Fort Carson Soldiers Changing Lanes

Fort Carson Soldiers Graduate from New Caliber Collision Changing Lanes Program

Collision Week

COLLISIONWEEK EDITOR 

January 4, 2019

Changing Lanes is free training program for Fort Carson 

Transitioning from a regimented military environment to the unpredictability of civilian life is one of the most stressful times for many soldiers.

The first Fort Carson graduates from the Changing lanes Falcon Academy are (L-R) Specialist Patrick Horn of Oakland, CA, Specialist Adrian Jimenez Cruz of Salinas, CA, Master Sergeant Robert Apfelbaum and Specialist McKinley Kerns, both of Colorado Springs.

Four soldiers from Fort Carson graduated stress-free from Caliber Collision’s Changing Lanes Falcon Academy, armed with a $12,000 toolbox, a secure employment offer and new career in the collision repair industry. 

Veterans With Multiple Tours of War Overseas Struggle at Home

There is a quote in the following article on New York Times that deserves attention. "The military is very good at identifying and amplifying the psychological factors that make a high-performing fighter." While they do a fantastic job of training these men and women to fight in combat, they do a lousy job of training them to fight for their own lives.

That is evident when you read more about the high rate of suicides in those with multiple deployments. When you think about the simple fact they survived all the hardships and risk to their lives, but cannot survive being home, that screams a message of how the DOD still does not understand them.

Those With Multiple Tours of War Overseas Struggle at Home
The New York Times
By BENEDICT CAREY
MAY 29, 2016

Ryan Lundeby, 32, an Army Ranger with
five deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Credit Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times

An analysis of Army data shows that, unlike most of the military, these soldiers’ risk of committing suicide actually drops when they are deployed and soars after they return home. For the 85 percent of soldiers who make up the rest of the service and were deployed, the reverse is true.

FORT WORTH, Tex. — The dinner crowd was sparse for a downtown steakhouse, a handful of families and couples lost in conversations. Ryan Lundeby, 32, an Army Ranger with five deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, took in the scene from his table, seemingly meditative beneath his shaved head and long beard.

He was not.

“He watches, he’s always watching; he notices everything,” said his wife, Mary. “Superman noticing skills, that’s what I call it. Look, he’s doing it now — Ryan?”

“He watches, he’s always watching; he notices everything,” said his wife, Mary. “Superman noticing skills, that’s what I call it. Look, he’s doing it now — Ryan?”

“That table over there,” Mr. Lundeby said, his voice soft, his eyes holding a line. 

“The guy threw his straw wrapper on the ground. I’m waiting to see if he picks it up.”

He did not. Mr. Lundeby’s breathing slowed.

After 14 years of war, the number of veterans with multiple tours of combat duty is the largest in modern American history — more than 90,000 soldiers and Marines, many of them elite fighters who deployed four or more times. New evidence suggests that these veterans are not like most others when it comes to adjusting to civilian life.
read more here

Military Spends Fortune Training For Combat, Pittance To Come Home From It

Our military spends a fortune on war but little when our forces come home 
Washington Post
By Roger Boas
May 27, 2016

"The Army spends a fortune training its troops to kill but almost nothing to train us for coming home." Roger Boas is the author of “Battle Rattle: A Last Memoir of World War II.”

A recent study by the Rand Corp. concludes that the U.S. military is unable to provide adequate therapy sessions for thousands of soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. 

The February study of 40,000 cases, the largest ever, found that only a third of troops with PTSD received the minimum number of therapy sessions needed after being diagnosed. As a veteran, I am appalled.

Though my war experience was 70 years ago, it haunts me to this day. I can still remember the sound that froze my blood. The stomach-churning whistle of a field artillery round, like a thousand shrieking pigs, increasing in a ghastly crescendo until it finally explodes — and bodies fly in every direction.

Anyone who has served in ground combat knows that sound. It’s our worst nightmare. You never know where the incoming projectile is going to hit. You’re either dead or you’ve managed to squeak out alive one more time, deeply shaken. It happens nonstop, any hour of the day or night. It seeps into your bones.
read more here

Home From War Female Veteran Feels Service Devalued

Home From War, Female Veteran Discovers Not All Military Service Is Valued Equally
KPLU
By GABRIEL SPITZER
APR 30, 2016

As a female vet, she was often mistake for a “real” veteran’s wife or girlfriend. And as someone who did a majority of her service within the confines of that Army base, she discovered that some soldiers played down what she went through.

