Stars and Stripes 5.14.15

Volume 7, No. 21 ŠSS 2015

FRIDAY, MAY 15, 2015

For information please contact Waverly Williams 803-774-1237 or waverly@theitem.com

Mile-high Sports clinic helps wounded veterans reach new heights Page 2

healing

A volunteer coach gives instruction before a sled hockey game at the National Disabled Veterans Winter Sports Clinic at Aspen Snowmass resort in Colorado last month. The clinic was started in 1987 by a group of injured Vietnam veterans.

H EATH D RUZIN /Stars and Stripes

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BY H EATH DRUZIN

disabled veterans skied, snowboarded, kayaked, played hockey and scaled climbing walls.

The clinic represents the striking contemporary reality for disabled veterans, the bittersweet fruits of improved battlefield care and technology that mean many more survive horrific injuries. And many expect more out of their post-injury lives.

Each spring, more than 300 veterans attend the event, which is co-sponsored by the Department of Veterans Affairs and Disabled American Veterans. Some have never participated in winter sports, some haven’t tried since their injury and others have been coming here for decades.

For Bill Davenport, 92, a Word War II veteran who was a navigator in a B-24 bomber on D-Day, skiing at the free clinic has helped him cope with losing his vision.

“When you get down, there’s always someone there to help,” he said.

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COVER STORY

Annual winter sports clinic helps heal minds and bodies of disabled veterans Stars and Stripes

SNOWMASS VILLAGE, Colo. — Each spring, 2 miles high in the Colorado Rockies, the Aspen Snowmass resort becomes an openair rehabilitation clinic for disabled veterans for whom simply surviving is no longer enough.

With the sun glinting off the snow and a panorama of craggy peaks, hundreds of veterans gathered at the National Disabled Veterans Winter Sports Clinic this year for six days of lift-serviced medicine.

“It gives you your breath back,” said Shanda Taylor-Boyd, 53, an Army veteran who suffered a serious brain injury in a car accident 11 years ago and now comes to Snowmass every year to ski with fellow vets.

Here, the “new normal” for severely injured veterans is simply normal — for one week there is only encouragement to do more, rather than concern about what they can’t do. This year,

PHOTOS

BY

SEE PAGE 3

H EATH D RUZIN /Stars and Stripes

Top: A visually impaired veteran skis at Snowmass Resort in Colorado during the National Disabled Veterans Winter Sports Clinic last month. Veterans of conflicts as far back as World War II participated in the clinic, which has been running since 1987.

Above: Disabled veterans learn kayaking at the clinic, which is aimed at helping them improve their physical and mental health.

World War II veteran Eugene Puckett, 88, finishes a run in a sit-down ski at the winter sports clinic. The program uses adapted physical activities to aid in the rehabilitation of disabled veterans.

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COVER STORY FROM PAGE 2

‘The best family reunion’ More than 50,000 troops have been wounded in action in Iraq and Afghanistan, thousands maimed for life — a staggering toll often obscured by the relatively low number of troops killed in wars that have stretched over more than 13 years.

As improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, have become the signature weapon of the post-9/11 wars, amputations and traumatic brain injury are the signature wounds. The Department of Defense estimates that about 1,600 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have suffered major amputations and 7,600 have severe brain injuries. Tens of thousands more have been diagnosed with less severe brain injuries.

More troops survive than their predecessors in Vietnam and earlier wars, and they don’t let their injuries define them. They climb mountains and ski down them, race bicycles, run marathons and sometimes return to active duty. Many credit activity with not only physical health but a rescue from the depths of depression that often accompany a devastating injury.

“I think of rehabilitation from a physical standpoint, but I also think of rehabilitation from an emotional and a mental standpoint,” VA Secretary Bob McDonald has said. “The two are symbiotic — you can’t really have one (without) the other.”

Theresa Parks first came to the clinic in 1998 while working as a VA recreation therapist to lead a team of mentors and instructors. She took the full-time post of director in 2003. The wife of a Marine and daughter of a soldier, Parks said she has made lifelong friends among the veterans and volunteers who come year after year.

