Bridging the Gap between Military and Civilian Jobs
By Cindy McCombe, director of marketing, Workshops for Warriors Reprinted with permission: The AWS Welding Journal On a Monday morning in San Diego, Calif., Lyle Palm, 56, dean of welding at Workshops for Warriors, wakes up at the crack of dawn to begin his day. For the first part of his day, he is a welding instructor at Marine System Corp. at Camp Pendleton, but by mid-afternoon, Palm is shifting gears and is preparing for his evening courses at Workshops for Warriors, a nonprofit that trains, certifies, and places veterans and wounded warriors into advanced manufacturing careers. By the time Palm returns home, he will have driven 115 miles, something he does five days a week. It is his dedication to the welding profession that keeps him going.
“It feels really good to have trained other welders. In the military, you are taught to train your reliefs. These younger men and women are my reliefs. They will fill my shoes one day,” he said.
Palm’s involvement with Workshops for Warriors has been growing since 2013. He was recruited to the welding school to help create a world-class training center. At the time Palm joined the school, which had been operating since 2011, there were six welding booths. Today, the program has 18 booths.
The school purchased curriculum from the Hobart Institute of Welding Technology, and this framework has been closely followed. In the beginning, Palm thought teaching the program and figuring out how to qualify and inspect welds for testing would be the hardest part of his job. He soon learned there was much more going on than he thought. The transitions that many of the veterans and wounded warriors are facing thrust Palm and his brother and fellow welding instructor, Tim Palm, in more of a career counseling role.
“A lot of welders come to the program sort of beaten down. I am working with people who have been unemployed,” explained Palm. “Some are just getting out of the military or have been recently laid off from a job and they are navigating career changes. Some of them have marriage problems. I thought that after I set up the school, training these folks would be hunky-dory. But I rapidly found out that I would need to use my problem-solving skills to help these people get out of an emotional crisis so they could learn to weld.”
With the wars that have been ongoing over the recent years, our veterans and transitioning service people have a lot of issues they are sorting through, Palm added.
Usually, by the middle of the first semester, the welders who are going to be successful begin to surface. If they have personal problems they are dealing with, their troubles start to get resolved, and plans get made to continue into advanced welding courses. Ultimately, many of the students get placed into welding positions at a variety of companies — something that Palm finds hugely satisfying.
“I feel an obligation to these veterans,” said Palm. “I am a veteran. I am paying it forward. I have been lucky to get some of the best welding training. Life has rewarded me well. I feel fortunate, and I want to help other people now.”
Student Stories
Michael Whitfield
One veteran highly influenced by Palm is Michael Whitfield, 28, a welding instructor at Lincoln Tech in Grand Prairie, Tex. Whitfield was a welder in the U.S. Marine Corps at Camp Pendleton with the 7th Engineering Support Battalion when he first learned of Workshops for Warriors in 2013. He enrolled in the program and took every welding class that was available. It is the welding certifications that attracted Whitfield to the program. He earned three of them.
“The Marine Corps doesn’t offer these certifications. After I got all the certifications I could get from Workshops for Warriors, I was very confident. I even taught welding to the Sergeant Major from the 7th Battalion — he was extremely high up on the totem pole. I had the confidence I needed.”
It was Whitfield’s accumulation of certifications that gave him a leg up on the competition when he transitioned from his military service to a civilian career. He was medically separated from the military for 70 days, and then he had 20 days to look for housing. By the time his military check ended, he was already getting a check from Lincoln Tech — there was no interruption in paychecks.
Although Whitfield lives in Texas and Workshops for Warriors is in San Diego, he stays current on all the updates in the welding program by following the Workshops for Warriors’ Facebook page and website. He also made several welding friends through the program.
Like Palm, Whitfield plans on teaching for a long time. “As of this date, I have taught over 250 welding students. Some had never seen a helmet or struck an arc before. I am very, very happy where I am now.”
David Beem
David Beem, 29, is enjoying a new position that he recently earned as a steel warehouse worker at Reliance Metal Center in San Diego.
As Beem transitioned out of the U.S. Marine Corps in 2010, he found his artillery training didn’t have any parallels outside of the military. “I had no skills that translated into the civilian world.” He had been unemployed for a long stretch of time when he found out about Workshops for Warriors. One of his family members Google searched “veterans” and “welding training.” He found out about the school, and made plans to move to San Diego from Hawaii to get trained in both welding and machining. He attended the school for a year, earning 12 certifications.
