In this episode of NationSwell’s 8-part mini documentary series on service years, retired Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal shares his personal experience with service — both in and out of uniform.
“Over the past few decades, we’ve come to equate service with military service,” says McChrystal. “In reality, service is much broader: education, healthcare, conservation. I’d like to see us expand that term ‘service members’ or ‘people in service’ as people doing the complete spectrum.”
McChrystal is the chairperson of Service Year Alliance, which is partnering with NationSwell to make a national service year — a paid opportunity to develop real-world skills while solving some of the most pressing challenges facing local communities — a common opportunity for all young Americans.
Service year corps members, including Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, and YouthBuild participants, earn modest stipends that are funded by public and private dollars. Occasionally, some members also receive money to pay for school or student loans.
As these programs face potential elimination under the current White House budget proposal, they continue to garner bipartisan support from voters and members of Congress. Local and national leaders, social entrepreneurs and members of the nonprofit and business communities are calling for service years to become a rite of passage for young Americans.
“Federal funding for national service is not where most of the funding comes from, but it’s essential. It is something that precipitates all of the programs moving forward, and so it’s a key part,” says McChrystal. “If the federal government won’t invest in young people — the most critical part of our nation — there’s no point in rebuilding our roads and bridges in America.”
At a time when our communities are deeply divided, studies show that service year alums are more civically engaged. They vote. They volunteer. And they purposely seek out friendships with people they didn’t know growing up.
“In communities across the nation and around the world, tens of thousands of service year corps members are already working to address local needs — making a huge impact on important issues such as education, inequality, opportunity youth, the environment and health,” says Shirley Sagawa, CEO of Service Year Alliance. “Imagine the impact if we unleash the energy and idealism of the next generation of young Americans through a service year.”
NationSwell asks you to join our partnership with Service Year Alliance. Watch the video above. Contact your elected officials and ask them to support a service year. Do one yourself. Together, we can lead a national movement to give young Americans the opportunity to help bridge the divides in our country.
Category: Advancing National Service
Upstanders: A Warrior’s Workout
Former pro football player David Vobora gave up a lucrative career in private fitness to work with wounded warriors. His workouts have brought them new strength and inspiration.
Upstanders is a collection of short stories celebrating ordinary people doing extraordinary things to create positive change in their communities produced by Howard Schultz and Rajiv Chandrasekaran. These stories of humanity remind us that we all have the power to make a difference.
For Veterans Facing Employment Difficulties, This Boot Camp Boosts Their Tech Skills
“Thank you for your service, but we can’t accept you for this position.” That’s what Jerome Hardaway, an Air Force veteran, heard from several potential employers after he returned stateside from three tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Coming home amidst the second worst economic slowdown this country had ever seen didn’t help, but Hardaway suspects being fresh out of the armed services was a big problem to those looking over his résumé. “Inheriting the stigma of the Vietnam veteran, some people considered us unskilled or untrained,” he says. Today, with the economy largely back on track, Hardaway still hears about comrades struggling to find jobs. The overall veteran unemployment rate recently fell below the civilian unemployment rate, hitting a seven-year low of 3.9 percent in October 2015, but that still means about 422,000 veterans are out of work.
“For a lot of these [employers], the last person that served in their family was in World War II. We’ve gotten so far from there. If you served your country then, you knew you were not going to go homeless, that you’d get a job,” Hardaway says. “We’ve gone from joining the military being the best decision of your life to now, it could possibly put you in a worse position.”
To change that, Hardaway started looking for work in a rapidly growing sector: the tech world. The barriers to entry, like knowing how to code and compute, were higher there, but so was the possibility of finding a high-paying job. Hardaway had some experience — he started fiddling with computers in 2007, while stationed in Iraq, mostly “as a way to keep my sanity,” — but it was General Assembly’s 12-week boot camp in 2014 and a full-ride scholarship from the group’s Opportunity Fund that helped him transition to a full-time career in coding. Now, Hardaway is paying it forward by setting a goal of helping 1,000 fellow veterans follow him into software development.