She choked up when talking about her nearly two decades at the clinic.

“This is the best family reunion I ever go to,” she said. “You just don’t come here and get this experience and not want to continue to do it forever.”

In addition to an emotional lift for participants and volunteers, the clinic is a hands-on laboratory for the rapidly changing technology that allows more severely disabled veterans to participate in a growing number of activities.

Relatively simple shortened hockey sticks with metal cleats on one end allow paralyzed athletes to push across the ice; sit-down skis have advanced

HEATH D RUZIN /Stars and Stripes

A veteran passes a gate during a race at the annual National Disabled Veterans Winter Sports Clinic at Aspen Snowmass Resort in Colorado last month. suspension. Veterans and winter sports industry leaders use the clinic to test new advances. This year, a triple amputee tried out a custom prosthetic arm he had made to allow him to hold an outrigger ski for his sit-down rig.

“We’re always working with the industry to make things better,” Parks said.

Respect, not pity Dr. Kenneth Lee has seen and experienced the change in care and outcomes for disabled veterans represented at the clinic. The chief of the spinal cord injury unit at the Milwaukee VA Medical Center has treated the

wounds of war before and after 9/11.

He has a more intimate knowledge than most — Lee was injured during a deployment in 2004, when a suicide bomber rammed his convoy in Baghdad, leaving him with severe shrapnel wounds and a traumatic brain injury.

Too often, he said, people mistake pity for kindness, and someone recovering from a severe injury benefits more from a push. This is especially true for recently injured troops, who have lost physical ability and the basic structure of military life.

“They’re used to being soldiers, so let’s treat them like soldiers,” Lee said. “They don’t feel like soldiers anymore. They don’t feel like anything

‘ I think of rehabilitation from a physical standpoint, but I also think of rehabilitation from an emotional and a mental standpoint. The two are symbiotic — you can’t really have one (without) the other.

’

Bob McDonald VA secretary

anymore.”

Lee, who volunteers at the winter clinic and is the medical coordinator of the National Veterans Wheelchair Games, said his experience helps him connect and empathize with wounded veterans. But that doesn’t mean he coddles them.

“When they say, ‘Can you call a cab for me?’ I say, ‘What, do your fingers not work?’ ” he said. “Part of the rehabilitation is for them to become independent.”

That’s the kind of confidence that clinic participant and Army veteran Joel Hunt got from hitting the slopes after suffering a traumatic brain injury while working as an ordnance disposal specialist in Iraq. When he got into ski racing in 2009, he said, no one bugged him to keep dates and numbers straight or to come up with the right word. All he had to do was fight through double vision to navigate between gates as fast as possible.

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COVER STORY FROM PAGE 3

“For once in my lifetime, I didn’t need someone’s help,” he said.

Hunt, 36, didn’t stop at getting back on skis — he trained hard, made the U.S. Paralympic Team and raced at the 2014 Paralympic Games in Sochi, Russia.

Better care, outcomes Veterans have also benefited from a major shift in how doctors approach disabilities.

As a VA recreation therapist for 23 years and a clinic volunteer for two decades, Jose Laguna has seen that change. When he first joined the VA, paralyzed veterans would spend six to nine months in the hospital. Now it’s four to six weeks.

“The longer you’re institutionalized the harder it is to break through that thinking,” he said. “We don’t want people to get comfortable with the idea of being institutionalized.”

For Hannah Nishimoto, an Army veteran and adaptive ski guide who has volunteered at the clinic for 25 years, seeing the metamorphosis that veterans go through in less than a week keeps her coming back. Riding the lift with 88-year-old Eugene Puckett, a World War II veteran who

rode a sit-down ski during this year’s clinic, Nishimoto said many disabled veterans show up at the clinic having withdrawn from the world, depressed about their limitations.

“It’s great to see the spirit unlock in people who have decided to rejoin life,” she said.

