Heroes Horizon helped repair more than a roof for elderly veteran

Nonprofit organization remodels house for veteran Army nurse

NBC 10 NEWS
by SAM READ
February 15th 2020

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. (WJAR) — A veteran Army nurse from Narragansett is getting a new roof over her head, literally.

Dozens of volunteers who heard she needed some home repairs stepped up to help her.

“Some of these guys have brand new babies at home, some of them came hundreds of miles to help out this weekend,” said Ken Gayles, the Project Manager for Heroes’ Horizons.

Heroes’ Horizons is a non-profit organization based out of Rhode Island that helps veterans.

“My son was a veteran, he came home he was not well and we lost him eventually,” said Gayles. “I started this because of him, if a veteran needing heating oil, electricity bill paid, had nothing in the refrigerator, we like to provide it for them that day if possible.”
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Two Army Generals made history....because they are sisters!

These 2 women are the first sisters ever to become Army generals

CNN
Mallory Hughes
September 7, 2019

(CNN)The US Army has plenty of famous examples of generals who were brothers. But sisters? Now that's another story.

Maj. Gen. Maria Barrett presenting Brig. Gen. Paula Lodi a beret with one-star rank insignia as a tribute to the history of women serving in the Army and the historic moment of sisters serving together as General Officers.

Maj. Gen. Maria Barrett and younger sister Brig. Gen. Paula Lodi became what the Army believes to be the first pair of sister generals.

Because women sometimes change their last names after marriage, the Army would have had to look at every single woman general, as well as their siblings, to compare names and determine if they were sisters. An Army spokesperson told CNN that it wasn't possible to do that.

"But since there haven't been that many women generals, it's a safe bet that they're the first," the spokesperson said.

The military didn't start accepting women into its ranks until the Army Nursing Corps was established in 1901.

Maj. Gen. Barrett is the Commanding General of NETCOM. She graduated from Tufts University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in international relations and was commissioned through the Army ROTC program as a Second Lieutenant in 1988.

Her younger sister, Brig. Gen. Lodi, was promoted in July and is the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations at the Office of the Surgeon General. She is a Distinguished Honor Graduate of the Naval War College and has master's degrees in public administration, military arts and science, and national security and strategic studies.
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Army ignored warnings before nurse was set on fire

The Army Ignored Her Warnings About a Dangerous Colleague. Then He Set Her on Fire

Task and Purpose
By James Clark
5 Jun 2019

Alone in her office, Katie Blanchard saw him out of the corner of her eye.

It was Clifford Currie, a 54-year-old civilian employee who Blanchard supervised. She couldn't yet see what was in his hands.

For months, Blanchard, then a first lieutenant, had warned her supervisors and coworkers that something would happen to her. She told them that Currie scared her. He would fly off the handle at a moment's notice. He would yell and physically intimidate her.

She told them Currie was dangerous.

Then he did what she said he would.

As Currie stood in the doorway of Blanchard's second floor office at Munson Army Health Center, he pulled out a small clear bottle filled with a brown liquid. His eyes were glazed over and bloodshot as he doused her in gasoline.

Then he lit a pair of matches and threw them on the 26-year-old Army nurse, lighting her on fire.
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Veterans in other news on October 12, 2018

Disabled Army veteran rescues flag being run over by cars

KXXV News
By Holly Stouffer, Reporter
October 11, 2018

TEMPLE, TX (KXXV) - Chris Ellenburg was driving home from work on FM 1237 Monday afternoon when something in the road caught his eye. "I honestly could not believe it," Ellenburg said. "I figured it was normal trash, but as soon as I saw the flag open up as it flipped over into my lane, I knew." Ellenburg was heated. He immediately pulled over and hopped out of his truck to rescue the tattered flag that was being run over by other drivers.

"You're dang right I stopped traffic," Ellenburg said. "And there were still disrespectful people driving by as I had this flag, picking it up off the ground in the middle of a freaking road." He said some drivers even honked at him to get out of the way. As a disabled Army veteran, Ellenburg was trained to leave no man behind. He sees his fellow soldiers each time he looks at the flag. read more here

Veteran's family fights to bring long lost sister from Vietnam to NC

WECT news October 12, 2018 WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) - In the wake of Hurricane Florence, a lot of us know what it’s like to feel displaced.