Marine Corps translator Vanessa Davids (second from the left), on one of her rare trips off base.

COURTESY OF VANESSA DAVIDS

Vanessa Davids did most of her military service “inside the wire,” as an Arabic translator on a base in Iraq. Her job called on her to translate audio and video recordings, in hopes of gathering intelligence, foiling attacks and probing enemy action. She translated bomb plots, beheadings, even in some cases child pornography. As a result, she got an intimate, and dark, perspective on human nature.

“Doing the work that I did, it really seemed to me at the time that evil was in every single person, and it was just a matter of how well they hid it from you,” Davids said.

But upon returning from her deployment, she discovered that not all military service is treated equally by either the military itself, her fellow vets, or the civilians she now moved uncomfortably among.
read more here

South Miami-Dade Cultural Center Brings Veterans’ Experiences Home

‘Basetrack Live’ at South Miami-Dade Cultural Center brings veterans’ experiences back home
Miami Herald
Jordan Levin
03/14/2015

Younger veterans, who join in their late teens before they have really grown up, are often most lost when they return to civilian life. But service members of all ages feel alienated, not just from a society that touts them as heroes but in many ways seems oblivious to them, but even to their families — who endure their own trauma. The result is high rates of alcoholism, homelessness, domestic violence and suicide — effects that can last for years. Many of the 22 veterans who commit suicide every day fought in Vietnam.

Anthony Torres was not on the front lines when he was sent to work at Abu Ghraib Hospital in Iraq in 2004, during the second U.S. assault on anti-U.S. insurgents down the road in Fallujah. In the aftermath of the killing and mutilation of four U.S. contractors and the discovery of torture at Abu Ghraib prison, the Iraq War was at its horrifying height. As a mental health technician, Torres’ job was to counsel Marines and soldiers struggling with fear, depression, rage and mental trauma.

But with nearby explosions rattling the sky every day, random death raining in on the camp in the form of mortars and stray fire (which killed a fellow medic as he stepped out of a trailer), the flow of wounded men, and the agonized stories he heard, Torres dealt with his own share of stress.

“Everyone deployed to Iraq is in combat,” says Torres, 33. “Any day you could be killed. But at some point you just have to give in. It can drive you crazy. Some people had panic attacks. I decided I’m just gonna keep doing my job.”

When he returned to his unit at Fort Hood, Texas, Torres was put in charge of 14 people at a substance abuse clinic. But even among fellow military, he felt out of place.
read more here

Navy SEAL Howard Wasdin, "Rock Star to Rock Bottom" in PTSD Battle

Former Navy SEAL Team 6 Sniper Reveals How He Rediscovered His Faith After Hitting Rock Bottom
The Blaze
Billy Hallowell
Nov. 4, 2014

Upon his return, he faced both PTSD and survivors’ guilt, wondering, “Why were these guys taken and why was I allowed to live?”

The Last Rescue by Howard Wasdin

Howard Wasdin, a former top sniper with Navy SEAL Team 6, is hoping that his story of overcoming intense personal struggles will inspire others who are faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges.

Wasdin recently told TheBlaze about the issues he faced after sustaining injuries during the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu (also known as Black Hawk Down) in Somalia.

The incident took a physical toll on Wasdin, forcing him to leave the military and assimilate back into civilian life.

The former military fighter, who is now an author and a chiropractor, said that he initially hit rock bottom after leaving the service, forcing himself to crawl his way out of a world filled with pain and despair — an experience he recaps in his newly released book “The Last Rescue.”

“It’s a powerful redemption story that will hit home to anyone who has found him or herself in a dark place,” Wasdin said of the book.

The decorated former Navy SEAL said that after being wounded and “on the verge of death,” leaving the military was intensely difficult. Struggling to adjust, he ended up divorcing, turning to alcohol and finding himself profoundly confused about his destiny.

“I got a divorce right after getting out of the SEAL Team — a lot of bad things snowballing for me there,” he said, noting that he also became a single dad tasked with caring for his son. “After that, I jumped into the bottle and became best friends with Jack for a while, last name Daniels.”

Considering that the military was the only thing Wasdin truly knew and the only real job he had ever had, he said he was left distraught and disconnected.