Therapy for mind and body The transformation starts the first morning of the clinic, when dozens of veterans — some paralyzed, some missing limbs, some with unseen brain injuries — line up to be paired with guides and adaptive skis. Many use the sit-down variety, a high-tech plastic seat with one or two skis underneath connected by a suspension system, and specially trained guides teach them how to control the rigs.

Rhonda Akers, an Army veteran from Oklahoma who has multiple sclerosis, has been coming to the clinic for 20 years. She was beaming as she prepared for a sit-down cross-country ski race. She said her annual week in Colorado is therapy for the mind as much as the body.

“You come here and you get rejuvenated — you’re ready for another year,” she said.

Unlike when he first came to the clinic 14 years ago, Jake Hipps, 59, a paralyzed Marine veteran, doesn’t

PHOTOS

BY

HEATH D RUZIN /Stars and Stripes

Army veteran Shanda Taylor-Boyd, who suffered a serious brain injury in a car accident 11 years ago, prepares to ski at the annual National Disabled Veterans Winter Sports Clinic at Aspen Snowmass Resort in Colorado last month. TaylorBoyd attends the event every year. need much help anymore. He tore down the mountain while making smooth, arcing turns in his “bucket,” as adaptive skiers refer to the sit-down skis. Hipps said the confidence he gained from learning to tackle the mountain reverberated well past the

week of the clinic.

“It allows you to go back home and think about the other things you can do,” he said. “You stop sitting around watching TV.” druzin.heath@stripes.com Twitter: @Druzin_Stripes

Volunteers help veterans reach the starting line of a cross-country ski race on the last day of the clinic. Better care and technological advances have allowed even severely wounded veterans to participate in sports such as ski racing.

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MILITARY

VE-DAY 70TH ANNIVERSARY

Veterans commemorate end of WWII in Europe with Washington flyover

North American B-25 Mitchell bombers fly the Doolittle Raid formation past the Washington Monument during a flyover of Washington on May 8. The World War II vintage aircraft were marking the 70th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe on May 8, 1945.

M ANUEL BALCE C ENETA /AP

A DAY TO

REMEMBER

BY CARLOS BONGIOANNI Stars and Stripes

I

WASHINGTON t was a day of triumph 70 years ago. It felt that way again last week, as 56 World War II-era aircraft buzzed the nation’s capital.

More than 400 WWII veterans attending a wreath-laying ceremony to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Allied victory in Europe at the National World War II Memorial watched as one formation after another — 15 in all — passed overhead. Tens of thousands of spectators along the National Mall were treated to the sights as well, and people watched from office building windows, balconies and rooftops.

Flying south along the Potomac River, the aircraft made a left turn at the west end of the Mall where the Lincoln Memorial stands. Flying at an altitude of 1,000 feet — double the height of the Washington Monument — the flight path took them down Independence Avenue before turning right

just past the U.S. Capitol to head out of the city to the Culpepper and Manassas airports in Virginia.

Bob Vaucher, 96, said the show was an educational opportunity.

“There is a great deterioration in the perception in many younger people, of what World War II was about,” said Vaucher, who flew more than 100 missions as an Army Air Forces bomber pilot during

the war. “It was so important to the freedom of this country and the world, that I think anything you can do to stimulate the right perception is a good thing. … The flyover will certainly make an impact.

They’ll take the memory of it back home and talk about it and tell others about it.”

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who had been slated to speak before the flyover, was unable to at-

CARLOS BONGIOANNI /Stars and Stripes

Bob Vaucher, 96, watches a B-29 Superfortress pass over the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on May 8. Vaucher was a World War II Army Air Forces pilot who flew the B-29 bomber.

tend. Her sister, Kathy Silva, read her prepared statement lauding the courage, ingenuity, faith and industry of Americans.

Officials at the May 8 event promised that the U.S. efforts to defeat Hitler’s Third Reich would not be forgotten.

The idea for the rare vintage flyover came about to emphasize how the country can work together for the common good, said Pete Bunce, president and CEO of the General

Aviation and Manufacturers Association.

