An update on two vets struggling to put the war behind them

An update on two vets struggling to put the war behind them

Veterans program director Jim Zenner and client Greg Valentini have forged a respectful truce in the fight for recovery.

By Steve Lopez
July 2, 2011, 6:24 p.m.

Jim Zenner, fresh out of college, was program director at a new veterans recovery program in Hollywood. Greg Valentini, who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, was one of his first clients.

The first impressions they had of each other when they met last August were not positive. Zenner, a reservist, had just gotten back from a mission in Korea to learn that Valentini and some other vets had partied at the residential recovery center, throwing back beers while he was away.

"I was thinking this guy ain't gonna make it," said Zenner, who thought Valentini looked like a hardboiled, hotheaded convict. "But I was thinking I wasn't going to make it, either."

Valentini, meanwhile, thought Zenner was too starched, as if he'd just graduated with honors from officers' school. And Zenner was such a rookie social worker that Valentini began calling him Green. Even today, they see the drinking incident differently.

"Tell him why," Valentini pleaded, explaining that the beers were to celebrate President Obama declaring the end of the combat mission in Iraq.

President Obama? That's another issue.

Zenner, 34, was pro-Bush, anti-Obama. A Republican.

Valentini, 33, was anti-Bush, pro-Obama. A Democrat.

Valentini enlisted in the Army in 2000 primarily for the G.I. Bill and ended up in heavy combat a year later, even though he's generally antiwar. He hung a "Veterans for Peace" sign on his dorm room door at the vet center, and when Zenner objected, Valentini hung it on Zenner's door.
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An update on two vets struggling to put the war behind them