When Suzanne Mettler, alumni associate professor of political science, decided to write a book on how the educational benefits of the G.I. Bill influenced the civic engagement of World War II's "greatest generation," she quickly realized that the kind of archival research she'd done in the past would not get to the heart of the matter.

"I was trying to understand how the experiences people have, as the beneficiaries of public policies, affect their subsequent political involvement and their attitudes about government," she says. "So, while it was, at that point, 50 years after the end of World War II, I had no choice but to go to veterans myself and learn about their experiences."

Mettler planned to reach veterans through extensive mail surveys supplemented by a small number of open-ended, in-person interviews. "I was crossing my fingers, because survey experts told me I'd be lucky if I got a 20-percent response rate," she recalls. "So we sent the surveys out and waited about 10 days, and all of a sudden I came in one day and my mailbox was brimming over. And the next day even more so and more so . . . I ended up getting a 73-percent response rate to a 12-page survey that asked people about 120 questions about their lives.

"And then my phone started ringing. Veterans would call me and say, 'I've never talked to anyone about this in 50 years,' and they'd tell me about their experiences in the war. It was thrilling."

The resulting book, Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation (Oxford University Press), tells the story of how the G.I. Bill transformed the lives of veterans by subsidizing vocational and higher education; and how grateful men of all classes, black and white, responded by becoming deeply engaged and productive citizens. In the postwar era, these veterans joined fraternal orders and community organizations in record numbers, and became highly involved with the political process at all levels. The G.I. Bill helped to foster all this civic activity, Mettler argues, by treating veterans with generosity and respect as well as broadening their economic opportunities.

Along with Mettler's analysis of the G.I. Bill's impact on citizenship, Soldiers to Citizens is a book full of remarkable life stories. One of the men who stands out in Mettler's mind is Richard Colosimo, who told her about entering the Ohrdruf concentration camp with the 89th Division and finding a few skeletal survivors among the thousands gunned down by the departing Nazis. As the son of poor Italian immigrants, Colosimo- like so many children of the Depression-had grown up with no hope of attending college. But the G.I. Bill completely changed his prospects after the war, allowing him to get vocational training, a college degree, and eventually a master's. Throughout his life, Colosimo has remained keenly interested in politics, voting in every election and writing to officials on issues that concern him, and has served low-income people in his community through church-related volunteer work.

As the World War II generation fades into history-many veterans Mettler surveyed in the late '90s have since passed away-Soldiers to Citizens naturally turns to the question of what the G.I. Bill era teaches us about citizenship today. In recent decades there has been no comparable initiative to broaden access to education and help people rise into the middle class, Mettler says, which clearly impacts civic life.

"Despite the fact that today we spend one-third of our gross domestic product on all kinds of government programs," she says, "we almost never stop to ask the question, How will this affect the well-being of democracy? What impact will this have on citizenship? I think that is a grave concern for us today. The past few decades brought a decline in voting turnout among the young and among low-income people. What we might be seeing is a trend in a direction that's not very democratic, where people who are privileged and well-heeled are able to get what they want from government but others are left out."

Even with the decline in political participation, Mettler adds, "Americans continue to be very strong believers in the idea of the American Dream. The G.I. Bill was the kind of policy that actually made it happen."

This article appeared in the Fall 2005 print edition of Maxwell Perspective; © 2005 Maxwell School of Syracuse University. To request a copy, e-mail dlcooke@maxwell.syr.edu.