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THE DAILY ILLINI AFTER THE ARMY The independent student newspaper at the University of Illinois since 1871
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Johnny Watts spent 2 tours in Iraq, but transitioning to life as a student was the hardest thing he ever did BY JOHNATHAN HETTINGER EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Johnny Watts refused to get out of his car. He pulled into the garage at his home in Champaign 10 minutes ago but wasn’t ready to go inside. Johnny spent six years in the Army, ascending to the rank of Master Sergeant. He endured basic training. He fi red automatic weapons and drove some of the heaviest machinery the military has to offer. He survived a deployment to Iraq — twice. He had friends killed in war. But being a 23-year-old freshman at the University of Illinois majoring in electrical engineering was the hardest thing he had ever done. He had just gotten his fi rst exam back — pre-calculus. He thought he aced it. He got a C-. The professor said everyone who received a grade below a B needed to meet with her to discuss their future in the major. He sat in the car, the same thought running through his head: “How can I tell my wife?” *** Johnny didn’t fit in at the University. He was five years older than everyone in his classes. He was married. But he was used to that. He had never fit in anywhere. That’s how he ended up in the Army. He was looking for a way out. He was supposed to call Madison, Ill., home, but it never really functioned as that. Instead, it served as a place where he spent years of his life getting teased and bullied. Johnny spoke differently than everyone in Madison. He wasn’t interested in sex, drugs, gangs or anything else that tied the community together. Instead, he liked math and science. He liked school. The other kids knew from Day 1 that he didn’t fit in. But it took him 10 years to get out. *** Johnny didn’t live in Madison until he was 8 years old. The son of an Air Force man, he grew up in Europe, moving from base to base. On the bases, Johnny didn’t have much freedom to play with friends. He remembers the culture shock when he moved to the United States. “In the Netherlands, we would go out into the woods and, like, throw rocks,”
Johnny said. “That was the intensity of our mischief. But here, man, they would talk about drugs. I never knew anything about that.” Though he is black, he wasn’t used to black people. He wasn’t used to rude people. He wasn’t used to anything but the military. He wasn’t used to Hispanic people. He wasn’t used to diversity. And he wasn’t used to rude children like those he encountered in Madison. On his fi rst day of school, one kid confronted Johnny on the playground. “At fi rst, I was like, ‘Is this really going on?’” said Johnny, who had only seen bullying on television. “But then he started picking on me, and I fought back.” Johnny didn’t get in trouble for the fight. “It was just little kid stuff,” he said. But it showed him that his transition to Madison wouldn’t be easy. *** Johnny never got along with his father. To him, his dad was unfair. He always dished out ridiculous punishments, putting Johnny “on punishment” for a month for forgetting to take out the trash or forcing Johnny to sit in his room and read the dictionary. Johnny’s dad wasn’t afraid to get out the belt to teach his kids lessons — even when Johnny was 15. “Whenever we had the opportunity, we were not in the house,” Johnny said. “If we were in the house, we were in sight and normally that just meant we got in trouble for something.” Johnny doesn’t remember ever having a family dinner with his mom, dad, brother and sister. Johnny’s dad’s stubbornness and treatment of his children led to Johnny’s parents’ splitting up during Johnny’s sophomore year in high school. Relieved, Johnny moved with his mother to Granite City, two miles north of Madison, but he remained in the Madison school district. Johnny still didn’t like high school. He got mugged in the locker room and continued to endure bullying, but at least he didn’t have to deal with his dad on a daily basis. Although he said he still never felt he fit in with his family, he enjoyed the increased freedom of living with just his mother and brother.
PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHNNY WATTS
Johnny Watts poses in front of a truck before heading out on a mission during his deployment to Iraq. During his junior year of high school, Johnny and a friend were sitting in Wilson Park in Granite City when an Army recruiter approached them and began to tell them about the Army’s benefits: being able to see the world, receiving job training and having a consistent paycheck. The boys, surrounded by housing projects, drug dealers and prostitutes, didn’t see much of a future in Madison. *** Johnny Watts joined the Army before graduating high school. When he crossed the stage, all he had to do was sign the paperwork before being shipped off to Basic Training. At Basic Training, Johnny drank his fi rst beer. He learned about the importance of personal responsibility — how if one person could take care of himself, it made it a lot easier for a group to function. He learned about the Army, and he learned to follow its rules, like shaving every day, though he was an 18-year-old private who could barely sprout peach fuzz. He learned to appreciate having a bed to sleep in or having a roof over his head. For the fi rst time in his life, Johnny fit in. The drill sergeants didn’t get to him as much as they did the other soldiers. He took everything in stride, and he credited his readiness to his father’s strict upbringing.
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University strives to help transition veterans to the college environment Johnny Watts is just one of 297 student veterans on campus, but his story is not unlike the story of other student veterans on campus. Nicholas Osborne, the assistant dean of students and veteran student services coordinator, helps student veterans adjust to life on campus. Osborne said student veterans differ from traditional students in many ways: the way they get to campus, their life experiences, their goals and aspirations and their responsibilities. Groups, like Illini Veterans, help ease the transition. “One of the most important things we can offer is a healthy veterans community,” Osborne said. “Because they see that their peers have gone through the same experiences and they’re going through the same things that they’re going through.” He said he often sets students up with an Illini veteran when they first arrive on campus, helping to provide a person they can go to whenever they have questions about campus life. Osborne is a member of the Veterans Advisory Committee, a group of people who try to help veterans on campus. He said the committee has tried to help instructors on campus realize who
Governor Quinn’s new grant supports local park
Volunteers clean up, clear Boneyard Creek
$300,000 given to spruce up Douglass Park
Students, park district members come together to save area wildlife BY AUSTIN KEATING STAFF WRITER
It was the fall of 1832 and a large host of Pottawatomie Indians set up camp near Urbana. Among them was their leader, Shemaugua, who on many such occasions told the settlers stories of this area, his ancestral home. He told the settlers a story of a “deep snow” years ago that had many of the region’s animals move to the nearest source of running water — what is known now as Boneyard Creek. It is here, the leader said, that many animals perished of hunger, leaving their bones scattered throughout the banks of the creek. And that, according to a book published around the turn of the 19th century, “The History of Champaign County” by J.O Cunningham, is how the creek garnered such an ominous name. But these days, what ends up in the Boneyard’s waters isn’t bones — it’s litter. Anything from plastic bags to shopping carts, the storm waters that end up in the creek carry with it much of the area’s waste. With that in mind, more than 400 volunteers took to the Boneyard Creek, its tributaries and areas across the community on Saturday to clean it up as part of the Boneyard Creek Community Day.
