An economics major in shorts, a polo shirt, and flip-flops walks into the Coop Fountain and orders a grilled chicken sandwich. He doesn’t look that different from any other 5C student, but it turns out he’s a little bit older than most recent graduates and commutes daily from his home in Pasadena.
And, a little over a year ago, he was under attack by Taliban forces in Afghanistan.
Like most Pomona students, Phillip Kantor, a 25 year-old junior, has a story to tell. His just happens to involve the United States Marine Corps.
Kantor is from Cleveland, and his military experience began after an underwhelming freshman year at Miami University of Ohio.
“I wasn’t doing as well as I should have,” he said. “I’d always been interested in the armed services, and at the end of that freshman year, I really had to take a look in the mirror and figure out what I needed to do to get myself back on the path that I wanted to go down.”
Kantor’s lifelong interest in military service was rooted in a number of factors: his grandfather’s service in World War II, a strong interest in history in general and military history in particular, and certain aspects of military culture, specifically “…the opportunity to take part in something greater than yourself while at the same time being pushed to your limits.”
So he met with a recruiter, thinking that “it seemed like a now or never type deal.”
Read the full story at the Pomona Student Life.
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