When Hardaway enlisted, the wars in the Middle East were still new. Soldiers hadn’t started coming home, and the recruiters were persuasive, appealing to his patriotism and the sense of duty he felt coming from a military family. Hardaway, to be sure, doesn’t regret his service — “I’m happy I did it because I wouldn’t be where I am now,” he says, but finding financial stability as an African-American male and combat veteran in Tennessee was tough. Hardaway occasionally found freelance web design gigs, but on the whole, Memphis felt more “old-folksy” than “tech-savvy,” he says. “They call themselves a city,” he jokes. “They have tall buildings, but it’s really a town.” Its social structure operates on who you know, and Hardaway missed six and a half years of making connections while deployed.
He considered enrolling in a degree program, but he couldn’t find a school that offered what veterans needed as “24-year-olds reintegrating into civilian society.” A class might teach him HTML or CSS, but he wanted a foundation of strong logical reasoning to solve problems that would come up on the job. By chance, he saw a post about General Assembly’s Opportunity Fund on Facebook and applied. The first year, his application was rejected. Determined, he reapplied the following year. Within a week of losing his job, he was accepted for a boot camp in Manhattan.
He says practicing, “just making us solve problems every day,” was the most helpful part of his experience. “It’s like boxing,” he tells other veterans. “I can teach you how to throw all the punches, but you’re not going to be able to know if your first punch should be the right cross or an uppercut.” Now, he knows which tools to use and when. He says he’s started to think like a programmer, rather than a guy who liked messing around with computers.
“I tell people I’ve gone from no job to having one. I can’t understate the importance of General Assembly,” he says. “But I don’t feel like I’m special. I was willing to do the work. I went from being fired to being hired and getting invited to the White House.”
Dressed in sharp suits, a fan of shaken martinis and hot bowls of ramen, Hardaway today might not appear like the stereotype of a veteran. But his military training quickly comes out in conversation. “Roger that,” he wrote in an email about setting up an interview. His yes and no are “negative” and “affirmative,” and they’re often followed by a “Sir.” Above all, Hardaway strives to live up to the Air Force’s core value of excellence in all you do. That’s the principle that guides his nonprofit, Vets Who Code, in closing “the digital talent gap” for veterans. (A celebration of the group is why Hardaway went to the White House.)
Hardaway says veterans are particularly attuned to tech, because from the minute they enter basic training, they’re constantly working on solving problems in high-stress situations. While some employers may doubt those skills can translate from the battlefield to an office, Hardaway is blazing a path for other warriors to follow by sitting down at the keyboard.
Watch the video above to see how General Assembly helped Hardaway achieve a career in the tech sector.
MORE: The School That’s Making a Career in Tech Possible for Everyone
This Is Why Hollywood’s Depiction of Veterans Must Change
When it comes to seeing veterans on the big screen, Tom Cruise leading a protest from his wheelchair in “Born on the Fourth of July” or Christopher Walken and Robert DeNiro playing a final game of Russian roulette in “The Deer Hunter” probably come to mind. But Hollywood’s usual portrayal of service members being physically and psychologically wounded is too narrow, says Charlie Ebersol, a Los Angeles-based TV and film producer. “It’s so staid and boring.”
Having on-screen veterans look like ordinary Americans, however, causes our views and politics will change, Ebersol believes. So along with Got Your 6 and support from the White House, he developed a certification system for films and television shows that “contain a representative and balanced depiction of veterans.” (Think: Chris Pratt playing a Navy veteran in the blockbuster Jurassic World, or the latest season of Dancing with the Stars, which featured an Army vet and double amputee doing the Tango.)
NationSwell recently spoke to Ebersol by phone from Southern California about the role Hollywood should be playing in bridging the civilian-military divide.
What misconceptions does traditional media perpetuate about veterans?
That they’re either heroes or they’re victims; they either need our help or they don’t need any help at all. It’s not binary, and the real story is so much more complex and interesting, in that, you have great opportunity in all these veterans coming home, but we don’t take advantage of it because we think they all have PTSD or hero syndrome.
How are you personally changing that narrative?