“In this day and age, our

World War II: Leading to the end, an interactive project at stripes.com/go/ victoryeurope country is pretty fractured,” said Bunce, who played a major role in organizing and promoting the flyover. “The intent is to remind people that 70 years ago, the entire nation — people on the home front as well as the men fighting in combat — gathered all together to support the war effort.”

Events like the May 8 flyover can be a catalyst to bring unity, said Bunce. “When everyone is there for this pure purpose of honoring this greatest generation, it should unify our country.”

Flyovers were common in Washington after WWII, “but after 9/11, that air space became very secure,” he said.

It took quite a bit of negotiating with federal agencies to get permission to fly, Bunce said. “Some people said, you’ll never make it happen, but the FAA, the Secret Service, the Department of Defense, the Transportation Security Administration, the National Park Service police, the Capitol police, everybody came together and said, ‘We’re doing this to support the veterans, to honor them.’ That’s what it was all about.” bongioanni.carlos@stripes.com

CARLOS BONGIOANNI /Stars and Stripes

Hundreds of veterans gathered May 8 to take part in a ceremony at the National World War II Memorial to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Victory-in-Europe Day.

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MILITARY

Ex-medics on bottom rung in civilian field

BY H EATH DRUZIN Stars and Stripes

NORTH CHICAGO, Ill. — In four deployments as an Army combat medic to some of the most dangerous corners of Iraq and Afghanistan, Joe Carney had seen the worst of war — bullet wounds, severed limbs, shrapnel. He saved lives amid bombs and gunfire, his emergency room often a patch of dirt in the desert or a rocky mountainside. None of that mattered when he left the Army three years ago.

“I think the services should do a better job because at the end of the day, your last day in the Army, the last day in the Navy, you’re out, no one cares about you,” he said. “What I tell people who are planning to get out is, you have to have a plan.”

Like many medics and Navy corpsmen, the U.S. military’s front-line medical professionals, Carney’s skills translated to almost nothing in the civilian world.

He grew up watching “M.A.S.H.” and “ER” with his parents and was drawn to emergency medical work as a young boy. That led him to join the Army at 19 and serve as a combat medic for 10 years. Nearly half of that time was spent deployed in war zones.

But despite his extensive training, he lacked state licensing certificates and he struggled to find a job at his skill level. He settled on a job as an emergency room technician, where he was allowed to do little beyond administer oxygen and take blood pressure readings.

“It was a good reality check,” he said.

“You know you’re not in the military no more. The hard part was standing back when you’ve got these trauma situations.”

It’s a common story with medics and corpsmen, who have long had difficulty finding civilian medical work that matches their training.

“It is an asset that’s being wasted because they’re highly skilled in what they do,” said Dr. Michael Bellino, an emergency physician who mentors Carney at the Capt. James A. Lovell Federal Health Center in North Chicago, Ill. “I’d trust him with taking care of my family.”

Carney, 32, doesn’t have to stand back anymore. For the past two years, he has been working in a fledgling program that offers medics and corpsmen appropriate health care employment and at the same time, builds up the ranks at the Department of Veterans Affairs — which is struggling mightily to keep up with demand. He and about 45 other veterans are working as Intermediate Care Technicians, a role invented for the VA program. Carney is also

HEATH D RUZIN /Stars and Stripes

Like many former medics, Joe Carney struggled to find employment after leaving the military, but he was able to get work in North Chicago, Ill., through a VA program that places such vets in health care jobs. in a pilot program to prepare ICTs to become physician’s assistants, a more advanced, higher-paying job.

State standards According to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers, post-9/11 veterans have a slightly higher unemployment rate than their civilian peers and veterans as a whole. While there are no unemployment numbers specifically for medics and corpsmen, they leave the military with very specific barriers to employment in the medical field.

Despite being trained to tend to bullet wounds and severed limbs in the harshest conditions, under fire and on helicopters, most leave the service without a certificate for the lowestrung medical jobs. They face months of redundant training, and many leave the medical field.

