Six years in the Florida National Guard. I joined back in the Clinton years - when pretty much all you had to do was sit in the armory for two days once a month - to pay for college and suggested he do the same. He's had a rougher go of it - had to deal with multiple rounds of hurricane duty, which always seemed to short-circuit his fall semester, plus a bureaucracy that never paid his university on time and made it all but impossible to register for classes. He also had a seven-month deployment (his unit did air defense) and almost got nabbed for another one that lasted a year. But he made sergeant, made some life-long friends, and learned a lot about himself, and I think he's a better person for serving.