“How do you get people to care about a little creek with a funny name? The way our organizing partners think is that you ask people to come out and volunteer,” said Eliana Brown , coordinator of the event. “They may not care about it any more than how they started out, but at least they’ll be thinking about it.” Brad Bennett, assistant city engineer for Urbana Public Works, said that most of Urbana’s storm water ends up in the creek. “It takes the bulk of Champaign’s storm water, the bulk of the University and almost all of Urbana drains into the Boneyard Creek,” he said. “One of the reasons for the day is for people to make that connection — what we do on the land impacts the creek,” Brown added. This was the event’s ninth year and it was a record breaker in terms of the amount of volunteers and organizers, Brown said. “When it’s such a nice day, everybody sort of comes out of the woodwork,” said Sarah Scott , an event organizer and administrative assistant for Prairie Rivers Network.
Saline Branch The largest group that came
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A group of Veterinary Medicine students and an Urbana Park District employee wade through the waters of the Saline Branch near the Urbana Country Club on Saturday for Boneyard Creek Community Day. “out of the woodwork” were University students, Brown said. This included a group of veterinary medicine students who trudged through ankle- to knee-high waters looking for trash in the Saline Branch, which Boneyard Creek feeds into. Shannon Darcy, a second year veterinary medicine student, said the most common thing her group found in the Saline Branch, which cuts through a golf course, were plastic bags. “A lot of the golfers here are better than I expected,” she said with a chuckle. She said students from her department came out for conservation reasons, and as a sort of preemptive strike to their busy season at the Wildlife
Medical Clinic. “If we try and improve the habitat, we can help the lives of our wildlife,” Darcy said. “It’s going to be our busy season here soon, and we don’t want to have more animals coming in than necessary due to litter.”
Weeding-out invasive species A little south from where the veterinary students were, another group of volunteers were hard at work cutting down invasive brush along the Saline Branch’s banks. The team included a few University students, a group of conservationists called the Master Naturalists and community members.
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Douglass Park will receive updates, including a new pathway and pavilion, thanks to a $300,000 grant from Gov. Pat Quinn. The Champaign Park District received $300,000 grant from the Open Space Lands Acquisition and Development program to improve the park, located on the corner of Fifth and Eureka streets. “Our goal is to serve the needs of the community and to make the park better used,” said Chelsea Norton, Champaign Park District marketing manager. “If we can get the community outside to use it more, that’s exactly what we’re looking for.” The grant is part of Quinn’s initiative to ensure that no child is left indoors. In total, $16.5 million was awarded to communities throughout the state to promote healthy living, according to a press release from Quinn’s office. Park district employees worked with members of the community to develop an improvement plan. A focus group was conducted with elementary school students to determine which features children enjoy most in a playground. “I think it’s great. Anything to help the kids, you know what I’m saying, I think it’s really good,” said Champaign resident Brianna Davis. The Champaign Park District applied for the grant last summer after they decided that Dou-
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glass Park deserved “extra attention,” Norton said. “We found, based on talking to community members in that area, there are some areas where we can do better,” she added. “Since that’s what we’re all about at the Champaign Park District — serving the community in a way that’s relevant and valuable — we decided to go ahead and apply for this grant last summer,” Champaign resident Danielle McCleldon thinks the improvements will help Douglass Park provide residents with more reasons to come to the park. “It would probably bring more people and it wouldn’t be dead all the time. The walking path will provide leisure for people with bikes and the pavilion will allow people to come here and barbeque,” she said. Members of the Douglass Seniors program advocated for the installation of a pavilion so they can host community functions, according to Norton. The walking path and fitness stations are aimed at providing the community with healthy outdoor options. “There are going to be a few of (the fitness stations) along the pathway, which is a great to get the community active and doing something a little bit different,” Norton said. Construction is scheduled to begin in August and expected to be complete by next spring.
Angelica can be reached at lavito2@dailyillini.com.
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student veterans are and give them tools to help make them feel comfortable in the classroom. “Part of those tools are giving them questions or comments that they shouldn’t pose or they shouldn’t make,” he said. “Student veterans often don’t want to be singled out in class as representing the military voice. If a professor were to say, ‘John, you served a little bit in Iraq, tell us about your story.’ a lot of our veterans are put off by that.” Osborne said he’s seen the education of educators have success and bring visibility that veterans are on campus. “We have a wonderful veterans community. We have wonderful and robust training that we do,” Osborne said. “We have developed a great reputation for the work that we’re doing.” Osborne said he would like for the campus to be able to quantify how veterans are adjusting in the classroom. “Even though, we’re designated as a veteran-friendly or militaryfriendly school, only we ourselves can defi ne what that means,” he said. “We always have to look at growth or expansion.”
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