Anne Puangprasert, Wayne Lipford and Kumaune (WECT)

Anne Puangprasert has known that feeling her whole life, having overcome abuse, loss, and even a falsified death. Anne is the daughter of a Vietnam veteran who moved to Wilmington after the war, and her family is now trying desperately to bring her home. Pete Lipford met his sister Anne for the first time last year. He is 45. She is 48. Pete knew he had a sister, but thought, as did his father, Wayne, that she had died decades ago. read more here

Army nurse recounts her service in Vietnam, impact on her life

Jennifer Horbelt, Mike Spissinger
WPSD Local 6 news
October 11, 2018

PADUCAH — The Wall That Heals is coming to Paducah from Oct. 25 to 28. There are more than 58,000 names on this traveling replica Vietnam Memorial. They are the men and women who never came home.

Marj Graves stands at the nurse’s station in the 24th Evacuation Hospital at Long Binh during her tenure in Vietnam.

Those who did very likely were cared for by army nurses like Marj Graves. When the chance to help soldiers in Vietnam presented itself, she didn’t hesitate to go, but she saw and experienced things that cut deep and nearly took her life. She has spent decades learning to care for herself as much as she cares for others. “We may not have carried a gun, we may not have been on the front lines of combat, but some of the things that we saw and that we experienced were horrific. Horrific,” Marj said. From the time Marj was old enough to play with dolls, she knew she wanted to be a nurse. “I never wanted to be anything else but a nurse,” Marj said. read more here

Son of dead Quincy veteran attacks Rauner in new Pritzker ad

WGN 9 News
BY TAHMAN BRADLEY
Octobr 11, 2018

CHICAGO — Hours before the final gubernatorial debate in Quincy, the J.B. Pritzker campaign launched a blistering new attack ad featuring the son of a veteran who died after contracting Legionnaire’s disease at the Illinois Veterans Home. Eugene Miller is one of 14 residents of the Quincy home to die during the Legionnaires’ outbreaks since 2015. His son, Tim Miller, appeared in the television commercial titled “Heroes.”

“Gov. Rauner was more interested in protecting his image than he was the heroes who protected our country,” Tim Miller says to the camera. As Miller describes visiting his dying father in the hospital, the spot cuts to a graphic on screen that reads, “For six days the state of Illinois knew of a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak and said nothing.” read more here

Widow of Army veteran receives home makeover thanks to Home Depot and HomeStrong USA

Fontana Herald News

October 11, 2018

The widow of a U.S. Army veteran received a very special home makeover in Bloomington on Oct. 4. The Home Depot Foundation partnered with HomeStrong USA to transform the home of Maria Rowe, the widow of George Rowe, who served more than nine years in the Vietnam War.

Originally tasked with renovating the Rowes' bathroom, the Home Depot Foundation increased its support to cover renovations needed throughout the home after Maria Rowe unexpectedly lost her husband last year. More than 90 members of Team Depot, the Home Depot's associate-led volunteer force, completed the work on their day off. read more here

Family reunited with missing soldier's remains, visits lab that identified him

KETV News

Sarah Fili

October 11, 2018

OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, Neb. — An American hero is home. Army Sgt. Melvin Anderson was killed in World War II and was listed as "missing in action. His remains were recently identified in Nebraska. Thursday, his family got to see the lab that reunited them. “He’s just been a part of our family. And even though he’s been missing for that long we've always had hope we would find him,” Maureen Herzberg, Anderson's niece, said. Anderson died fighting in Germany in 1944. He was buried in an American cemetery overseas but was never identified. That changed when his skeleton was exhumed and sent to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency laboratory at Offutt. read more here

Tet Offensive Survivors Reunited After Google Search

Nurses, soldier who saved them in Vietnam reunite
The News-Press
Patricia Borns
October 27, 2015

Paliughi still has a photo of the wall in the nurses' room stitched with bullet holes. "They were brave," he says. "They're nurses."

On the night of the Vietnamese lunar New Year, Ron Paliughi woke to the sound of fireworks in the seacoast city of Nha Trang.

Only "it wasn't fireworks," the decorated Army veteran remembers. "It was the rockets and mortars of 850 North Vietnamese soldiers launching the Tet Offensive."

Housed in a decaying French colonial villa were Carol Portner and Maureen Orr, young nurses on a USAID mission. As the streets filled with corpses and chaos, the soldiers' and nurses' paths crossed in a life-saving moment.

No names were exchanged. They barely saw one another's faces through the tear gas and smoke. What were the chances they would reunite 46 years later at Portner's Gulf Harbour home in south Fort Myers? And yet last week, the group met again for the second time in two years. It took a death to bring them together.

A Google search

After working in 75 countries, Steve Orr wrote a book about his travels, "The Perennial Wanderer, an American in the World."

