"Military experience, some find, is tough to translate on resumes" by Katie Johnston Chase, Globe Staff | September 27, 2009
Sean Kellenberger - a bald, brawny 27-year-old with scars and bits of shrapnel still embedded in his hands - haven’t helped much so far. Kellenberger had been in Iraq for less than three months when the Humvee he was in hit a roadside bomb. He was standing up, holding a machine gun out the turret, when the shock wave knocked him unconscious. He spent two weeks in four hospitals being treated for shrapnel wounds and a concussion; two fellow Marines were killed in the blast. Three years later, he was back in Iraq.
Kellenberger, who returned to Brighton, and his wife, in April after he was honorably discharged, is looking for a job that will allow him to keep serving the public. Every male in his family, which arrived in the United States from Europe after World War I, has served in the military and gone on to become a firefighter or police officer. Kellenberger hopes to follow in their footsteps. He has taken four civil service tests and is taking more in hopes of finding work with the likes of the Boston Police Department or the Pentagon Force Protection Agency.
“It’d be nice to have a job where you’re proud to show other people,’’ he said. But the search hasn’t been easy. After taking a physical for a Border Patrol job, he received a letter saying he wasn’t medically cleared, citing his hand injuries and headaches, which he says have long since cleared up.
“So I’m healthy enough to serve the Department of Defense,’’ he said, “but I might not be healthy enough to serve the Department of Homeland Security.’’
What, you not Jewish?
Kellenberger spent $1,350 out of his own pocket to take another physical a few weeks ago and is awaiting a response. In the meantime, he’s back in school at UMass-Boston.
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