Man beats odds to go to West Point

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Andrew Hunt, a senior at St. Andrew's High School , is bound for the United States Military Academy at West Point .

That is what he calls "a major deal." For his parents, it's a minor miracle. Then there is Josie Dickson, Andrew's college counselor at St. Andrew's.

"I'm sure you remember being in the first or second, third grade and the teacher was always saying, 'I wish Billy would sit down; he's just squirmy as a worm on a hot brick,'" said Dickson. "It wasn't that Billy wanted to do that; he simply couldn't help himself."

In this case, though, 'Billy" is Andrew and 'squirmy' doesn't quite get there.

"He was squirrelly," said the boy's father Frank Hunt. "He couldn't sit still in his chair, was always looking out the window."

That's not all: As a small child, Andrew would incessantly punch the buttons on the family's VCR machine.

"You could tell him 'no' and you could tell that it registered," his father recalled. "He knew what 'no' meant but it didn't make any difference to him. He just had a very inquisitive mind; he would just keep exploring. So that's one of the ways we knew he was a little bit different."

There were plenty of other ways. As the boy grew, he started collecting things.

"Andrew would bring things home with him that he would find laying on the ground," said Frank Hunt. "Trash, we called it trash: Bottle caps, paper clips, ink pens. I used to keep a zip-lock bag full of the ink pens that he would totally disassemble and reassemble them in ways that they did not go together. This was the type of thing that he would do."

Perhaps the worst news, though, came from school.

"He was disruptive," his dad said. "He was disruptive of other students. We were asked to talk to him and so we talked to him at home. We said, 'Andrew, you cannot talk and listen at the same time.' And he looked at us with a straight face and he said, 'Yes I can; yes I can.'"

It was time for a trip to the doctor.

"I was medicated, I think from first grade all the way through May of my sophomore year," Andrew said.

The medications worked. Andrew was able to focus and concentrate more when he was on them. But there were some gnarly side effects.

"The medication had symptoms that I didn't like," the boy said. "The big issue was loss of appetite. The medication deprived me of the desire to eat. That was an issue because I wasn't gaining weight; I wasn't getting bigger; I wasn't getting faster and that was a problem."

The drugs also interfered with Andrew's sleep and when he came down off of them at the end of the day, his parents found him to grow increasingly irritable.

Besides, the medicines only went so far. Family members still had to pour their hearts into daily life with Andrew.

"We always had to make sure that he knew what he was expected to do," said his mother  Donna Hunt, "and then constantly remind him: This is what you're expected to do. These are the consequences if you do them; these are the consequences if you don't do them. So there was constant instruction."

"You just have to be very, very patient, be very loving and you've got to be persistent," Frank Hunt said. "I probably nagged him quite a bit when he was younger but he needed that. He needed that until he could learn to start nagging himself."

Andrew, too, knows how hard it all was on his family.

"My brother and my dad helped me," he said. "I would write down my school assignments on a list and then have check boxes next to each one. You have that there when you're doing your homework, so it's a physical image of what you need to get done; you can look and see, this is what I need to get done.

"For people who suffer from ADHD, they have to deal with a thought process. They have to go through the loops of: This is something that I need to get done; so I should be doing this instead of something else, so then, being able to do it. I have to tell myself to focus and concentrate and I have to tell myself to get it done. It's a matter of self-discipline and self-control."

So it went, for a decade. Along the way, though, there were plenty of good times and calm moments. Andrew and his older brother, Kyle, enjoyed hunting with their parents. There was football, golf and track in the family life, and of course, dreams.

Frank Hunt had served in the U.S. Air Force and Kyle considered following in his father's footsteps. But he really wanted to go to West Point. Meanwhile, Andrew soaked up everything he could about a warrior's life.

"I've always loved the military," he said. "I've always loved military books. I've always loved the history and heroes like Doolittle and Patton, Eisenhower and MacArthur. So that was kind of a big deal for me."

So one day a couple of years ago, the entire family set out on an adventure to San Antonio for a recruiting function called, "Academy Day."

"We talked to some of the officers who were recruiting for the academy and they told us that ADHD does keep a lot of people out," Andrew remembered. "But if you've been off the