Wright State grad softens hardships for returning military veterans

McCauley is a tireless volunteer, and in 2009 was selected by Wright State to receive the Volunteer Service Award.

It was a chance encounter with a military veteran struggling to get his college education that inspired Marilyn McCauley’s crusade.

The student couldn’t afford one of the required textbooks, his car was breaking down, his computer had died, and he and his family were living on bologna sandwiches to save money.

“These are the ones the university and our communities have got to watch out for because they are so reluctant to say anything,” said McCauley.

So McCauley—a Wright State University grad, longtime defense employee, consultant and now Fairborn city councilwoman—established the “Boots to Books Veterans Support Fund,” a program at Wright State that helps struggling military veteran students make ends meet.

The fund helps degree-seeking students who are veterans or dependents of a veteran meet unmet financial needs that threaten graduation. Special emphasis is placed on circumstances due to administrative or academic complications.

McCauley, elected to Fairborn City Council earlier this month, also plans to make helping veterans part of her political agenda. She wants to establish an Operation Fairborn Cares support program for veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

“There are so many of them falling through the cracks,” she said. “There are so many emotional and other needs that they have.”

McCauley’s life has been closely tied to the military.

She’s worked both at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and the Pentagon. And she  currently runs McManagement Group, a consulting business that helps defense contractors meet industry standards on project performance management issues and systems. In addition, two of McCauley’s family members have been deployed to Iraq, and two others will soon likely be deployed to Afghanistan.

McCauley grew up on a farm in Millville, Ind. She later moved to Ohio and worked at a bank in Springfield before landing a job at Wright-Patterson. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in business management from Wright State in 1989. She later moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked at the Pentagon and the Federal, Aviation Administration before returning to Ohio to start her consulting business.

McCauley is perhaps best known as the “Float Queen of Wright State.”

When she served on the Wright State Alumni Board of Directors in 2003, she suggested that alumni build a float instead of walking in parades. So her fellow board members tasked her with the job.

McCauley went to London, Ohio, bought a farm wagon and then used a kit to construct what is now the Wright State float. It’s done in green-and-gold Wright State colors and features Greek temple-like columns, a frieze and cornice to symbolize higher education.

“I was always so persnickety when we had to fix it up,” McCauley said. “Fellow alums had to do it just right.”

The float has become a fixture in the annual Fourth of July parade in Fairborn, the Dayton Air Show parade in Vandalia and the Christmas parade in Dayton.

“I think it’s cool,” McCauley said. “I don’t know how enthusiastic everybody was at first, but now everybody relates to that float, and the community loves seeing it in the parades.”

McCauley is a tireless volunteer, and in 2009 was selected by Wright State to receive the Volunteer Service Award.

One of her favorite charities is Life Connection of Ohio, which supports and promotes organ and tissue donation. McCauley herself underwent a transplant in 2005, receiving a kidney donated by her daughter.

But McCauley devotes much of her effort to helping military veterans.

McCauley said soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan experience the horrors of combat, sometimes see their friends die, and then return to civilian life only to be confronted with domestic and financial challenges. Sometimes, she said, it’s difficult to identify the veterans who need a hand.

“Soldiers are taught to be tough, and they suck it up,” she said. “Then, they come back home and they’ve got all of these things they’re facing. They’re just not going to readily say, ‘I need help.’”

For more information on the Boots to Books Veterans Support Fund, contact Pablo Banhos at 937-775-3694 or pablo.banhos@wright.edu