In keeping with Hollywood tradition, I operate from a philosophy that if you offer some sort of shiny prize or award to producers, they will do what they need to do to get said prize. So we’ve been certifying movies and television shows that do a good job telling veterans’ stories. Lo and behold, people started telling better veterans’ stories when they got a gold star at the end of their show or movie.
Should filmmakers be meeting with veterans to turn their stories into films?
It’s literally that simple. The problem is that, for so long, we were trying to drum up support for the veterans coming home. To do that, people have always [done something similar] to those ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) commercials where the dogs look really pathetic and what’s her name — [Sarah] McLachlan — is playing her sad song. You may donate money, but what they found was the best way to get people to actually adopt dogs was to show how much fun and how fabulous these dogs were.
After Word War II, veterans came back and people wanted to hire them because they were highly trained. They knew they did well under pressure, and some people started really reaching out. We don’t do that [today]. So when you look for a story, all you really have to do is talk to a veteran, say, “Thank you for your service. Can you tell me about interesting people that are in your lives or unique stories?” And the majority of the stories you’re going to hear are not going to be stories of, “oh, my buddy who’s got a massive drinking problem and is living on the street,” because that’s such a fraction of the population. A lot of the stories are going to be about guys who served two or three tours and now they run a hardware shop or now they’re working in a corporation or are in the tech business. Those stories make for interesting characters.
In telling these stories, what have you learned about what defines an American soldier?
Loyalty, duty and commitment. As an employer, when I’m interviewing somebody, if I could know inherently those were a person’s three strongest traits, that would be the ultimate cheat sheet. That’s the beauty of hiring a veteran. You know going in that that person is loyal, feels a sense of duty and is all about commitment because the guy or girl put themselves in harm’s way for their country and for their fellow soldier or sailor or airman. That’s what you’re looking for in a company, in a family, in a friend. You want people that you know are going to show up, and nobody shows up like the military.
What can the rest of us do to support veterans?
The platitude needs to stop being, “Thank you for your service,” and actualize that into something meaningful. The yellow ribbon and the stickers, that’s all well and good, but that’s not actually translating into anything. We have to look past that and ask, “How are we creating job opportunities? How are we creating community support where we’re embracing these people?” A lot of people want to do it under the guise of “They served our country, so we owe them.” That’s not what I’m saying. Don’t get me wrong: You do have to take into account that we enjoy our freedoms because of them. But I think the other side of it is significantly more important; they have show their true character and their true colors, and in showing us that and in being trained, at the absolute worst, they are certainly the best qualified people for almost any job.
It’s rare that the person I hire into my company is the most suited because they went to the right types of schools; it’s always about how they act under pressure and how they understand teamwork and the mission being bigger than the man or woman. Veterans are always significantly better at that than anyone else.
MORE: Why Is It So Hard to Understand What It’s Like to Be a Veteran?
When You Picture a Soldier, You Probably Don’t Have This in Mind
When you think of special operations forces in Afghanistan, you probably picture a group of men: buff, tattooed and sunburnt. But right beside some of them, a “band of sisters” kept them safe. In her 2015 book “Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield,” journalist Gayle Tzemach Lemmon details a little-known Army program that assigned all-female units to support male soldiers. Known as Cultural Support Teams (CST), these women helped gather intelligence from mothers and daughters in Afghan households, while male counterparts conducted raids to find insurgents.
“In a conservative and traditional society like Afghanistan, particularly places where the insurgency was strongest, male soldiers — no matter how good they were at fighting — could not speak to Afghan women,” Lemmon recounts at a Got Your 6 Storytellers event in Los Angeles. Lemmon, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who spent an extensive amount of time in Afghanistan for her previous book “The Dressmaker of Khair Khana,” reported the story of Lt. Ashley White and her unit through hundreds of hours of interviews over the course of two years. In an interview with NationSwell, Lemmon discussed what she learned about women’s role in the military during her research.
What inspired you to share the story of CST in Afghanistan?
It was the impossibility of the story on the surface — this group of teammates who became friends and then family at a time when women officially were banned from ground combat. Here was a group of Americans who answered their country’s call to serve, who went onto the battlefield alongside Rangers and SEALs, and who were forever changed by it. They broke ground in service to their country, and we didn’t know them. I wanted to share this slice of history we didn’t know.
