A Call to Arms

Millions of citizens have answered the call to arms over the past 250 years. That is just in America alone. Duty called and they signed up. Maybe the draft called, and they did what they had to do. But the result is the same: military preparedness of our nation is built and maintained. Wars are avoided. Wars are won. Wars are declared not won by either side, but peace comes from a truce, an agreement to pursue other, less violent means to settle the dispute.

Once served, the good people become veterans. They return to their civilian lives and continue to live their dream. Or not. This piece is about the not.

Some veterans return to a home of broken marriages, splintered families, loss of job, fruitless education and much more. All too often vets return home having lost themselves in military duty. Broken. Unable to cope with modern life that kept on changing while they were in service to country.

I remember a good fellow at the local coffee shop. A bunch of strangers gathered at the shop daily to drink coffee, read the newspaper, get an early start to the day, and gab a bit before starting our workday. This fellow had good spirit and personality. But he was broken. He had no job. He had no hope for a job. Slowly we heard his story. Day by day we learned more about Frank.

Frank had served in Viet Nam. He trained as a flight medic for helicopter extractions of wounded personnel. He told story after story of flying into battle sites, bullets whining around their heads, plinking against the helicopter’s skin, all while his crew dragged wounded soldiers to the helicopter. Medics quickly worked to stabilize the patients while the copter flew back to the base hospital.

Frank told us of the wounded, some screaming in agony, others quietly weeping, others bravely suffering through fear and pain. Others were quiet. Frank tended to many of those. He told us of cradling these men in his arms while they quietly slipped away.

These cases affected Frank. It forever changed his mind, his ability to relate to the world, his sense of self and meaning of life. He answered the call to duty, but he gave more than time and effort. He gave his life, his normal life anyway.

The Veterans Administration helped Frank. They medicated him. They counseled him. They provided psychiatric care and even hospital time. Despite this attention, Frank never returned to normal. He was granted a monthly stipend for housing and sustenance. His family was enlisted to guide Frank to a new normal, and of course the VA medical benefits were forever available to Frank.

Frank had good days and bad. We heard about them and witnessed many.

I still think of Frank, especially when driving by the apartment complex in which he lived. I wonder how Frank got along after we all had moved on with our lives. I wondered if Frank were still alive. If he ever found happiness and peace.

Recently I worked with a SCORE client who founded a nonprofit to address the ongoing saga of the lives of veterans. How many are left with an incomplete life because of their military service? How many have ended their own lives out of sheer frustration and agony of forever remembering the horrors of battle? How many lived in a perpetuating hell until taking their last breath?

This client is calling us to shoulder some of this pain. He has opened a woodworking shop in the heart of a nearby city inviting vets to enter, play with the tools and learn the skills to make small products to sell in proven retail markets. His hope is to help vets find a way forward to building a small business activity that fuels their interest in life and health. For seven years this man has funded this enterprise. He reached out to SCORE for help in finding others to share the workload and expense.

We spent hours in a strategic planning session. We identified the working pieces of his business, his nonprofit. We mapped out the key elements needing attention for now. Not surprisingly, it is fundraising and marketing. Getting the message out to vets of the services and benefits of his programs, a call to arms from the public to donate funds or leadership in supporting the organization’s mission and vision.

His mission is clear: reduce suicide stats of vets; help them find themselves and the promise of renewed life. The name of the organization? A Call to Shoulders.

How utterly apt!

June 13, 2022

 

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