Lots of people struggle to get a kid through college. Making sure that several make it can be both a financial strain and emotional roller coaster.

So, imagine having 200 kids who have been promised a full-ride education to any college they can get into. Could you handle it? Where would you start?

The where-do-we-begin part started 20 years ago for Steve Bauer. He retired from the Social Security Administration and became director of the then relatively new Federal Employees Education and Assistance Fund. FEEA was setup to be a feds-helping-feds charity. With a lot of financial help from corporate friends.

Twenty years ago this month, domestic terrorists set off a powerful car bomb outside of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. At 9:02 a.m. CDT (April 19, 1995), the powerful, home- made fertilizer bomb went off. It killed 168 people and seriously injured 680 others. Among them were HUD employees, Secret Service personnel, the FBI, Social Security, IRS and just about every other federal agency you can think of. They were targeted for death because they worked for the federal government. Plain and simple.

Nineteen of the dead were children in the America’s Kid Day Care Center in the building. One hundred and ninety nine children — including one who was born after the attack — lost at least one parent to the explosion and collapse of the building.

FEEA was one of the first outside groups to go to Oklahoma City. It supplied money and help to families too numb with grief to function. To buy food. Or pay a bill. Or walk the dog.

It was immediately decided, although FEEA didn’t have the funds, to set up a full-ride scholarship fund for the children who ranged from young adults to an unborn boy.

So how did FEEA do it? What was it like herding 200 children through college? Where did they go? How did they do? What career paths did they take? How can you help, even now?

On today’s Your Turn radio show, we’ll talk with Steve Bauer about the ups and downs, the joys and heartaches of having 200 very special kids in college. That’s 10 a.m. at www.federalnewsradio.com or, in the D.C. area you can listen at 1500 AM.

Nearly Useless Factoid by Michael O’Connell

In the 2014-15 school year, the average published undergraduate tuition and fee price for in-state students who are enrolled full-time in a four-year college is $9,139.

(Source: College Board)

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