Over time, though, Wasdin said that he was able to overcome these struggles through counseling and a return to his Christian roots — ideals he had previously abandoned in his adult life, placing his sole focus on his career.
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Veterans Still Not Having Transition Help from Military to Veteran

New study finds veterans struggle in transition to civilian life
Advocates call for holistic approach to vet health
KJRH 2 News
RACHEL QUESTER
OCT 7, 2014

Rep. Murphy has authored a bill to overhaul how the U.S. treats the entire mental health system. Murphy says the bill, Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis, aims to provide treatment before tragedy, especially when it comes to helping veterans. The bill is still in committee.

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

WASHINGTON D.C. - Some people look at the military veteran Omar Gonzalez who jumped the White House fence recently and say: if only we had a higher fence. Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., the only practicing psychologist in Congress, looks at the incident and says, “there was a need for treatment for this man, and he couldn’t get it.”

If a new study by the School of Social Work at the University of Southern California is any indication, Murphy has the right response.

The circumstances service members face upon leaving the military are, to say the least, very bleak.

Nearly two-thirds of veterans are unprepared for civilian life, the study says, and nearly eight in ten do not have a job lined up. Around 40 percent do not have a place to live, and many leave active duty with untreated physical or mental issues. In fact, the study found that about one-third have contemplated suicide.

The study focused only on veterans returning home to Los Angeles County, but an author of the study, retired Army colonel and USC professor Carl Castro, argues that these results can apply on a national level.
read more here

What happens when they are forced to leave service?

What happens when they are forced to leave service?
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
January 11, 2014

Zack Mayo (Richard Gere) had a rough life but thought he found what he needed when he enlisted. Sgt. Emil Foley (Louis Gossett Jr.) had other ideas.

In this clip from An Officer and a Gentleman Mayo is doing whatever he can to stay in. He screams, "I got no place else to go!"

Young men and women join the military for many different reasons. Some, like Mayo saw military life as their chance to have a better life. No real family, no support and no other option. For Mayo, leaving was giving up on any hope he had left.

For others it was a matter of being able to go to college afterwards, again for a better future than they could obtain otherwise.

Some never thought of doing anything else and committed to a lifetime of service. Some felt the same way however they were either wounded or worn out. They had to leave what they always wanted to do.

What happens when they are forced out?

It isn't a job they can just decide to quit and move on. This stays with them the rest of their lives.

When they are wounded, in a perfect world anyway, their wounds are taken care of and they are compensated for whatever damage military service inflected. None of this answers the question of what happens when they can no longer do what they wanted to do, especially when they never had a dream of being anything else.

At a young age, military becomes part of their identity. They are trained physically and broken mentally so they can do what they have to do to stay alive. How do you erase that? How do you take all they were conditioned to become without the same kind of training to condition them to become veterans? They will never again be a civilian after everything is said and done.

When do we understand that training them to come back into the world the rest of us live in is just as important as training them to leave the civilian world?

"Strategies for veteran success" at Florida University

Colleges dedicate staff, facilities to ease veterans from war to student, civilian life
By Associated Press
October 18,2013

TOLEDO, Ohio — Many veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have embarked on a new mission, but this transition from battlefield to university classroom isn’t always easy.

Colleges and universities are offering an array of services, from tutoring to setting up vets-only lounges, to help them succeed.

Some of the challenges that the veterans face are medical.

Adam Fisher, a freshman at the University of Toledo, deals with post-traumatic stress disorder by participating in group therapy.

“It’s hard for me to be around so many people,” he said.

Other challenges are academic. Veterans often have to sharpen their math, reading and study skills after being away from school for so long.

They face cultural hurdles too.

While many other freshmen are testing their independence after moving away from home for the first time, some of the veterans back in school are supporting a family, working evenings and weekends.

About 500 veterans attend Florida State University, an increase of about 40 percent from the previous fall.

The school offers a class just for veterans called “strategies for veteran success.” It’s designed to boost their confidence and allows them to meet other veterans. The university holds a job fair for all students but opens it up a day early for veterans on campus. It also allows students to defer many expenses, such as their books and meal plan, because of the time it takes to get VA payments processed.
read more here

Three Tour Iraq Veteran Marine's body found in Lake Isabella

Family remembers veteran as drowning investigation continues
KGET News
June 21, 2013

BAKERSFIELD, CA - The family of a local veteran who served three tours of duty in Iraq is awaiting the results of his autopsy after crews recovered his body from Lake Isabella, three days after he went missing. The sheriff's department is in the midst of a drowning death investigation and an autopsy is scheduled Friday to determine how the former marine died while kayaking at Lake Isabella.