“I was unable to do well in college because I have problems with PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder). The college environment was not working for me. But at Workshops for Warriors, things were different. Everyone is a veteran. It was a welcoming environment. Many of the people involved in the school have had problems,” he explained. “There is a real brotherhood that make the transition smooth. It was easy to communicate with each other.”
Before his time at Workshops for Warriors, Beem did not have any experience with welding. “I came in completely fresh,” he said. But during his year in the program, he felt as if he mastered everything he could. “I absorbed the information like a sponge.”
Beem looks back on his time in the welding school as a very positive experience. He really enjoyed the instructors. He recalls them addressing each individual student with quality hands-on instruction. Tim Palm, a Workshops for Warriors’ welding instructor, helped Beem get a part-time job as a janitor to help make ends meet.
Many of the issues that Beem struggled with got resolved as his time in the program passed. He recalls how he started unemployed, then switched to part-time work with the schooling, and he amassed more skills. The more skills he amassed, the more employable he became. He now has a job that allows him to support his family.
Today, he looks ahead to a long and bright career. “The future is looking brighter than it has looked in a long time. I look forward with positive thoughts and hope.”
Michael Gallagher
Michael Gallagher, 26, formerly in the U.S. Marine Corps, is now the lead welder/fitter and structural foreman at the Petroleum Measurement Company in Conroe, Tex. Like Beem,
Gallagher did have some struggles to contend with while attending Workshops for Warriors, but his issues were different.
Gallagher’s wife was pregnant when he started school. He was working as a laborer for a construction company, making $9 per hour. After working at that position for two months, Gallagher decided he could not live off of what he was making. After he received his first few welding certifications, he ended up obtaining a shipfitter job at the BAE shipyard, making $17 per hour. “My family needed more money, so getting the job in the shipyard was a big deal. It was my first civilian job making that much money.”
Gallagher worked at the shipyard for four months, and then he found another job with higher pay. He moved to Chicago Bridge and Iron as an in-house welder, making $26 per hour.
“When I was a student, I did struggle. I worked full-time — at times working 50 hours per week plus going to school. I didn’t always get to see my family. I soon had a newborn son. A lot of the parental duties were left to my wife. We should have shared more in the responsibilities, but I simply didn’t have the time. But in the end, those struggles were worth it.”
Gallagher’s wife is from Conroe, Tex. After she left the U.S. Marine Corps and he finished the program at Workshops for Warriors, they moved to be closer to family. “I wasn’t here for more than two days when I was able to get this job,” he explained. By this time, Gallagher was able to share a collection of six nationally recognized welding credentials.
“The fact I can weld anything really helped me out. After getting my foot in the door, I have made a name for myself.” Gallagher is the only flux core welder on staff. He welds and fabricates big petroleum skids. He spends approximately half of his time welding, and the other half fitting and cutting.
As Gallagher reflects back to his time at Workshops for Warriors, he said having instructors who are also veterans was a big deal to him. “It was really comfortable for me to have veteran teachers. We had similar experiences. Workshops for Warriors was like a second home to me.”
The free training he received was invaluable, he said. “The amount of money a student would have to spend on this quality of training at any other school is mind-boggling.”
Workshops for Warriors
It is the intangibles of his job, and working with students such as Whitfield, Beem, and Gallagher, that keep Palm motivated to continue teaching at Workshops for Warriors.
“It is kind of addictive. You get in there and get to know a group of students. You learn names, and see their tendencies. You feed off of it. It self-perpetuates. They become welders, then better welders, and you watch their personal problems get ironed out, too.”
Palm said he purposely set up his life so he can do instructional teaching for many years to come. He has no plans of retiring.
Workshops for Warriors is headquartered in San Diego, but a national rollout is on the horizon. Workshops for Warriors is rebuilding America’s advanced manufacturing workforce, one veteran at a time.
How to Participate
The mission of Workshops for Warriors’ school is to provide quality training, educational programs, and opportunities to earn third-party nationally recognized credentials. Available courses include:
- Shielded Metal Arc Welding
- Gas Metal Arc Welding
- Gas Tungsten Arc Welding
- Flux Cored Arc Welding
- CNC Milling
- CNC Lathe
- Solidworks
- Mastercam
- Immerse2Learn
