“My dad’s the most motivated person I’ve ever met in my whole life, and he’s living out of his van,” Freneire’s son Eric told the Inquirer. “A full colonel with three master’s degrees? I don’t get it at all – it doesn’t make sense to me. If he had a job right now, we’d be fine. We’re not fine right now.”
Robert Freniere has three graduate degrees earned during a 30-year career in the military, which included a position as an aide to Pentagon brass. So it might come as a surprise that now he is living out of his mini-van and having a hard time finding a job.
For six hours a day on a computer at the public library, Freniere fills out job applications with no luck yet, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported earlier this week. Staring at the computer screens is difficult for him though. He has dyslexia, according to the newspaper.
“Why doesn’t this guy get a job as a janitor?” 59-year-old Freniere asked, echoing the sentiment that some might express to a person having a hard time finding a job.
“Well, I’ve tried that,” he told the Inquirer.
Freniere admits that he’s one of many jobless, homeless veterans. He described a luncheon in D.C. that occurs each month where the former military members stand up and describe their service. The hope is that they get hired by someone in attendance.
Freneire comes from a military family, so it was only natural that he would enter himself. He joined the Army after the Vietnam War ended and later transferred to the Air Force where he served in several combat zones. Freneire got a job in the Pentagon in 2000 and was there when it was hit by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001, according to records found by the Inquirer.
[…]