Meanwhile, his family celebrated what would've been his 30th birthday Thursday by remembering good times with him. Family members gathered at Michael May's foster parents' home to remember the local veteran. This, just hours after the coroner identified May's body, pulled from Lake Isabella after he went missing on Father's Day.

May's foster mother Rosaura Hernandez said, "We got peace, in the sense that if he was dead, we wanted to know. If he was alive, we wanted to know because it was four days of agony and so that was very hard."
read more here

How do soldiers cope on their return to civilian life

From the UK
Battle scarred: How do soldiers cope on their return to civilian life?
Published: Mon, April 8, 2013

EVERY year 20,000 people leave the armed forces, but film–maker Chris Terrill reveals some simply find it too hard to handle.

Being shot at is terrifying but exciting. If you can hear the eerie whistle a bullet makes as it rips through the air you know it can be no more than a couple of feet from your head. Soldiers on the front line in Afghanistan refer to these near miss bullets as "lead wasps".

I don't shoot with a weapon, I shoot with a camera but often I've had to dive for cover as lead wasps swarmed in from a Taliban nest. I prayed the bullets wouldn't find their mark; that the wasps wouldn't deliver their deadly sting. Conversely the adrenalin coursing through my body at these times gave me a rush like nothing I've ever known before.

I first came under enemy fire with a troop of Royal Marine Commandos ambushed by insurgents in the Helmand valley. It was then I experienced not only the thrill and fear of battle but also the extraordinary selfless comradeship that binds combat soldiers on the front line.

The bond between them is not replicated in the civilian world. War is war. Nothing else comes close to its challenges, its chilling excitement or the kill–or–be–killed experience of it. I have seen the rugged determination that drives soldiers in combat. I have seen the haunted, exhausted look in their eyes after enemy contact. I have witnessed their night terrors following the elimination of their foes and the grief and anger that grips them when comrades are lost or wounded.

Make no mistake, going to war changes a man's view of the world; it changes his view of himself; it radically recalibrates his mindset. But at least he is with like–minded comrades. To be part of this band of brothers is not only life affirming but spiritually reinforcing.

The problem is that military people, combat veterans among them, must eventually become civilians again – and there's the rub. They have to leave the "safe" haven of military life with its unifying ethos and embracing comradeship. Suddenly they are in the dogeat–dog world of civvy street where no one marches in step and everyone seems out for themselves.
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Learning From Marines About Military Suicides

Learning From Marines About Military Suicides
Posted: 03/28/2013
Joseph Bobrow
Founder and president, Coming Home Project

Veteran military writer Tom Ricks posted an important blog on his Best Defense column in Foreign Policy. Researchers Dr. Frank Tortorello and Dr. William Marcellino, sponsored by the Marine Corps' Training and Education Command and Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning, did something novel. They listened to Marines, who described in great detail their experiences of stress and distress. What did the researchers learn? They found that crises of meaning were central. Some Marines were able to bounce back, say by forgiving themselves for perceived errors on the battlefield. Others judged themselves harshly for perceived failures. Yet others remain plagued by doubts. The researchers saw real people describing their struggles to make sense of things done, not done, or witnessed.

This follows on an earlier study that revealed a critical factor in military suicides: overwhelming emotional pain. Meaning and emotional pain; quintessentially human elements. Another "no duh" moment. When will we wake up and learn to see what's right in front of us?
read more here

Army veteran still thinks about Iraq War 'every single day'

Army veteran still thinks about Iraq War 'every single day'
Published: March 16, 2013
By Michelle Dupler
Tri-City Herald

It’s taken Joel Robertson of West Richland five years to reconcile himself to the permanent ways his life was changed by serving in Iraq.

The former Army infantryman came home from two tours, totaling 28 months of combat, with injuries to his brain, back, shoulder and knees, and post-traumatic stress that gave him nightmares.

He came home to a divorce and non-military friends who didn’t want to hear about the horrors he had seen, even though he needed to tell someone — needed for someone to understand.

A decade after it started on March 19, 2003, the Iraq War likely isn’t on the minds of many people not directly touched by it. Troops have been withdrawn, news coverage has dropped off, life has moved on.

After struggling — having trouble with jobs, relationships and even a few run-ins with the law — Robertson has rebuilt his life and reached a point where he can think about a future.

