84 Year old Veteran Evicted--Community Stepped Up!

Groups step in to help 84-year-old Rock Hill veteran who faced evictions
Herald
Andrews Dys
March 20, 2017

The veteran told police money was missing from his bank accounts, a bank card had been stolen, and money from benefits that he had for rent and utilities was missing.
“The police helped him and he may have been swindled out of his money,” Guest said. “There were some choice words used for someone ... who would take an elderly veteran’s money. You can’t print those words in the newspaper.”

Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/andrew-dys/article139668028.html#storylink=cpy

ROCK HILL
Veterans services and veterans advocacy groups worked Monday to get help for an 84-year-old veteran who had faced eviction and homelessness.

The Rock Hill chapter of Rolling Thunder, a veterans advocacy group, had $500 in gift cards and cash for the veteran, and was organizing more to help the man long-term.

The veteran faced homelessness last week in sub freezing temperatures, had it not been for some fast-acting law enforcement officers.

And as people mobilized to help him, some of the veteran’s belongings were thrown in a trash container and hauled away Monday from the house where he lived on Eden Terrace, across the street from Winthrop Coliseum. Court records show the eviction was legal, even if one of the people affected was “too frail to be put out into the cold,” as police put it.

“I drove by the house last week and saw all the stuff thrown in a heap outside and like anybody else, I didn’t know what happened until I read it in The Herald,” said Al Guest, president of Rock Hill’s Rolling Thunder chapter and a Vietnam War combat veteran. “Then when I read that he was a veteran and evicted, and could have frozen outside, I was upset.”

The story published in The Herald spread through social media and has been shared and commented on hundreds of times.
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US Soldier Killed in Germany Car Crash

Soldier killed in car accident when driver raced MP
STARS AND STRIPES
By MARTIN EGNASH
Published: March 20, 2017

GRAFENWOEHR, Germany — Spc. Tyler Vaughan, a 22-year-old soldier stationed in Vilseck, Germany, was killed Saturday in a car accident near the Grafenwoehr Training Area, the military said.

A 22-year-old soldier stationed in Vilseck, Germany, was killed Saturday, March 18, 2017, in a car accident near the Grafenwoehr Training Area. Two other soldiers were seriously injured and the driver of the car, who tested positive for alcohol, suffered minor injuries. COURTESY OF THE FREIHUNG FIRE DEPARTMENT

Vaughan, who served with the U.S. Army’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment as a fire team leader, was a passenger in a vehicle that veered off the road and rolled into a tree near the Grafenwoehr main gate, German media reported. Two other soldiers, 26 and 27 years old, were seriously injured.
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Vietnam Veteran's Widow Lost Husband to Suicide and May Lose Home

Boulder Creek widow of U.S. veteran suicide struggles to carry on
Santa Cruz Sentinel
By Ryan Masters,
POSTED: 03/17/17

Hutchinson detailed the horrors of the experience in a written account submitted to the VA before his death. He described the sights and sounds, the constant fear — how it felt to carry armloads of body parts; to x-ray badly-wounded men; to treat crippled and maimed Vietnamese children; to helplessly sit through mortar attacks; to watch men die.

Bernetta Hutchinson lost her U.S. veteran husband when he killed himself in 2014. Now she may also lose their Boulder Creek-area home. (Dan Coyro -- Santa Cruz Sentinel) Bernetta Hutchinson lost her U.S. veteran husband when he killed himself in 2014. Now she may also lose their Boulder Creek-area home. (Dan Coyro -- Santa Cruz Sentinel) 

BOULDER CREEK  On the morning of Oct. 24, 2014, Bernetta Hutchinson woke up in the Forest Springs neighborhood home she shared with her husband Terry. Wandering sleepily out to the living room, she found a note on the table. It began, “Bernetta, I am sorry. Call the VA.”

As she finished the short note, she went to their grown daughter’s bedroom, fell to her knees and prayed she was misinterpreting the suicide note; that somehow her husband was still alive.

And then, Hutchinson said, God guided her out the door and 50 yards into the redwood forest behind their home where she found her husband of 29 years, 7 months seated against a tree with his head bowed.

The 67-year-old Vietnam Veteran had shot and killed himself with a Glock handgun, becoming another casualty of the United States’ ongoing inability to heal its warriors after they return from the battlefield.

Kathie Dicesare, who runs the Wounded Times web blog and has been working on PTSD since 1982, said the VA reported 20 veteran suicides a day in 1999 — the exact same number of veteran suicides a day in 2016.

“In the 2000 Census, there were 26.4 million veterans; in 2014, there were 21,369,602. That’s the same number of reported suicides despite 5 million less veterans,” said Dicesare.
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(Yes, that is me quoted.)

"On the Outside I was Perfectly Fine" Veteran Battles PTSD

Former Army captain Lisa Keevash on mental struggle: On the outside I was perfectly fine
The Express UK
By DANNY BUCKLAND
PUBLISHED: Sun, Mar 19, 2017

“I didn’t know who I was. I started to get dark moods and would become really anxious and jealous. I didn’t want to go out and was inflexible. I became argumentative and snappy and people were treading on eggshells around me. My boyfriend at the time bore the brunt of it."

