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Denise Hilton is a proud working mother of five, three of whom are in college. She has been employed for years with an energy technology company, SLB, where she handles the contracts for leasing railroad cars to move the company’s products. The job allows her to work out of her home, which is essential so she can continue to care for her husband, a former soldier troubled by trauma from his military service. 

But Hilton’s lack of a college degree is holding her back. A way to show her abilities to her employer would be to hold a bachelor’s degree, and she recognized that it was an aspiration she could not financially afford to pursue.

Not anymore.

Hilton is among this year’s Pillars of Strength Scholarship winners at University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC). The highly competitive scholarship covers the full cost of a degree for a caregiver of an injured servicemember.

Hilton said she was “absolutely shocked” when she got the call with the news of the scholarship.

“Like I tell the kids you just never know until you try,” she said. “Don't give up until the final give up is done.” 

When Hilton stumbled onto the scholarship during an online search, she was skeptical that she would even be allowed to apply since she wasn’t a certified caregiver. But she clicked on it anyway. Then Kelly Grooms, UMGC’s assistant director for veterans initiatives, reached out to let her know she was eligible.

Hilton has been caring for her husband for more than a decade. In May 2000, shortly after high school, David Hilton joined the U.S. Army and, by the time he was 21, he was off on his first deployment to Saudi Arabia following the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Over the next 13 years, he had five more deployments, all in Iraq, some of them lasting more than a year and a half.

“He was out there constantly in fight-or-flight situations,” Denise Hilton said. “He was on the frontlines. He was with the aviation and engineering corps. He was with the air defense artillery. He was with the field artillery. It affected him in ways that he didn't really recognize until he actually got to step out and be what we call a civilian again.”

Coming from a military family, Denise, too, had joined the Army shortly after high school in 2007. Both she and David were deployed to Iraq in 2009. 

“It was the last deployment to Iraq. So, we were shutting it down,” she said. “So, there was chaos all around. It felt as if it was just normal for us.”

They married the following October, and Denise Hilton left the Army when she was expecting their first child, one of five in the couple’s blended family. When her husband was offered a medical retirement, he took it, and the new family settled in Houston.

Then, bit by bit, David began to crumble, Denise Hilton said. 

“I didn’t understand because just the days before, all was well,” she said. “PTSD, anxiety, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder started to take control of his daily life.”

David Hilton landed a position as a parole officer, carrying his own caseload and working with his own team, which is like a military squadron. The job returned him to what he needed most—some of the discipline and camaraderie of military life—wearing a uniform, showing up at a specific time, dealing with difficult situations, Denise Hilton said.  

Denise Hilton took over more and more of their home responsibilities as their lives became more restricted by her husband’s anxieties. She watched closely for anything that would break his routine and send him off kilter.

“I always tell him everything is gonna’ be OK,” she said. “His new saying is, ‘It’s going to work itself out because we can no longer thrive on the negativity and can’t thrive on what could happen.’

“We just have to take what is happening and what can we do about it,” She added.

Denise Hilton took a semester or two of courses with UMGC while stationed in Germany. She also enrolled in online classes with Colorado Technical University before dropping out when she struggled to balance work, family, and college. At UMGC, she plans to pursue a Bachelor of Management Studies in conjunction with an Advanced Management Certification.