In the end, Paliughi's search came down to Googling the words 'Robert's Compound, Nha Trang, Vietnam.' A chapter from Orr's book popped up describing the Tet Offensive there. The nurses were named. He reached out to Orr to confirm.
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High Rate of PTSD in Female Vietnam Veterans

Study: High rate of PTSD among female Vietnam War vets 
Stars and Stripes
By Nancy Montgomery
Published: October 9, 2015

“Vietnam service significantly increased the odds of PTSD relative to U.S. service; this effect appears to be related to wartime exposures, especially sexual discrimination or harassment and job performance pressures,” the study concludes.

The Vietnam Women's Memorial in Washington, D.C. Women who served in Vietnam suffer significant rates of post-traumatic stress disorder decades after the war, partly because of the pervasive sexual harassment and discrimination they faced, according to a new JAMA study.

MICHAEL ABRAMS/STARS AND STRIPES

Female Vietnam War veterans suffer significant rates of post-traumatic stress disorder decades after the war, partly because of the sexual harassment and discrimination they faced while attending to the wounded and dying, according to a new study.

Of the women surveyed, 20 percent experienced PTSD at some point after the war, according to the study published this week in JAMA Psychiatry, a publication of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Most of these women were nurses. Nearly 16 percent currently suffered from the disorder at the time of the study.

By contrast, among military women of the era who remained in the United States, 14 percent had experienced PTSD, with 9 percent still suffering from it. Women who served near Vietnam — for example, in Thailand or the Philippines — had the lowest rates of the disorder: 11.5 percent experienced PTSD and 8 percent currently had the disorder.

The study, funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs, is based on surveys and phone interviews of more than 4,000 Vietnam-era female veterans. Of these, 1,956 had been stationed in Vietnam, mostly in the Army; 657 had served nearby on bases in Asia, mostly in the Air Force; and 1,606 had served in the U.S.

“I truly hope that this study will help the women who served so admirably during the Vietnam era, as they have been overlooked for a long time,” co-author Kathryn Magruder, who is affiliated with the Ralph H. Johnson Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Charleston, S.C., said in an email. “It’s never too late to do the right thing.”
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Vietnam Veteran Searching For Nurse From Casper Wyoming

Vietnam Veteran Searching for Nurse Who Helped Save His Life 50 Years Ago 
KULR 8 News
Penny Preston
Posted: Jun 26, 2015

A Vietnam Veteran is trying to find and thank the woman who helped save his life almost fifty years ago

CODY, WYOMING
A Vietnam veteran is trying to find and thank the woman who helped save his life almost fifty years ago. The problem is, he can't remember her face, or her name. He's hoping to get help from someone who may know her.

As he walks in front of the Vietnam Memorial in Cody, Wyoming, Larry Baker is looking for names of people he knew when he served in Vietnam in 1968. He recognizes a couple of names of Wyomingite's who died there, but he's also looking for someone else from the Cowboy State who survived the war – someone who helped save his life after he was injured by a bomb blast. He suffered numerous injuries, including a broken back and burned eyes. He was not expected to live.

"And they didn't know if I would be able to see or not and they wanted to prepare me for that." And so a nurse started taking the bandages off of my eyes, and she asked me where I was from and she said, 'Where are you from soldier?', and I said, 'Cody, Wyoming.' She said, 'Oh really. I'm from Casper, Wyoming.'"

Baker said he saw the nurse, but can't remember what she looked like. He can't remember anything about his service in Vietnam, because the blast also injured his brain.
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Army Nurse Went From Helping Patients To Being One

Army nurse goes from helping wounded warriors to racing them for gold 
United States Army
By Tim Hipps
June 25, 2015

Being an Army medic for 13 years and a medical provider for wounded warriors, she knew her road to recovery would be long and painful.

Army nurse goes from helping wounded warriors to racing them for gold Army Capt. Kelly Elmlinger, a surgical nurse with the Warrior Transition Unit on Fort Sam Houston, Texas, wins her division of the 100 meters in the 2015 Department of Defense Warrior Games track competition on Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., June 23...

MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, Va. (Army News Service, June 24, 2015) -- Two years ago, Army surgical nurse Capt. Kelly Elmlinger was helping wounded warriors recover from battle scars at the San Antonio Military Medical Center.

Now, she's competing alongside wounded warriors at the 2015 Department of Defense Warrior Games in Quantico this week.

Elmlinger, 35, planned to compete in all of the track events and three of the four swimming events.

She got off to a roaring start, June 23, by winning her divisions of the 100- and 800-meter wheelchair races before the remaining track events were postponed because of a severe thunderstorm.

In March 2013, Elmlinger was diagnosed with synovial sarcoma, a rare tumor in her lower leg, while she was taking care of wounded warriors in San Antonio.