EX-Army captain Lisa Keevash opens up about her mental battle scars.

After a decorated military career, former Army captain Lisa Keevash slipped easily into corporate life with a high-powered job and enviable lifestyle. She was successful and she was fit, but deep inside she was in dark turmoil.

The suppressed feelings from dealing with battlefield casualties and seeing a close officer friend die after an improvised explosive device (IED) blast were twisting her soul and threatening to wreck her life.

If we can make it normal to talk about our struggles then we can stop a lot of these problems getting to a point where they do real damage Lisa Keevash

"On the outside, I was perfectly fine. I had a great job, a new relationship. I was fit, healthy and everyone thought I had made it,” says Lisa, 34, from Edinburgh. “But I was existing in a haze – there in body but not mind."

"I was not enjoying anything, I lost confidence and had anxiety about everything in my life. I was really lost."

“I became snappy, argumentative and generally not a nice person to be around at times. It got very dark.”
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Do you really want your life defined by suicide?

Would You Save the Life of Someone Like You?
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
March 19, 2017

Do you really want your life defined by suicide? The lives you saved, the risks you took for the lives of others will become secondary to the fact you gave up on your own life.

You've thought of the reasons you have to end it all. You thought about how you'd do it. There is a question you seem to have forgotten to get the answer to. Would you save the life of someone like you? Isn't that the next question you should ask? 

How much do you value life? After all, you dedicated your life to putting others first. You wouldn't be suffering right now if you did not do your job in combat, as a police officer, as a firefighter or other first responder profession. Saving lives was your job. Saving your own life is your job too. Dragging around the tombstone, waiting to fill in the dash between the date you were born and the date you chose death is deciding life really doesn't matter that much after all.

If no one told you that you choosing to leave behind people who care about you instead of fighting to heal is a bad idea, here are two stories that should get you to think twice about how you want your life defined.


Increasing suicide rates among first responders spark concern
TribLive
WES VENTEICHER
Sunday, March 19, 2017

"My son is a classic case of 'I'm never going to tell anybody; if I tell them, they'll think I'm weak.' "

Paramedic George Redner III started to grow angry and distant after he failed to revive a 2-year-old who had drowned.

But not even his parents saw how deeply his work affected him until he took his life seven years later.

"My son was a classic case of 'I'm never going to tell anybody; if I tell them, they'll think I'm weak,'" said Redner's mother, Jacqui Redner, 48, of Levittown, outside Philadelphia.

Like many first responders dedicated to saving lives, Redner, who was 27, never talked about his struggles, she said.

Her son, who went by "Georgie," threw himself in front of an Amtrak Acela train the morning of Aug. 1, 2015, at a station near the family's home.

Suicides among first responders, often driven by emotional strain in a culture that long has discouraged showing weakness, are too common, according to organizations that track the deaths.

First-responder suicides are sometimes compared to those among military veterans, many of whom have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Military veterans deployed from 2001 to 2007 had a 41 percent higher suicide risk than the general population, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
read more here

Donald Wendt came home as a double duty hero. He was a two tour combat veteran and he was a firefighter. It seems he was born to save lives, that is, other than his own because he was brainwashed into thinking asking for help meant he was weak.

Think about that for a second. Weak if he needed help? How could anyone get that notion into their heads after all the times he faced dying because someone else needed his help?


Bradenton firefighter shot and killed by police, was also a veteran

Wendt joined the Bradenton Fire Department in December 2003 after volunteering with Cedar Hammock-Southern Manatee while working at Ten-8 Fire Equipment.

A year later, he spent 13 months in Iraq with the United States Army Reserve. Wendt received a Bronze Star Medal for his efforts.

On May 13, 2005, as a recovery section sergeant with HHC Platoon, 1st Battalion, 103rd Armor and Task Force Liberty, Wendt “went to the aid of a fellow soldier who was injured and trapped under a burning vehicle during a Vehicle Born Improvised Explosives Device attack,” according to the U.S. War Office. He used tow chains to move the burning vehicle away from the injured soldier.

“It seems like every day you read about this, but when it hits home, it's different,” Gallo said.

I am posting this with an extremely heavy heart. This morning I woke up to news of this from his Mom. My prayers for my friend and his entire family as well as the firefighters and police officers involved with this tragedy.

He was a firefighter and volunteered to serve this country in combat.

When will we ever get to the point where being back home is less dangerous than combat for those we send?

His life was remembered in 2014. 

The military makes it harder for them to seek help especially when a General came out and said, Some of it is just personal make-up. Intestinal fortitude. Mental toughness that ensures that people are able to deal with stressful situations.

And then went on to say it had to do with not having a supportive family. I saw his supportive family yesterday and they included about 100 firefighters. I heard how much intestinal fortitude he had and he showed it in Bradenton as well as Iraq.

PTSD comes from the life you live and the risks you took to save others.

How about you choose to live long enough to prove all the idiots wrong about PTSD and why you have it? How about you face the fact that tomorrow is defined by you and you can fight for others to extend the dash on their own tombstones? Put down the tombstone. You got healing to do.