by Eva Dameron
Daily Lobo
Jack Jacobs said being short helped save his life.
"Being small is extremely good news to me," he said. "If I were two inches taller, I'd be dead. We very small people are extremely efficient - we don't use up many resources."
Jacobs, who is just over 5 feet tall, won the Medal of Honor for his service in the Vietnam War. He spoke Thursday in Keller Hall to about 50 students, many in UNM's ROTC program or in the military.
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Jacobs, a military analyst and commentator on MSNBC, inaugurated the UNM Presidential Speaker Series meant to bring internationally known speakers to campus.
He spoke about military life and what to expect in active duty.
He also told stories about his life.
Married at a young age, Jacobs said he chose to join the military because it paid $27 an hour, and he had a family to raise. He signed up for three years of active duty, which turned into 20 years of service. He said three years did not seem very long at the time.
"When you're 20 years old, two years, 200 years, 3,000 years, it's all the same," he said. "Time doesn't mean anything. It just disappears over the edge of the earth because you've got all the time in the world ahead of you. That's why people who are young procrastinate."
Student Sonia Marinelarena said Jacobs' speech gave her more confidence about staying in active duty.
"I'm going into military intelligence," she said. "If I could be an infantry, I would definitely go infantry, but infantry's not for females."
He said there is nothing like military service to teach young people responsibility.
"You're given a great deal of responsibility at a very early age," he said. "You're responsible for people's training, their lives, their personal problems, their food, shelter, everything. Where else do you see that? As a result of that, institutions on the outside jump all over themselves to hire people with military experience."
One of the important things people learn in the military, Jacobs said, is how to distinguish a crisis and a noncrisis.
"We misuse the term 'crisis' all the time," he said. "My wife has a culinary crisis, she can't cook at all. She burns water. If everything's a crisis, nothing is a crisis. You've got to be able to distinguish."
He said at some point all soldiers lack confidence in their ability to do what they are called to do.
"You can do many more things than you think you can do," he said. "You are well-trained and you're going to be even better trained. You're getting a proper liberal education, and that's with a small 'L'."
Jacobs showed a short film of previous Medal of Honor winners, which portrayed how they received the medals and what it meant to them.
Student Trinidad Chavez, a member of UNM's ROTC program, is no longer in active military duty, but he plans on going back into the infantry in May. He said Jacobs' speech inspired him.
"He's really influential just by the way he talks, and his body language, his posture. He was really confident," he said. "I was emotionally moved by watching that video - just the music in the background and hearing some of the stories brought a tear to my eye."
