Robert Lee lost it all.

His job. One piece of equipment after the next. And then, in September, his 15-year-old daughter, who he sent to live with her mother when he stopped being able to feed and clothe her properly.

“It was terrible,” he said. “She’s crying her head off, she hates her mother, she doesn’t want to be there. Her mother’s got a bunch of substance abuse problems or had them in the past — she is doing better now, but you know she doesn’t want to live with her. But I had no choice.”

Lee, a 44-year-old military veteran from Flint, has watched the city he grew up in fall apart. He hasn’t had a regular job since about 2007.

Diltz and Lee came to MSU’s Vets to Ag program looking for the same thing: an opportunity.

Both hope the training program — funded by No Worker Left Behind through Michigan Works and aimed at preparing veterans for jobs in agriculture — will give them what they need to get back on their feet.

They’re two of 19 veterans spending six weeks at MSU’s Kellogg Biological Station in Hickory Corners, Mich. outside of Kalamazoo, taking agriculture courses led by MSU professors. With a pilot program launched in September 2009, Vets to Ag now is in its second session.

“To a ‘T,’ every one of them is looking at this as an opportunity to turn their life around,” said Tom Smith, acting associate dean of the Institute of Agricultural Technology and Vets to Ag program coordinator.

A vacation

Veterans deserve so much more, said Michael Wofford, operations manager for the Department of Labor and Economic Growth. It’s an embarrassment to have veterans out of work and at the point where they’re living in a shelter, he said.

“They’ve given all they have to their country,” Wofford said. “Served. They’ve been to battle. Some of them are wounded, mentally or physically.”

Wofford, a veteran himself, had an idea: Why not train homeless veterans in Michigan’s biggest industry? Agriculture, a $70 to $76 billion industry per year in Michigan, likely has replaced manufacturing as No. 1, Wofford said.

The starting pay rate for agricultural jobs is about $30,000 per year, he said. Employers often look to other countries for labor, but veterans are an able work force.

With the help of other Department of Labor and Economic Growth staff members, the idea of Vets to Ag was formed. Fully funded by No Worker Left Behind, the program is free to homeless veterans and offered through a partnership between Michigan Works, the Department of Labor and Economic Growth and MSU.

As the leader in agriculture, MSU was an easy choice for a partner in the program, Wofford said.

“When we were trying to put a program together, the first thing that came to mind was, ‘Well, who’s the expert in terms of agriculture in the state?’ And boom, MSU came up,” he said.

The 19 participants now are in their fourth week on the site.

They’re the second group to go through the program, which includes college-level training in pesticides, soil science and Spanish.

The group is scheduled to graduate from the program March 12.

Wofford said it’s the only program of its kind in the country.

The members come from Lansing, Detroit and Flint, selected from veteran support services.

They live together and study together at the MSU property, miles and miles away from the nearest highway on a lake front property.

They attend classes almost daily and spend their free time watching “Forrest Gump” and Stephen King movies, studying for exams and talking to family members at home.

Some say it’s like a vacation.

“I sleep better since I’m here,” Diltz said. “When I’m home, I got so many other things to worry about. I got my kids there, all sorts of other things going on. Here, I don’t have much else to focus on besides studying these books for that exam.”

It’s challenging, Smith said. The men are a high-risk group, some with a history of substance abuse or disabilities.

If just one of them is placed in a job at the end of the program, it’s a success, he said.

But they don’t necessarily have to get jobs in agriculture. If the program changes their mindset, if it makes them realize they can get jobs, it is working, Smith said. They leave more confident, knowing they are in charge of their own futures.

“It’s so inspiring to see when the lightbulb goes off and they realize they can do this,” he said. “So many of them spent so many years thinking they couldn’t do much.”

Gratitude

Lee remembers the Flint of his childhood.

“When I was a kid, it was a great place to live,” he said. “Everybody had jobs. We were all happy. If you didn’t want to go to college, it was no big deal. You got out of school, you went and signed up at General Motors and you got yourself a job.”

Fast forward 20 years and the whole city is falling apart, he said. Streets that once had numerous businesses are down to one or two. Each day it gets worse.

“There ain’t no nice words for it,” he said. “There’s hardly anything left.”

Teenagers are shot dead in the streets, Diltz said.

“A 16, 17-year-old who’s never even been out of Flint,” Diltz said. “That’s sad, ain’t it? Your life ends that early and all you ever knew was Flint. They never even thought about leaving. There’s a lot out there.”

Both Lee and Diltz say they would leave Flint if they could. Maybe the skills they learn in the Vets to Ag program will help them do so.

They have children and grandchildren waiting at home. They look back on their Army days, back in the 1980s, with some degree of longing. Some in the program wear their Army camouflage.

The Vets to Ag program is an opportunity to further their educations, add something to their résumés. Both jumped on the opportunity as soon as they heard about it. They can’t believe how much they’ve learned.

Lee hopes he’ll be able to get a full-time job and get his daughter back.

Diltz is looking forward to going home and sharing the things he’s learned with his 10-year-old son: Soil is composed of silk, sand and clay. But the weight of it is not just from the dirt, it’s from the organic matter.

He wants to bring a slide of the dirt — with the different types of bacteria and other organisms in it — to show his son.

“He appreciates things,” Diltz said. “I’m going to get a picture of one of those slides, bring it back to my son and be like, ‘Here’s what you’re bringing into the house.’”

Diltz says he’s learning to appreciate things more because of the Vets to Ag program. He even looks at trees differently.

“I guess everything is here for a reason,” Diltz said. “Without one thing, something else won’t be balanced. Like the trees — if we can’t get oxygen, we can’t live. So you see people cutting down trees, they taking something away.”