anybody out there knows Richard and what he finally decided to do, I’d be interested to know.