"I ended up finding myself a patient on my own floor," she said. "In January and February of 2014, I was able to start doing rehab."

By June, she was competing again - this time in a wheelchair.

"I've always been involved in athletics," said Elmlinger, who competed in track and field, cross country and basketball in high school and college. "I stayed active through the military [before being diagnosed with cancer] in different events, so when I got to San Antonio to take care of the wounded warriors, I knew a little bit about the adaptive sports and some of the things they did.

"We very much enjoyed when our patients who left our inpatient services came back to show us they were on their prosthetics - they were walking, they were competing, they were going on trips - and the milestones they were able to achieve. It was absolutely wonderful to see them come back much healthier and in much better spirits, so that got me introduced to the adaptive community."
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WWII Nurse Receiving French Foreign Legion of Honor

Veteran Army nurse to receive French Legion of Honor
Rusty Rice will receive France's highest award for her service in the Army during WWII
WDBJ7
Reporter Nadine Maeser Nadine Maeser
December 26, 2014

BLACKSBURG, Va.
A Blacksburg woman will be recognized for her service to our country on Saturday.

Rusty Rice served as a nurse in World War II and nearly 70 years later, she's receiving the highest honor from France.

Rice, 94, is set to receive the French Legion of Honor.

She is the second veteran in Virginia to receive it.

“I'm nervous,” she said.

Rice, a New Jersey native, worked as a registered nurse in a maternity ward before joining the Army in her early 20's.

"I was an Army nurse and I happened to be stationed where the Battle of the Bulge was occurring and it was a very difficult time."

Rice said she loved serving her country.

"Much to my mother's horror she wouldn't hear of it, but then my brother was drafted,” she said.

Rice gained her mother’s approval after she explained there might not be enough nurses to care for her brother.
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Army Rangers honor bravery of Capt. Jennifer Moreno at memorial

Memorial for feisty Madigan nurse Moreno salutes her bravery in Afghanistan
The Olympian
Adam Ashton
Staff Writer
Published: November 2, 2013

Col. Stephen Yoest, foreground, deputy commander for clinical services at Madigan Army Medical Center; Lt. Col. Timothy O’Haver, Madigan chief of staff; Col. Lena Gaudreau, deputy commander for nursing; and Chaplain Lt. Col. Jimmy Davis leave flowers at a newly dedicated memorial Friday at Madigan in memory of Capt. Jennifer Moreno, a medic killed while on a mission in Afghanistan.
DEAN J. KOEPFLER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The death of Army nurse Capt. Jennifer Moreno in Afghanistan last month devastated her teammates.

They told themselves they should have been the ones to take that dangerous mission with a team of Army Rangers instead of the feisty medic from San Diego with the broad smile.

But as the days wore on after the Oct. 6 bombings that killed four soldiers and wounded 30 more, Moreno’s friend and commander Capt. Amanda King realized it “couldn’t have happened any other way.”

Only Moreno, 25, had the bravery to race through a heavily mined village to try to save wounded Rangers.

“None of us would have done what you did, running into hell to save your wounded brothers, knowing full well you probably wouldn’t make it back,” King wrote in eulogy to her friend.
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Madigan Army Medical Center nurse killed in Afghanistan

Madigan Army Medical Center nurse killed in Afghanistan
Seattle Times
Posted by Nick Provenza
October 8, 2013

JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD (AP) — A nurse from Madigan Army Medical Center and three of her fellow soldiers in a special operations force were killed by an improvised bomb blast Sunday in Afghanistan, the Defense Department said.

Lt. Jennifer M. Moreno, 25, of San Diego, was based at the hospital at Joint Base Lewis-McChord and volunteered as a member of a cultural support team with a special operations task force that deployed in June.

Also killed in Sunday’s blast in the Zhari District of Kandahar Province were Sgt. Patrick C. Hawkins, 25 of Carlisle, Pa.; Sgt. Joseph M. Peters, 24, of Springfield, Mo.; and Pfc. Cody J. Patterson, 24, of Philomath, Ore.

Hawkins and Patterson served out of Fort Benning, Ga., with the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. Peters belonged to the 5th Military Police Battalion out of Vicenza, Italy.

Serving with a special operations cultural support team is one of the few ways for female soldiers to go outside the wire on combat missions with all-male Army Ranger or Green Beret teams, The News Tribune reported.

“We’ve lost a superb officer and a caring nurse who served with marked distinction and honor throughout her career.” said Madigan Command Col. Ramona Fiorey. “We are all deeply saddened by the tragic loss of this great American solider.”
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