While embedded, what did you learn about what it means to serve as an American soldier?
I saw young Americans going in and out of Afghanistan, risking their lives for their nation and for the friends they had come to love. I wanted to share that connection, that friendship, that desire to serve.
What does camaraderie look like in an all-female unit?
Much the same as in an all-male unit. It was about friendship and sisterhood and caring for one another — only it was even more extreme because they were all they had out there, the only people who knew and understood all that they saw and did at the tip of the spear while women officially weren’t there.
How did meeting these female warriors change your idea of womanhood?
This story took me into a world I had never known of women who were funny and fierce, driven and kind, intense and warm. So many times the women we see on our pages or on our screens are one or the other. I wanted to show these women in all their dimensions and to tell a story that was true to who they are and were.
What three words describe your experience abroad?
Afghanistan is a generous, inspiring and heartbreaking place.
What is the quality you most admired in the troops you met?
Tenacity and grit alongside great heart.
How can someone support veterans?
Get involved. Listen to veterans’ stories. Help veterans with their transition into the next phase of life and be aware of the wars we have asked them to fight. Too many are too distant from the battle and don’t want to hear what it was like for the 1 percent of the country that has fought 100 percent of its 15 years of war. That must change.
What unique challenges do female veterans face?
We must recognize that veterans are women and women are veterans. We must expand our version of the veteran to make sure it includes women and the valor they have shown these past decades of war. Otherwise, our antiquated views of what women have and are doing keeps us as a country from offering the respect and the support they deserve from us.
MORE: This Resourceful Soldier Goes From Fighting on the Front Lines to Running a Fashion Line
Why Is It So Hard to Understand What It’s Like to Be a Veteran?
As soon as he wrapped up his studies in film and literature at Boston University, Henry Hughes followed family tradition and signed up for the Army. For the next five years, he took fire, dodged IEDs and grappled internally with the meaning of military service while on two tours of duty in Afghanistan with the 173rd Airborne Brigade. After Hughes returned home and earned another degree from the American Film Institute, he began making movies, including his short film,“Day One,” which tells the story of a female Army interpreter facing a moral quandary during her first day on the job: saving the newborn child of a known enemy. The film was nominated for this year’s Academy Award for best live-action short.
NationSwell spoke to Hughes, a Got Your 6 Storyteller, by phone from Los Angeles about the lingering questions from war and their portrayal on film.
What inspired you to serve your country?
For me, it was a long family tradition. We basically had someone in the Army since the [American] Revolution. I wanted to be part of that tradition.
Is there one question that you continually ask yourself about your experience?
It’s probably, “why is it not so simple?” It’s a very complex part of my life, not something that is full of simply good memories or simply bad memories: it’s a mixture of all types of life. So I always wonder why it’s not like anything else. At this point, why can’t it be simpler? Why is it so difficult for everyone to understand it?
I’m guessing that’s why did you decided to make the film “Day One?”
For sure, it’s about those questions. There’s not a reducible answer like the one I just tried to give you. So that’s why I thought I could make a movie about it instead, to kind of show the way it felt. So the movie is not a true-to-life of what exactly happened to me that one day. But the feeling when I’m watching the movie, it’s that sublime space of things that are horrible and beautiful in the same breath.
What’s the most important lesson civilians can take away from art that’s made about war?
I would say that everyone’s wartime experience is subjective. I don’t know if there’s some sort of universal experience.
What’s your favorite movie about war?
For me, it’s “The Thin Red Line.” I think it touches me because there’s no other war movie like it, that accepts the soulfulness of the warrior experience. A lot of movies don’t go that way, they kind of go along the more visceral, more experiential route.
What is the quality you most admire in a comrade?
What I actually admire most is hard to come by in our community: vulnerability. When it’s a vulnerability to look at your military experience, I really love meeting those people.
Who was the most inspirational person you encountered while serving?