But the war remains with him and always will.

“Every single day, I am thinking about something that went on in Iraq,” he said.
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Home from war, troops face 'white knuckled' first month

Home from war, troops face 'white knuckled' first month
By Bill Briggs
NBC News contributor
February 18, 2013

In the first month home from war, one Marine routinely searched his darkened bedroom for the rifle he'd left in Iraq, while another Marine shunned his favorite nightspot for fear that someone in the club might carry a gun.

In the four weeks after their homecomings, one infantryman drove “white knuckled” at 55 mph while another soldier purposely began living even faster — losing her virginity, going blonde and drinking hard with battle buddies.

Some 34,000 service members will ship home from Afghanistan during the next year, President Barack Obama told the nation last week.

Amid the gleeful glow of arrivals, many of those troops may quickly confront sensory overloads, social awkwardness and, perhaps, deep cravings for personal freedoms, according to interviews with four younger veterans who weathered such moments.

“The first 30 days are interesting,” said Alex Horton, who spent 15 months in Iraq as an Army infantryman, including during the 2007 troop surge in Baghdad and Diyala Province.

Today, he works for the Department of Veterans Affairs. "I’ll call it the unraveling. That first week back you’re still high on everything, kissing your wife or girlfriend, sometimes seeing your kids for the first time. But then the tension starts to build.
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Anthony Edwards Spearheads Film About Veterans’ PTSD

Emmy-Winner Anthony Edwards Spearheads Film About Veterans’ PTSD
KHTS AM-1220
Wed, 11/28/2012
By Stephen K. Peeples

The producers of “Searching for Home: Coming Back from War,” a feature documentary about the trials of military veterans’ assimilation back into society from World War II to Afghanistan, have enlisted Emmy-winning executive producer Anthony Edwards and launched a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign to help complete and release the film.

"It's an unflinching, emotionally involving, extremely personal look at veterans returning from war and their search for the ‘home’ they left behind, physically, mentally and spiritually,” said Eric Christiansen of Santa Clarita, the film's director and editor.

His EC Productions' credits include producing and directing the Emmy award-winning film “Faces in the Fire,” about people who had to deal with the trauma of losing their homes in a major firestorm, and directing the documentary film “Homecoming: A Vietnam Vet’s Journey.”

Once funded, Christiansen said, “Searching for Home: Coming Back from War” will be finished as a feature film with a possible theatrical and festival run, then will be distributed to public television for a three-year run. So far, he’s been able to raise enough to produce a trailer and a long-form preview, and figures he’s about ¼ of the way home. He’s shooting for completion by summer 2013.

“It is truly my calling,” Christiansen said.

As it was for some veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam, the transition back to civilian life has been rough for more recent veterans of Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan, especially for those who saw combat and suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
read more here

Ex-Navy SEAL Helps Vets Get Back to Normalcy

Helping Them Return to Civilian Life
Ex-Navy SEAL Helps Vets Get Back to Normalcy
By Curt Schleier
Published September 09, 2012

COURTESY OF THE MISSION CONTINUES
Back Home: Returning veterans are honored before a baseball game at Chicago’s Wrigley Field.

Just before a Chicago Cubs-St. Louis Cardinals baseball game at the end of July, 100 veterans of America’s military walked onto a sold-out Wrigley Field and took a reenlistment oath. They weren’t planning to rejoin their old units.

Rather, they were committing to a six-month fellowship run by The Mission Continues, which helps returning veterans reintegrate into civilian life by volunteering at local not-for-profit organizations.

Transitioning back to civilian life can be a daunting endeavor. In addition to physical ailments and disabilities, many veterans suffer from traumatic brain injury, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, affecting their ability to rejoin their communities.

“Most vets have people tell them, ‘Thank you for your service,’” said Eric Greitens, founder of the St. Louis-based Mission Continues. “It became clear to me that there was something else they wanted to hear; that we still need them; that we see them not just as problems, but as assets.”

Greitens, a 38-year-old decorated Navy SEAL officer is something of an anomaly. He is a humanitarian whose work in some of the most impoverished areas of the world inspired him to enlist in the military. These battlefield experiences taught him about the need to serve at a time of peace.
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Marine Launches Winery Helping Fellow Veterans

Marine Launches Winery Helping Fellow Veterans
CBS Sacramento
August 26, 2012

LIVERMORE (CBS13) – From fighting for our country to fighting to find work, it’s a battle many veterans face when they return home.

