Helping veterans heal, grow after war

August 25th, 2007 9:31 pm
Helping veterans heal, grow after war


By Guy Kovner / Press Democrat

Nadia McCaffrey knows the sorrow of war firsthand.

Her son, Army Sgt. Patrick McCaffrey of Tracy, was killed in Iraq in June 2004, and a year later the Pentagon admitted he and another California National Guardsman, 1st Lt. Andre Tyson of Riverside, had been killed by Iraqi civil defense officers attached to their patrol.

They served in Iraq with Petaluma-based A Company of the Guard's 579th Engineer Battalion, which suffered a third casualty -- Sgt. 1st Class Michael Ottolini, a Sebastopol hay truck driver, killed by a roadside bomb.

About 20 North Bay members of the 579th Engineers are about to leave for a year-long tour in Iraq, following a farewell ceremony Thursday at New Jersey's Fort Dix.

McCaffrey, a French-born hospice caregiver-turned-antiwar-activist, wants to make sure they have help and good care when they get back.

On Sunday, McCaffrey, will unveil her latest initiative at a public meeting in Petaluma. It's a campaign to place psychologically scarred veterans in jobs and the healing environments of small farms.

The Farmer-Veteran Coalition, backed by about 20 agricultural and veterans organizations, will be described at a meeting from noon to 3 p.m. at Elim Lutheran Church, 504 Baker St., Petaluma.

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