I would say my interpreter on my second tour. She’s the one I based the movie on, or it’s inspired by her. She’s an Afghan-American woman, naturalized as an American citizen, but born over there. The deck was stacked against her, and she looked inside herself to find out what she thought was right and wrong. It wasn’t something that someone told her to do. She just had incredible integrity.
If you could change one thing about your service, what would it be?
I wouldn’t want one of my guys to be wounded or for any of my guys to die.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
I would probably say chasing down my wife. It was a long shot, and it worked out. In 2010, after my first tour, I flew to New York without knowing she was there. We hadn’t spoken in a long time. We knew each other as children, when we were 13, and I hadn’t seen her in a number of years. I thought I could track her down, and so on Facebook messenger, I basically said, “Hey, I just landed in New York. Let’s hang out. We haven’t seen each other in a decade.” We went on one date and then a few more dates. She started me writing me a lot of letters when I was in Afghanistan again for my second tour, and we decided to be together.
How can the rest of us, as civilians, do more to support veterans?
Just look at them as people first. I feel like there’s a big divide on some level, but a lot of it is imagined. The fact of the matter is that all of those veterans are just people. I would look at them that way first and then look at their experience.
To you, what does it mean these days to be a veteran?
Well, it’s inescapable, I suppose. The definition of being a veteran is you can never not be a veteran one once you are one. And that speaks to, I think, how profound that experience is. There’s no way you can stop being a veteran.
The Forecast for These Veterans’ Career Prospects Is Sunny
In a sunlit office building in northwest Austin, Texas, former Marine Corps electro-optical technician Logan Razinski greets his boss, a one-time sailor who maintained naval nuclear reactors. The day’s work ahead between the two soldiers won’t involve military operations, however. Both are now employees for SunPower, a solar energy company.
Razinski, a lance corporal (not “one of those movie star ranks”) who was previously stationed at Camp Pendleton near San Diego, found the job through a Department of Energy-sponsored program, Solar Ready Vets (SRV), which prepares former service members to work in the solar energy industry. Living in California, where utilities will get one-third of their energy from renewable sources by 2020, Razinski saw the field “growing like wildfire” and joined SRV’s first cohort. After receiving four weeks of intensive training (since expanded to six) covering photovoltaic panel installation, electrical grids and local building codes, Razinski interviewed and landed a job with SunPower, where he now remotely controls utility-scale arrays.
“There is still an alarming mix of veterans, who, as soon as they get out, look for work or try the college thing, and, for some reason, that doesn’t work out. Next thing, you know, they’re living on the street,“ Razinski says. Nationwide, in 2014, close to 50,000 vets lacked housing, and 573,000 lacked jobs. With SRV, “I went from somebody who was in the Marine Corps to being a far cry from the poverty line,” he adds.
So far, Solar Ready Vets has trained nearly 200 soldiers at five pilot bases: Camp Pendleton, Hill Air Force Base in Utah, Fort Carson in Colorado, Fort Drum in New York and Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia.
While the connection between military service and solar power might seem tenuous, Razinski says it’s about transitioning workers with proven leadership skills into industries that need talent now. As the solar industry adds new jobs 12 times faster than the overall economy, America’s veterans are a natural fit for various positions. “In an industry that’s growing as rapidly as the solar industry, you need somebody to actually be promotable. You need somebody who’s going to understand the magnitude of the situation and say, ‘Holy cow, this is growing faster than anybody anticipated,’” he says.
“This is definitely a path that I believe in,” Razinski adds. “I see it going nowhere but up.”
MORE: Going Solar Is Cheaper Than Ever. Here’s What You Need to Know About Getting Your Power from the Sun
From Battle Scars to Badges of Honor: 13 Questions with Paratrooper Bobette Brown
Bobette Brown, a U.S. Army veteran and motivational speaker, isn’t afraid to speak about her wounds, the physical and mental pain she’s experienced in life. Whether recounting a knee replacement surgery, sexual assault and harassment she experienced in the military or a five-day stretch of sleeplessness from her trauma, she believes that keeping secrets doesn’t do anyone good.
“You don’t have to look like what you’ve been through,” Brown tells the crowd at a Got Your 6 Storytellers event in New York. “See today, you can choose to take your experiences and go from scars to beauty marks. And those battle wounds can become badges of honor. It’s all your decision.”