After getting out of the military, several men and woman say it’s hard to find a job, but now a group of veterans have found a way to help other vets, with wine.

Like a lot of veterans, when Josh Laine was discharged from the military, he wasn’t quite sure what to do.

He was dating a girl who worked in the wine industry and thought, ‘hey I can do this.’

The thing is, he didn’t know anything about making wine. So, he turned to the same place you turn to for silly cat videos, YouTube.

“We are known as the YouTube winery, a lot of studying YouTube, studying online, reading books,” said Laine.

He took that knowledge plus $1,500, and he and 10 of his marine buddies created Livermore’s Valor Winery.
read more here

When Marine Sergeant Josh Laine returned from fighting in Iraq to his native Livermore, California, he couldn't find a job anywhere. When a girlfriend got him into wine, he decided to take a crack at winemaking and Lavish Laines Winery was born. The winery has since become a place where any returning veteran can find a job, camaraderie, and a sense of purpose. The film follows Josh and his fellow vets as they try to take the winery from a garage startup to a fully-fledged operation, and in the process explores the challenges vets face in transitioning back to civilian life.

In addition to screening in the Documentary Short Film program, No Wine Left Behind will be featured in a program of films honoring Veterans Day at the Lincoln Theater, Friday Nov 11 at 11am. Winemaking vets from Lavish Laines will be in attendance and offering their wine for tasting! This is part of a FREE program for everyone in the festival community.

Reverse Boot Camp to Prep Troops to Leave Military

Reverse Boot Camp to Prep Troops to Leave Military
Jul 23, 2012
Stars and Stripes
by Leo Shane III

WASHINGTON -- Troops leaving the military will go through a five- to seven-day reverse boot camp covering job skills, personal finances and veterans benefits under a new initiative to be announced by President Barack Obama on Monday.

At a speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention in Nevada, Obama will outline the program -- dubbed Transition Goals Planning Success, or Transition GPS -- as part of a wider effort to help curb veterans unemployment and the difficult integration into civilian life for many troops.

The overhaul is the first significant change in the military's Transition Assistance Program in more than 20 years. It comes in response to criticism that the current three-day voluntary program is outdated and too superficial.

According to senior administration officials, the new Transition GPS will include a pre-separation assessment and individual counseling for all troops, development of an personal transition plan, and certification that the servicemember has met "career readiness" standards before leaving the military. The program also includes efforts to provide career counseling and credentialing opportunity throughout a service member's military career, officials said.

The new five-day transition curriculum, created by an interagency task force, will cover lessons in basic budgeting tips, resume preparation, dealing with family adjustment issues, and translating military skills into a civilian environment.

Representatives from the Departments of Labor and Veterans Affairs will brief outgoing troops on post-service benefits.

Officials said troops will also be offered another two-day course in one of three categories: attending college, getting a technical or civilian-credentialed job, or starting a business from scratch.
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Florida Lawmakers Authorize Veterans' Courts

Florida Lawmakers Authorize Veterans' Courts
By Bobbie O'Brien
TAMPA (2012-3-14)
Florida is home to more than 1.6 million veterans. So, it’s no surprise that Florida lawmakers passed several bills this session that benefit military veterans and active duty service members.

Among the bills agreed upon was the “T. Patt Maney Veterans Treatment Intervention Act.”

Named in honor of Okaloosa County Judge Maney, the bill authorizes each judicial circuit to set up a Veterans’ Court or program to handle the cases of veterans with psychological problems like substance abuse and PTSD or traumatic brain injury as a result of their military service.
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'ReEntry' Play teaches Marines about returning home

'ReEntry' - Play teaches Marines about returning home

I Marine Expeditionary Force
Story by Cpl. Jennifer Pirante

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. - Marines and family members with I Marine Expeditionary Force gathered to watch a play at the South Mesa Club at Camp Pendleton, Calif., Jan. 24.

“ReEntry” is a play written by theater writer Emily Ackerman and KJ Sanchez, CEO of American Records, based on interviews conducted with Marines returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and their family members.

“I am a member of a military family,” Ackerman said. “I had no idea of a lot of the things they were going through, a lot of the things that they thought until we started working on this play. I try to be supportive and it was hard to figure out how to do that. It wasn’t until we started talking to a lot of Marines that I got a better idea of things that people actually go through, the way they actually feel and how to be more supportive.”
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