Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau and military talk about healing PTSD veterans

Garry Trudeau, military leaders highlight Patriot Hills event
By CHRIS KNIGHT, Enterprise Senior Staff Writer

SARANAC LAKE - Nearly 140 years ago, Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau came to the Adirondacks expecting to die from tuberculosis.

But not only did he cure; he cured countless others with his pioneering research, treatment and the sanitarium he established. This center for healing quickly exploded into a village, with Trudeau as its first mayor.

On Tuesday, Trudeau's great-grandson, Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau, made a rare public appearance in the community where he was raised to build support for a project that organizers say could once again make the village a center for healing.

Patriot Hills at Saranac Lake, a proposed respite and reintegration center for active-duty soldiers, veterans and their families, held its first major local event, a half-day forum at the Trudeau Institute titled "Soldier Resiliency: A Fresh Approach." The program, which included two U.S. Army generals, experts in the field of post-traumatic stress disorder and other speakers, focused on the stresses faced by soldiers returning home from war, two unique treatment methods that could help them, and the Patriot Hills model.

Trudeau, who has focused on veteran and "wounded warrior" issues in his comic strip and other writings, opened the event with a strong endorsement of Patriot Hills, calling it "a return to the healing ethos for which Saranac Lake was once world-renowned."
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Garry Trudeau military leaders highlight Patriot Hills event