Known to some of her fans as Lady Bobette, Brown now works as a “transformational architect,” helping to push others forward through difficult experiences through her speaking, coaching and consulting business. NationSwell caught up with Brown to ask about her service as an airborne paratrooper and advice for bouncing back.
What does it mean to be a veteran?
To me, a veteran is someone who has willingly sacrificed and served the United States of America and its citizens. Choosing to serve speaks to the veterans level of commitment, boldness and audaciousness.
What inspired you to serve your country?
I don’t have a heart-wrenching response to this question. Honestly, I decided to join the U.S. Army because I wanted… “Independence.” I wanted to leave my parents’ home and go “be all that I could be.” The Army was very familiar to me, having grown up in the military environment. When the recruiter sweetened the deal by offering me a signing bonus if I went to Airborne school, I jumped at the opportunity.
How can someone support veterans?
Look for daily opportunities to give back and show appreciation to veterans. As much as I am grateful for the public holiday to acknowledge veterans every November 11, I think veterans should be celebrated throughout the year. Veterans are men and women who worked daily to ensure the safety and security of the U.S.A. If there is an opportunity for to volunteer, visit or validate veterans – just do it. Why wait for a “special day?”
What 3 words describe your experience in the service?
Adventurous. Fulfilling. Inspiring.
What is the quality you most admire in a comrade?
Integrity. It speaks to the character, honor and resilience of the service member. We love the slogan “Army Strong,” but the reality I’ve learned is that we are only as strong as the weakest link.
Who are your heroes in real life?
My dad, the man I am named after, Robert “Bobby” Greene, is my hero. He is a highly decorated career officer, Army Ranger, Jumpmaster trainee, Purple Heart recipient and Vietnam survivor. He served in the United States Army for 20 years. When we talk, I often ask him to share stories of his military career and lessons he learned. He is an arsenal of wisdom. He loves his family and has been married to the same woman, my mother, for over 56 years. They are an example of resilience in military families.
Who was the most inspirational person you encountered while serving?
Command Sergeant Major Daisy Brown. She had to be one of the most inspiring women I have ever met. She broke the ceiling as one of the first African American women to hold such a high rank. Yet, she still remained humble and could always find a reason to laugh. A few years ago, we lost contact. I’d love to know what she is doing now.
If you could change one thing about your service, what would it be?
Nothing. Everything I learned and experienced has made me who I am today. I would not want to change any of it.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
I do not know if I can narrow it down to one, greatest achievement, especially as I reflect on surviving those 20+ mile rucksack road marches with 30 to 45 pounds on my back. I am also proud that I successfully completed jump school and made numerous jumps without breaking a limb. I can remember the number of people who started airborne training with me but did not finish.
How does being a veteran help you to tap into your resilience?
The years of discipline and training in the military have been crucial to my ability to rebound from numerous personal obstacles that I endured throughout my life. Life is filled with stressful experiences, but when I remember the many obstacles I endured and bounced back from, it continues to serve as motivation and a reminder — if I did it before I can do it again.
What is the key to thriving after experiencing a difficult or traumatic experience?
Finding and getting help from a licensed therapist and staying committed to the course. I went to several therapists in the Veteran Affairs system before I finally found the perfect therapist for me at the Vet Center. A good therapist will challenge you to get better. She or he will challenge you to uproot some extremely painful and traumatic events. There were times when I did not want to go back. But I kept reminding myself, there would be a time when I will have to encourage others to keep going. How would I be able to do that if I gave up? So, my desire to help others really helped me to thrive. Also, I cannot downplay the key importance of having a supportive circle of family and friends.
Why is it important to let our fellow comrades in life help push us through difficult times?
They remind us that difficult times won’t last forever. In spite of all that we’ve experienced our comrades are there showing and reminding us of another reality. We can choose to live life to the fullest or we can allow it to suck the very life from us. Comrades challenge us to go the extra mile, while reminding us they are also running in the same race.
Why shouldn’t people conform?
