Older vets reach out to younger peers

Older vets reach out to younger peers
By ART HOVEY
Lincoln Journal Star
Posted: Thursday, June 21, 201

Peggy Gillispie remembers the day she was ready to declare her husband the winner in his war with himself.

It was 11 years after he lost a leg to a land mine in Vietnam and the day of their older son’s first communion.

When retired Marine Terry Gillispie went to confession and took part in the sacrament with 7-year-old Shawn at the Cathedral of the Risen Christ in Lincoln in 1979, she realized the “cradle Catholic” and father of three had found a measure of peace.

“It was one of the happiest days of my life,” said a woman who stood by her man through years of readjustment.

"I was more involved in my faith at that time, but I like to think I brought him back into the fold."

It took a long time for Terry Gillispie to move beyond his injuries from an ambush on April 20, 1968, just one year after graduating from Lincoln Southeast High School.

“I relived that incident every day,” he said. “I was angry. I did some things. I drank too much. I got in fights. I raised hell.”

Now that’s behind him. And now, he and fellow Vietnam veteran Larry Brown are reaching out to Mike Sheets and others coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan with post traumatic stress and other problems.

They worry that a bleak jobs picture will add to the latest round of emotional turmoil for men and women returning from war zones.

“Our objective is to get them to the VA now,” Gillispie said, “and not to have them go through what we went through.”

One focus of their efforts is Saturday’s Veterans Freedom Music Festival at the Veterans Administration Campus in Lincoln.
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