At more than 200 feet in the air, it’s hard not to feel more alive.
Twenty-year-old Alex Schultz feels the butterflies creeping into his stomach when he looks down and sees specks for people, and slightly bigger dots for cars. Alex can’t stop, doesn’t want to stop, climbing toward the top of a radio tower in Manhattan, Kan. Excitement, not worry, pushes Alex higher when he notices an American Airlines plane ascending into the sky just miles to his left, seemingly flying at the same height. Only a few days into his job at Hayden Towers, a radio tower construction and maintenance company, the University of Kansas sophomore cannot help but wonder, just for a split second, how on top of the world the plane’s pilot must feel.
How much he wanted to be there
Alex Schultz was only 4 when he saw his first Blue Angels air show. He remembers watching the famous group of Navy fighter planes blasting in the sky, tumbling and spinning, entertaining the crowd with dangerous mid-air maneuvers near his home in Dallas.
“By the end of the show, I had made up my mind,” Alex said. “I was not just going to be a pilot. I was going to be a Blue Angel.”
And, until last semester, this high-flying dream was his life’s motivation.
Growing up, he lined his walls with drawings, photographs and posters of Navy fighter planes. The military, particularly the Navy, became Alex’s identity, what made him happy. After seven years in Dallas and eight more in Monroe, Mich., his parents moved with him and his younger sister, Cassie, to Topeka. Alex was 16. His family worked their lives around his dream. They moved into the Shawnee Heights High School district, after weeks of searching by his dad, the only area high school that offered Navy Junior Reserve Officer Training Corp, or ROTC. By the time Alex graduated, he was his school’s cadet executive officer, the second-highest rank in the program. College was the next step toward becoming a Navy pilot.
Then his dream started to tumble.
Alex applied to the Naval Academy in the fall of his senior year and to the University of Kansas. He remembers ripping the letter from the Naval Academy open when it arrived: He was wait-listed.
“I got a couple of letters for several months after I applied,” Alex said. “Most of them were just trying to keep my interest. After really believing I would be in the Naval Academy, all such hopes got shot down.”
In June after his senior year, he found out he had not been accepted. He was angry. But he still had another option. The University of Kansas offered Alex a Navy ROTC scholarship.
Alex said his first semester, in the fall of 2005, went well. His grade point average hit 3.5. His pilot dreams remained intact. Then his parents’ relationship deteriorated during his second semester of last year. His grades did, too. He withdrew.
Steven Griswold, Forsyth, Ill., sophomore at KU, and Alex’s best friend, noticed an increasing lack of motivation in Alex.
“He was always really talkative, from the first day I met him,” Griswold said. “I definitely noticed when he started keeping to himself and not leaving his door open like he always used to.”
The military teaches duty, honor and respect. Alex wanted emotional support.
“I lost interest in my classes, but the biggest problem was the lack of support,” Alex said. “I didn’t want to talk to my parents, and I felt like everyone was dragging me down. The Navy ROTC program paid for my education, so they’re supposed to care about how you’re doing, but they just don’t.”
Alex’s grades plummeted to below a 2.0. He had to attend a meeting with the program’s board of review. He got a second chance, but being a pilot became the last thing on his mind. For the first time in his life, Alex pondered whether the Navy was for him or not.
“I thought a lot about the lack of support, the lack of care that everyone with similar dreams showed,” Alex said. “I thought, if I’m dealing with all this now, how much worse is it going to be in the actual Navy?”
“He just never seemed happy for a period of three to four months,” said Will McCullough, another college friend. “He seemed more excited the day he told me he was out of ROTC than he had the entire semester.”
Alex dropped out of KU in the fall of 2006. He owes the University’s Navy ROTC more than $10,000 worth of student loans.
Alex feels the wind around him pick up as he nears the radio tower’s top. By this time, snow falls from clouds that appear touchable.
“Right now, I am just trying to work and pay off my loans,” Alex said. “I don’t know for sure when I’ll come back to KU, or if I will. It’s funny, though, because with my job now, I love being high in the sky.”