President Obama should be supported by Congress in his effort to help kids get to college.

As a senator, Lyndon Johnson successfully introduced legislation to do this in 1958.

Then, as president and by amendment, he expanded the program in 1964.

LBJ’s program made National Defense Student Loans available to students who wanted to attend four-year colleges and were willing to prepare for jobs that our country needed filled.

He was concerned that escalating costs would make college beyond the reach of middle class Americans.

We have similar concerns today.

The idea of the loan program was to prepare students to fill critical vacancies in our nation’s economy and then to use the repayment dollars to fund the education of additional students.

Back then, our nation was at war in Southeast Asia.

We were engaged in a violent struggle for racial equality and we were still reeling from the trauma of a recent presidential assassination.

In spite of these challenges, we were an optimistic nation in those days.

We believed that we could help other nations to achieve democracy, and we were planning on sending a man to the moon by the end of the decade.

LBJ’s vision included equality for the politically marginalized, medical care for the poor and college loans for those who need them.

When President Johnson’s amendment to the National Defense Student Loan Program was announced, I was an average kid from a terrible home who wanted to go to college and had no way to get there.

Our nation needed nurses badly, and although I wanted to study journalism, I jumped at the opportunity to get one of those loans and become a nurse.

In 1968, I graduated from Boston University School of Nursing.

Years later, I earned a master’s degree in public health.

The terms of that first loan required full payment, with interest, within 10 years of graduation.

In exchange for a terrific education, I made every payment on time and then worked in the public sector for more than 35 years.

During my career, I worked hard to develop disease prevention and health promotion programs that improve the lives of poor people, and by extension, the health of the communities in which they live.

My reward has been the contentment that doing good work brings.

When I graduated from college in 1968, I believed that my debt to LBJ was more than just “money-owed.”

That first college loan literally saved my life.

Although many years have passed, I am still optimistic enough to believe in LBJ’s dream.

He believed that being handed “the short end of the stick” at birth should not condemn a person to a lifetime of poverty.

I think he also believed that good health and political equality are the birthright of all Americans and that these were the foundations upon which his Great Society would eventually be built.

To realize his dream, Johnson introduced Medicare and signed critical civil rights legislation into law.

He was committed to fostering an educated populace.

He understood that the true wealth of our nation lies in its people.

On signing the 1964 amendment that expanded the National Education Act, LBJ said: “We must say as a matter of national policy, in the United States of America, that every boy and girl born in this country under that flag has the right to all the education he or she can take.”

LBJ wasn’t really an eloquent speaker, but his vision was true.

I am not a historian, nor am I astute politically.

But I am a person who loves her country and I am a person who is very grateful for the faith our government placed in me so many years ago.

I like to think LBJ would be pleased with his investment.

President Obama is trying to help the youth of our nation in similar ways.

This is not a partisan issue.

Can’t the Congress agree to get this done?

Suzanne Gunston is a resident of Arrowsic.