Today's military: are you making the cut or a cut above Published April 9, 2007 By Master Sgt. Robert Lumby 701st Medical Squadron FORT WORTH, TEXAS -- I was talking to my neighbor the other day, and it turns out, he's a retired Air Force colonel. He shared with me something his granddaughters' professor said. He told her to tell her grandpa, the retired fighter pilot, that he was a second-class citizen because he had been a career military member. He said the only reason a person would make a career in the military was because that person couldn't "cut it" in the corporate world. As you might imagine, this truly concerned me because I'm on the 30-year plan with the Air Force -- I don't consider myself or the people I serve with second-class citizens. The professor's statement really stuck in my craw until I recalled what I see every drill weekend at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth Carswell Field, Texas; that's when it hit me. We're different. Everywhere you go in the Air Force, you see the core values. You see men and women who know it's "not about me," that there's a bigger picture, a higher calling, a greater responsibility. Everywhere you go, you see Airmen of every specialty code working long hours to get a needed task accomplished. It didn't matter to him or her that: lunch was an MRE in the field that day; a day off was two weeks away; it was 105 degrees or raining; that every resource wasn't available; or the job had to be done yesterday. It didn't matter what they were doing wasn't glamorous or that a pay raise or promotion wasn't going to be the outcome. No, they did what they had signed on to do -- to protect and defend the United States. What mattered was accomplishing the mission. Every day they "make the cut" and every day the mission is accomplished. Second-class citizens? Well, if that means intentionally putting themselves in harms way to protect our freedoms, well ... OK. But if this dedication means a career military member can't "make the cut" in corporate America, you're mistaken. We make the cut. Look around -- you'll see first-class citizens wearing BDU's who are a "cut above". Corporate America, you should be so lucky.