I like to say that being and staying “authentically you” should be one of your core values. Why be a cheap copy, when you can be a truly amazing original?
The High-Energy Activity That’s Healing the Invisible Scars of War
Jeremiah Montell, a Navy petty officer with 17 years of service, takes out his frustrations at his UFC gym. “He can knock the heck out of a boxing bag,” says Lynn Coffland, founder of Catch a Lift Fund, a nonprofit that funds a gym membership or home workout equipment for 2,500 post-9/11 veterans, including Montell. In the past year, Lynn witnessed as Montell lost 70 pounds, stopped taking medication and began crafting homemade American flags — all signs of healing.
Lynn has seen firsthand how physical activity and healing go hand in hand. Her brother Christopher J. Coffland, a fitness enthusiast always heading out to “catch a lift” — his term for hitting the gym — enlisted in the Army one month before he turned 42 years old. Dropping him off at the airport, Lynn asked through tears, “What do I do if you don’t come back?” After cracking a joke, Chris got serious, saying, “I probably won’t come back, but I’ve had a great run and I’m ready to meet Jesus. If I can put myself in the place of another man that has family back home, I will.” In 2009, two weeks after being deployed to Afghanistan, a roadside bomb killed Chris and injured two other Marines. As Lynn pondered how to memorialize her brother, messages from people who’d lifted weights with him in boot camp started flooding Lynn’s inbox.
“There was no program that the VA had set up yet for fitness,” Lynn remembers. “Every active-duty service-member has to be physically fit…Many men and women I talk to, they say [exercise is] their happiest memories. If they’re on base or out in another country, they work out. They have lots of laughs, a lot of friendship and bonding. They come home, and everything’s different. They don’t even know who they are anymore, they say. We get them back to that very basic core that they know existed, which was fitness.”
Catch a Lift Fund started by gifting gym memberships to three veterans in February 2010. The soldiers could pick any spot they wanted: 24-Hour Fitness or Crossfit, a place with pilates machines or a pool. Recovery and reintegration started almost immediately.
To find more participants, Lynn’s father wrote letters to every Veterans Administration hospital nationwide. Today, the group has a waiting list of more than 300 veterans. For those who find a gym stress-inducing, or those in rural areas, the fund pays for home systems.
“The culture has taught them that you have to push through,” but trauma “never goes away,” Lynn says. “You have to work on it so it stays at bay. Through fitness, through friendship and camaraderie, that’s how they’re healing.”
From Combat to Comedy: 13 Questions with Marine Veteran Justine Cabulong
Out at a bar, Justine Cabulong, a former Marine Corps lieutenant who was deployed to Afghanistan in 2010, sometimes gets asked, “Wait. They let girls in the Marines?” Usually, Cabulong takes a sip of her G-and-T, patiently nods and replies, “Yep, I’ve shot weapons with these tiny hands.”
As the only female member of her family to join the armed services, Cabulong has always bucked the trend. Overseas, she relied on her sense of humor to defuse confrontations, chaos and self-doubt. But once she returned home, Cabulong realized her military experience didn’t align with Americans’ traditional image of a buff white male soldier. Above, filmed at a recent Got Your 6 Storytellers event, see the audience supervisor for “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” share her story of changing perceptions of veterans and how fighting for the military was sometimes easier than fighting for herself today.
“A lot of times, we become restricted to this list of generalizations because of our military service. ‘You like to take orders and crush things and show up 15 minutes early and carry anything that’s heavy — no matter what it is and what you’re wearing,’” Cabulong says. “But to me, what I believe, is that our military careers don’t define us by any means. But they empower us towards the future and what we’re yet to be.”
In this NationSwell exclusive, Cabulong discusses how civilians can better recognize the humanity in our nation’s soldiers.
What inspired you to serve your country?
To be honest, it was mainly because I didn’t know if I had what it would take to be a U.S. Marine. I came from a family with a military background, but there weren’t any Marines, any women who served, or any officers, and I became all three. The idea of going to college and succeeding was easy to me because I did well in school, but being a U.S. Marine meant that I would work towards being greater than myself. I’m a first generation [American], so this country is mine, but not my parents’. So there’s also a go-big-or-go-home attitude that sort of sticks with me.
