FORT WORTH, Texas — Bradley Vander Zanden was just a college undergrad in Wisconsin when he joined the U.S. Marines because a friend, who was also signing up, dared him.
“I would tell him to put his head down and charge forward,” Vander Zanden, 40, said when asked what he would tell that young Marine now. “That he’s going to have the best time of his life.”
Because his life as a Marine Corps cadet would take him through three military branches and four college degrees, until Wednesday, when he walked across a commencement stage in Fort Worth to accept his next assignment as a Navy Osteopathic physician…