Toussaunt Thomas
Hello, my name is Toussaunt Thomas and I am 37 years old. I have been married now for 10½ years and my wife and I just had a beautiful baby girl on January 28, 2009. I am a veteran of 8 years of service within the active duty Army and I have received an honorable discharge as of March 2004. My mother and father divorced when I was 9 years old leaving my mother to support me, my brother and my sister. As the oldest in the family, I have been working and making sacrifices all my life, at one point I entered into a culinary arts program at Harold Washington College in Chicago, but I stopped attending so that I could get a job and help my mother with the funds for purchasing the CTA bus tokens for my sister to attend college. Not long after that, I joined the active duty army and I enlisted for only 4 years with the full intent of coming right back to Chicago with the award of receiving a 4 year paid tuition at CSU (Chicago State University). At that time, if you entered the Army and your home of residence was Chicago and you received an honorable discharge from the Army, the university would pay for all 4 years of your tuition.
It was because of this that when I enlisted into the Army in January of 1996, I refused the GI Bill because I would save money in my military pay checks and I knew that once I got back home to Chicago, I would have my college paid for by CSU. Well, my time in the Army did not go as planned and I ended up re-enlisting in 1999 and going to Germany and then back to Fort Hood TX. with numerous deployments in between. In 1996 I was deployed to Kuwait, in 1997 I was deployed back to Kuwait, in 1999 I was deployed to Kosovo for a year and in 2003 I was deployed to Iraq for one year, and each deployment was within a Bradley Linebacker Tank Platoon. Also during this time with the Army, in the summer of 1998 after a year and a half engagement, I proposed to my fiancée and we got married on June 5, 1998. When I got out of the Army in 2004, I did receive an Honorable Discharge and my wife and I got our new home built from ground up here in Copperas Cove TX. where we currently live. Since I have been out of the Army, I did attempt to pursue college and I did attend Central Texas College (CTC) in Killeen, TX. for one semester where I took two courses. But I stopped attending so that I could support my wife’s college education and now she has received her BA in Psychology.
With our new addition to the family (a beautiful baby girl born on January 28, 2009 at 1:26am) Lord knows that I need more education which will open up brighter opportunities which will allow me to not just better support my wife but now to better support my FAMILY.
I truly thank you for taking the time to read this shortened version of my life and I pray and ask that you please choose to provide me with this opportunity to receive a full four year paid scholarship which I sincerely believe will create a life changing effect for my family and I.
Very respectfully,
Toussaunt Thomas