Veterans’ experiences change the way they look at life

Help available for area veterans
By YESSENIA FUNES, Contributing Writer
Press-Republican
July 8, 2012

PLATTSBURGH — After serving in the military for 18 years, Steven Bowman can speak firsthand about the difficulties veterans face when reintegrating into their communities after war.

“When you think about young men and women serving today, they’re a different person when they come back,” said Bowman, who is director of the Clinton County Veterans Service Agency.

Veterans’ experiences change the way they look at life.

Bowman joined the military two weeks after high school, when he was only 17 years old. It was something he had always wanted to do.

“I grew up in a farm,” he said. “I went back about eight years ago and met with old classmates. The only similarity is where we graduated from.”

The life experiences that veterans face are not necessarily negative. In this case, Bowman said, his classmates had a smaller world view than him. They had never left their small town in Iowa.

He, on the other hand, had traveled to multiple countries because of the military. He had been to Japan, Korea, Honduras — and all of this time, without his family.

“We try to tell families that the individual they send away on a bus will not be the same individual coming back,” Bowman said.
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