Six years ago, a hot Middle Eastern sun beat down on Erin Louden and his U.S. Air Force crew as they fueled a supersonic B-1 bomber in Qatar. That was Louden’s world then. But things change.

This March, in a busy emergency room at a Fresno hospital, he sat beside a gurney and guided an IV needle into the vein of a dehydrated man in his 70s. 

Louden’s bridge from Qatar to the ER came through the Veterans Education Program at Fresno State. 

“I didn’t think I could get into Fresno State,” he said. “But the people in the program were instrumental in helping me regain my confidence about school. The instructors were amazing and devoted to us, and they laid the foundation for me to come to college as a fully-prepared fulltime student.”

Louden — an 18-year veteran of the Air Force — graduated from Fresno State in May with a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing. It’s an accomplishment the 43-year-old never could have imagined when he was younger. At Buchanan High School in Clovis, he was the kind of student who is intelligent but doesn’t apply himself, and he had no clear plans or goals upon graduation in 1995. He took a few courses at a community college and then enlisted at age 20. 

“I knew the Air Force would give me time to find myself and in the meantime give me a career,” Louden said. 

He became a specialist in aircraft fuels, serving at bases in Alaska, Nebraska, Delaware, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic in central Asia. He also worked as a recruiter in New York and then as the trainer for other recruiters in Southern California and Arizona.

He left the military in 2016 and returned to Fresno with his wife, Lisa (“my rock,” he said), and their daughters, Haley and Mackenzie. The Air Force had changed him. “It led me to who I am today —  someone with inner drive and confidence,” he said.

But enrolling at Fresno State seemed complicated after so many years away from school. 

“Then [Associate Dean] Dr. Daniel Bernard laid out the process in the Veterans Education Program and helped take care of the red tape. It took away so much of the stress,” Louden said.

He found a kinship with other students in the program. “We knew where each one of us was coming from, and that helped a lot,” Louden said. 

As part of his nursing education, he worked with supervision in the ER where he cared for the dehydrated man. He also spent time in a hospital intensive care unit and discovered that’s where he wants to work.  

“The challenge of caring for the sickest of patients is something I enjoy,” Louden said.

Like all students graduating from Fresno State this past May, he had to forgo a traditional commencement ceremony because of the coronavirus pandemic. The pinning ceremony for nursing graduates might be held later this year, he said, but in the meantime he’s philosophical about the delay. 

“In the nursing world nothing is predictable. Nurses learn to roll with the punches. It’s like that in the military — you adapt to change and you press on,” Louden said. 

The Veterans Education Program helped Louden do that very thing. “It seemed too good to be true,” he said.

 

(Written by Doug Hoagland, a freelance writer based in Fresno.)