What 3 words describe your experience in the service?
In three separate words: challenging, rewarding, inspiring. In three words all together: “Carried heavy things.”
What is one thing people should understand about the Marine Corps?
That we are human. We are men and women from different backgrounds that come in all shapes and sizes, and we are not perfect. We are capable of both mistakes and failures, but also achievements beyond anything we could have imagined. We’re not too different from others that have dedicated themselves to a powerful cause or mission that requires a lot out of you both physically and mentally.
Also that the ‘p’ is silent in Corps.
What is the quality you most admire in a comrade?
Humility, which can be rare when you’re surrounded by a bunch of type-A personalities. But being humble grants you a certain level of awareness and the ability to respect others that is incredibly valuable as a leader. Good hygiene also goes a long way with me, too.
Was there time to laugh when you were deployed overseas?
If there isn’t, then you’re doing something wrong. Deployment really evolves your sense of humor too. Maybe it makes it broader or more crude, but laughing really bonds you in those situations, and it becomes a necessary survival tactic.
Who are your heroes in real life?
‘Heroes’ is a funny concept to me. Especially when you eventually meet one and then they hire you to work on their late-night comedy show. After Jon Stewart [former host of “The Daily Show”], I would really have to say that it’s anyone — whether it be Marines, friends, or writers that have written something that I absolutely needed to read at the moment I read it — that has just made me feel like it’s okay to really be myself. I feel like smaller, more accessible heroes is the best way forward these days.
To you, what does it mean to be a veteran?
It’s a reminder that I once gave a significant portion of my life towards being something great and will be connected to the many others that have done the same thing. It’s a very small percentage of our population that does this. I don’t know if I’ll ever do something as great, and that scares me, but I’ll continue to work hard and keep serving how I can.
What generalizations about veterans have you encountered?
For the most part, people are very kind and helpful and generous, and I think that’s probably the best thing you can expect when it comes to being generalized. I think there are still some preconceived notions about the kind of people who serve, but I mean, it’s not like we make it easy on ourselves with all our different services, traditions, uniforms and rules. I suppose I just wish we could get to a point where when I told someone I was a U.S. Marine, I wouldn’t be automatically asked, “Really?!”
How can civilians get a better sense of the people behind the military uniform?
Watch fewer military movies. The depictions of the armed services still isn’t really where I’d like to see it. I was more inspired toward the military by Disney’s “Mulan” than by “G.I. Jane,” and I think there’s something to be said about that. So yes, just talk to us more. All of us. Not all women who join the military survived some sort tragic childhood or weren’t popular in school. We come from the same place everyone else does. Two people can serve alongside each other and one can be from a rich town and the other from a poor town, but they’re doing the same job and both are out to protect each others’ lives.
Who is your favorite comedian?
This is the hardest question of the whole thing. So I will just say that in this moment, right now, it’s Eddie Izzard because I was listening to him on my way in to work.
Who was the most inspirational person you encountered while serving?
Eric Flanagan. He’s a captain now and was my partner in Afghanistan. He went from being an infantry corporal to a lieutenant and Public Affairs Officer. For me, just being a Marine Public Affairs Officer and a woman, I went through a lot for this journey. Being able to share our perspectives and have someone on my side that understood my experience had a huge impact on my life and how I thought of myself. I still email him the occasional life crisis and inside joke. It helps my sanity.
How can people use humor to get through tough times?
If watching reality tv doesn’t work to make you feel better about yourself, then I would try finding comedians who write or do stand up about things that you can relate to. That’s what I’ve found to help get me through difficult times — finding someone else who has gone through something similar and made the same observations I have. We’re not alone in our struggles, and laughing at sad things is incredibly therapeutic. So is getting a dog.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Since I’ve moved to New York, life has shifted in a way that has given me the opportunity to speak about issues that are important to me as a woman and as a Marine and working in comedy. It’s a way for me to continue to serve and to sort through my own experiences. I’m continually surprised that people are willing to listen, so that feels like a pretty good achievement.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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