“We do a little more than what people may understand,” said Scott Garbin, a 15-year Army veteran who works as an ICT in Detroit and is the unofficial senior technician in the program, acting as a liaison between the veterans and the VA. Congress has passed legislation to allow the federal government to recognize military training for some civilian jobs, but health care licensing is generally done at the state level, and efforts have been uneven across the country.

Some states have made efforts to recognize military training; in California, former medics and corpsmen can take

an equivalency exam to speed the process of becoming EMTs or paramedics.

A small program at Lansing Community College in Michigan, which was lauded as a model at a recent military credentialing conference in Washington, fast-tracks former medics to get paramedic licenses and placement in a nursing program.

“One of the major roadblocks those separating from the military face in their transition to the civilian job market is the fact that many professional licensing and credentialing standards vary from state to state,” Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, said in an email. “I urge states to adopt standards that will fully recognize veterans’ experience, and I will continue to support VA’s programs putting these professionals to work helping their fellow veterans.”

Undervalued experience Medics and corpsmen are exposed to more trauma than just about any other occupation in the military. They get an up-close view of the carnage and often must work to save the lives of their friends. Some civilian employers who don’t understand what they’ve been through penalize them for their experiences.

“I even had one hospital’s emergency room (official) ask me, ‘How damaged are you?’ ” Carney said.

The civilian reaction to combat expe-

rience has been one of the most difficult changes to make, said Ed Davin, an analyst with the research firm Solutions Information Design, who has spent three decades studying military-tocivilian career transitions and helped develop government programs to aid veterans as they leave the services.

“What the civilian folks can’t get their arms around is, ‘How do I put a value on two tours in Iraq?’ ” he said.

The medical community has made strides in recognizing military training, and the military has improved its credentialing, but the vast majority of medics and corpsmen still come out facing the prospect of a pay cut or redundant training.

“We have large numbers of medics and corpsmen who, when they come out, can’t get a job to support a family,” he said.

‘They relate’ When Aaron Rice left the Army in 2009, he was 25, a veteran of three violent deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan as a combat medic. He was struggling to find his footing in the civilian world. Seeking solitude, he moved to Alabama, far away from friends and family.

“It was kind of like looking in a broken glass mirror,” he said. “Your sense of self is kind of lost because your sense of self was your unit.”

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FROM PAGE 12

Positive response The ICT program began in 2012 after prompting from then-Secretary of Veterans

Friday, May 15, 2015

Once a military spouse, always a military spouse?

MILITARY His colleague, Conrad Siat, had a similar experience after a year in Ramadi, one of the most dangerous corners of Iraq. He had to quit a construction job because the loud noises bothered him, and he was later diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder.

Both got help, and now they work together as technicians at the John Dingell VA Medical Center in Detroit, one of 15 VA centers affiliated with the ICT program. On a winter day in that hospital’s busy emergency department, they attended to patients, including an ill elderly Korean Warera veteran and a young Iraq veteran with a gaping wound in his arm.

Rice and Siat say the job has become a calling.

“I’m a veteran, I’m here for the veterans — they’re my brothers,” Siat, 44, said. “He who sheds his blood with me shall forever be my brother.”

Far from seeing war experiences as liabilities, VA officials say having veteran medical professionals interact with their patients is an obvious benefit. Doctors who work with the technicians say they have a special rapport with patients and can often calm combative patients who might not respond to civilians.

“They relate,” said Dr. Bassam Batarse, the Detroit VA hospital’s chief of staff for integrated clinical services, who says the program has gone so well he’s requested additional technicians.

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H EATH D RUZIN /Stars and Stripes

Former Army medic Scott Garbin wears camouflage scrubs on the job, in part to better connect with the fellow veterans he treats at the John Dingell VA Medical Center in Detroit. Garbin is part of a VA program that gives former military health care professionals a VA job and helps the department fill a critical shortage.

Affairs Eric Shinseki. When the VA central office began accepting applications for 45 spots, they received about 400 applications, said Karen Ott, director for policy, education and legislation in the VA’s Office of Nursing Services.

“We knew we were on to something,” she said.

