Online NewsHour: The GI Bill's Legacy -- July 4, 2000



	REMEMBERING THE GI BILL
July 4, 2000

The education and housing benefits World War II veterans received from the GI Bill transformed society. After this background report, Jim Lehrer leads a discussion about the bill's legacy with a panel of historians.

July 4, 2000:
A discussion of the GI Bill.

Nov. 1999:
Online Forum: Four experts take questions on the civilian-military gap.

May 31, 1999:
Excerpts from President Clinton's Memorial Day remarks at Arlington Cemetery.

April 8, 1999:
Two experts discuss the draft issue in comparison to an all-volunteer military force.

March 12, 1999:
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April 6, 1998:
Should men and women should go through military basic training together?

Dec. 16, 1997:
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SPENCER MICHELS: At Harvard and many other colleges around the country it's reunion time again. The returning alumni include the class of 1950. In that year, the graduates included some of the first beneficiaries of the GI Bill, the benefits program for veterans of World War II, veterans like John Moser and Ed Padelford. The two former classmates at Georgetown University celebrated their golden anniversary last month. During the war Padelford served in infantry camp in Camp Landings, Florida.

ED PADELFORD: Every day the people who were training us would say, "You're going to be in on the invasion of Japan,"because we were in something called an "infantry replacement training depot."

SPENCER MICHELS: The invasion never happened, of course, because Japan surrendered after the atomic bombs were dropped. Moser served as a paratrooper in France.

JOHN MOSER: I ended up in the 101st Airborne Division, and we were located, my company, was located in a small French town called Mormala Petite. This was, I would think, about eighty to a hundred clicks away from Paris.

Few, if any, benefits

SPENCER MICHELS: Before World War II, U.S. veterans who were not disabled received few, if any, benefits upon their return home. That did not sit well with many World War I GIs during the Great Depression. In 1932, at least 15,000 marched on Washington, demanding early payments of a bonus promised under federal law.
WORLD WAR II VETERAN: I came to Washington to get my bonus, and I'm going to wait till I get it if I have to wait till 1945.

SPENCER MICHELS: The bonus marchers were driven out of town by the U.S. Army and never received their early payments that year. But a decade later, during World War II, the American Legion joined forces with newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst and crafted the Servicemen's Readjustment Act, also known as the GI Bill of Rights. President Roosevelt - planning for the eventual return of 12 million soldiers to the economy -- and mindful of the angry bonus marchers from 30s -- was favorably inclined.

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT: We are laying plans for the return to civilian life of our gallant men and women in the armed services. They must not be demobilized into an environment of inflation and unemployment to a place on the bread line or on a corner selling apples.

SPENCER MICHELS: FDR initially favored a more limited bill, but in June of 1944, a week after D-Day, he signed the GI Bill into law.

Opened doors to education

Among the key benefits was education. Any veteran who served 90 days, regardless of color or financial situation, qualified for up to $500 per term for vocational school or for college. Ed Padelford said that's what made university affordable for him and most of his peers.
ED PADELFORD: I probably could not have attended college unless I really had saved a great deal of money, because my parents were just ordinary. We weren't poor, but they didn't have any money, enough money that they could have afforded to send me to college.

JOHN MOSER: The wonderful thing about the GI Bill was, of course, the fact I did not have to work. My wife did work, but I did not have to. The college - the government paid for all expenses; they paid for tuition; they paid for books, and they gave us a magnificent sum of $90 a month that we could squander away on food and housing.

SPENCER MICHELS: The GIs flooded the campuses. In the words of the New York Times they were "hogging the honor rolls." The veterans doubled college registration in the 1940s, forcing schools to build temporary housing facilities.

GI Bill-financed housing boom

In addition to education, the law provided low-interest home mortgages backed by the federal government. That sparked a demand for new homes in the post war years - a key ingredient to the exploding growth of suburbia.
JOHN MOSER: After I got hold of the GI Bill and we bought a house in Rockville, Maryland, at the fantastic rate of 4.25 percent interest, which I thought was very, very high in those days. In fact, when we finally sold that house, I lost my GI Bill. I went to 5.5 percent, and I was very, very upset about that.

SPENCER MICHELS: The GI Bill also provided business loans to veterans, established veterans' hospitals, and provided unemployment benefits that included a $20-a-week allowance for up to a year, the so-called 52/20 Club.

An enormous impact on society

Statistically, the law far exceeded anyone's expectations. It provided education vouchers to 8 million veterans. It doubled the ratio of homeowners from one in three before the war to two in three afterwards. And according to a 1986 government study, each dollar invested in the bill yielded 5 to 12 dollars in tax revenues. Over the years, the GI Bill has been called many things by historians and veterans alike - a Marshall Plan for America, a Magic Carpet to the Middle Class.
ED PADELFORD: Well, I think the term the "magic carpet" probably is correct. I mean, as I said, it enabled me to go to college, which I doubt whether without it I couldn't have done that, and it enabled me to make a career in the State Department and the Foreign Service, not to mention the Air Force Reserve. It eventually got me up to Air Force Colonel. And so it was - it was essential - the GI Bill. I mean, without it, none of these things could have occurred.

JOHN MOSER: I feel very strongly about owing your government sometimes - military service - in service to the country. And, I mean, I had never expected to get anything out of it. So whatever I got, be it GI Bill, be it the home loan, whatever, it was all a fantastic bonus that I had not counted on, that I had not expected. And it made my life very, very much easier.

SPENCER MICHELS: The original GI Bill expired in 1956. Scaled back versions were offered to veterans of the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and today, a law known as the Montgomery GI Bill provides education and job training benefits as an incentive for military recruits.