Now there are 45 ICTs working across 15 VA hospitals, and the program is set to grow to about 270 slots. Pay for technicians can range from $31,000 to $52,000, depending on experience and location. The pilot program to help technicians prepare for physician’s assistant school while on the job, called CAMVETs, has just started. .

Navy Lt. Cmdr. (Ret.) David Lash, the director of the Corpsman and Medic Vocation Education and Training Program and a civilian physician’s assistant, said the job matches well with the skills of medics and corpsmen. It will also be open to those interested in other health care jobs, including physician. The physician’s assistant position was created in the mid-1960s partly in

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response to Vietnam veterans who returned with skills in treating trauma. As the profession has become more popular, it has become harder for medics and corpsmen to get into school.

Lash, who helped create the ICT program and the Lovell Health Center-based CAMVETS, bridges the divide between civilians who run those schools and the technicians.

“A lot of schools don’t want to accept what they did in the military as health care experience, which is crazy,” he said.

He has gotten a positive response from schools he’s worked with, and he hopes to be able to tailor the program to veterans interested in using the ICT job as a stepping stone to other medical jobs. Lash said interest in the program from veterans has been overwhelming, and he wants to take it national.

“How can you go wrong if you have veterans becoming the people who are taking care of our veterans?” druzin.heath@stripes.com Twitter: @Druzin_Stripes

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© Stars and Stripes, 2015

or Heather Sweeney, a communication and be conformer military wife, sistent. going public with her He’ll call and talk to the divorce was a painskids. I scan and send their taking decision. She kept her report cards. They also know yearlong separation a secret when they’re in trouble (here) from many until the divorce their dad will know it, too. from her Navy husband was They don’t even try to pit one final. She wondered if she parent against the other.” would feel cut off from the life This level of agreement took she had lived for most of her time and determination.

13-year marriage, wondered “We were definitely not that how her military spouse mature early on,” Sweeney friends would react. said.

An associate editor at MiliWhatever the difficulties, tary.com and a blogger, Sweeshe said she makes sure her ney had been writing about kids remember they are from military life for several years, a military family, like many other students at their school. but she didn’t write publicly about her divorce for a year.

“I remind them to welcome In late 2013, she wrote a these new kids and tell them, ‘You have done what they’re piece for the New York Times At War blog that began, doing.’ We “Today I got divorced.” The SPOUSE CALLS watch the response surprised her.

Army-Navy “I was so shocked by the game every outpouring of love and supyear and port,” said Sweeney. “People wear our Navy shirts. told me, ‘Once a military spouse, always a military They’re proud of spouse.’ ” their dad, Through her own experiand they’re ence, Sweeney discovered a proud to scarcity of information about be military this change Join the conversation with Terri at brats.” in her life stripes.com/go/spousecalls She’s comand military spouse status. mitted to “There’s no her children guidebook for being divorced and their military connection, from the military,” she said. but Sweeney said she’s taking “So many military spouses steps to forge her own identity have emailed me privately as well.

She’s run the Marine Corps after the New York Times Marathon, is writing a novel, article came out, and I started playing guitar and planning writing about it on my own a solo vacation. She advises blog. I wish someone had been military spouses not to let there for me to answer questhe demands of military life tions or just listen, and I’m crowd out their own goals. happy to be there and do that “I encourage them to go to for some other people.” school, have a hobby, join a Though no longer a military club, (instead of) waiting for spouse, Heather is the mother the next place you’ll go beof young military children, cause of your spouse. Create a role that requires balance something for yourself.” and good communication Sweeney took that advice with their active-duty father. and created a blog, RidingSweeney and her ex-husband TheRollercoaster.com, which have made the children their has been a source of support first priority. and a creative outlet through Their co-parenting is comher marriage and divorce. plicated by his latest assign“When I started my blog ment. She still lives near their five years ago, I was able to last assignment together in make a community of military Virginia; he’s now stationed friends, both online and in outside the continental United person. We bonded and had States. For the school year, similar experiences. Once the kids live with her and will you have that community, spend the summer with their they don’t let you go, which is father. wonderful.”

“We have to be on top of

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