Over Memorial Day weekend, the city of Miami put the phrase “thank you for your service” into action.
The Southern Florida city gathered hundreds of volunteers together in an effort to offer homeless service members a wealth of services during Operation Stand Down. The three-day event, which had 100 organizations participating (such as the City of Miami Veterans Services Department and the Florida Veterans Foundation), helped more than 200 veterans.
In a tent city on the property of an American Legion post, volunteers distributed clothing and performed medical and dental exams. Miami-Dade Judge Steve Leifman was on hand, running a court to resolve any outstanding minor infractions on the homeless vets’ records, such as petty theft or traffic violations. Showers, hot meals, and haircuts were also provided; homeless vets stayed on cots housed in the tends during the weekend.
Veteran Arthur Woods told Natalie Zea of CBS Miami, “It’s helping me out considerably as far as me getting my act together and a lot of things I don’t have due to the fact that I’m homeless…I need dental. I need some eyeglasses. I mostly need a place to stay and I need some income.”
The nonprofit Operation Sacred Trust even provided two of the homeless veterans with their own homes. Coast Guard veteran Gregory Lewis, one of the recipients, said he was “elated.”
“To open that door is gonna be great because it’s going to open other doors. I have two kids and four grandkids and they’ll be able to visit me. I’ll have a stable environment.”
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Tag: the South
When This Vet’s House Started to Crumble, Home Depot Stepped in with a $20,000 Renovation
Many of us have heard of the pervasive problem of homeless veterans, which the National Coalition for the Homeless estimates number between 130,000 and 200,000 on any given night. But what about vets who own homes, but due to disability or financial troubles, can’t afford to maintain them? Staff at the City of Miami Services Office became concerned about this issue and partnered with Home Depot to provide grants to renovate vets’ homes that badly need it.
The first to benefit from this program is Army veteran George Carswell. Disabled due to his service in Vietnam, Carswell lived with his mother Minnie Lee Spann in the home she purchased in 1964. Since her death, Carswell hasn’t had the funds to keep up with the maintenance, completing no significant repairs since 1978; the home was in danger of collapsing.
That’s when Home Depot stepped up and donated $20,000 to make the necessary improvements. Local Home Depot store manager Alberto Contreras even came out to work and personally oversee the renovation. “The house was in deplorable conditions and not livable,” Contreras told Carma Henry of the Westside Gazette. “If the house wasn’t repaired it would’ve been demolished.”
Not only did the volunteer workers stabilize the home, they beautified it, with new paint, windows, doors, sod, and a rose garden planted in the memory of Carswell’s mother.
The partnership between Miami’s Veterans Services Office and the Home Depot aims to help four more veterans with similar repairs this year. Miami mayor Thomas Regalado said, “My goal is to ensure that our Veterans are treated with the respect and dignity they deserve. We are trying to get them the services they need.”
One way to reduce the number of homeless veterans is to prevent vets from becoming homeless in the first place, and the generous people behind this home repair effort in Miami are doing their best to achieve that.
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Meet the Marine-Turned-Doctor Helping Veterans Overcome PTSD
Posttraumatic stress disorder can be tough to treat, for both patient and doctor. How do you retrain a traumatized brain? How do you fix someone’s emotions?
But one medical expert offers a unique perspective that could change medical treatment for servicemembers. Dr. Carmen Russoniello isn’t just a doctor — he’s been a PTSD patient, too. And his pioneering work could help soldiers recover from the mental trauma they suffered while serving their country.
As a teen Marine serving in the jungles of Vietnam, the young man who would later become a doctor left the field in a medevac flight after his troubled screams in the night — “a bone-chilling sound” – haunted those he served with, Russoniello told Brendan King of WITN.
“When I came back, I was very disillusioned, disorganized, etc., and I spent about seven years just traveling around the country doing odd jobs, aimless,” he says.
But he found his purpose in medicine — and now, serving veterans like himself.
Today Russoniello leads a team of Ph.D. students using biofeedback to help veterans suffering from PTSD, from his post as director of the Center for Applied Psycho-Physiology at East Carolina University.
His work pushes veterans to control their emotions through cutting-edge technology. In one project, patients play video games like Pac-Man through sensors affixed to a cap that track emotional responses from their brains.
A patient “can actually, literally see his response to that, and now he knows that he has some control over that, and he can start to take control,” Russoniello says.
They also use simulators to recreate the scenarios that triggered patients’ distress, including sounds, sights and smells. By facing the things that caused them so much stress, veterans learn to control their reactions.
As Russoniello says, “We’re trying to help these guys… so that they can actually enjoy and benefit from what they went and sacrificed their lives for.”
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This Woman’s Brother Didn’t Receive the Care He Deserved, So Now She’s Working to Help Other Veterans
One North Carolina woman is proving that sometimes no one can look out for you the way a sister can.
Ciat Shabazz’s brother Harry Smith served in the Marines from 1972 to 1975, and when he came home, he expected for the Veterans Affairs (VA) medical service to help him take care of his health. In 2005, he began to suffer stomach pain and a number of other alarming symptoms. Despite repeated visits to the W.G. Hefner VA Medical Center in Salisbury, North Carolina, doctors didn’t take his concerns seriously and sent him home with painkillers or antibiotics instead of ordering an x-ray or colonoscopy.
Finally in 2006, Shabazz took her brother to Forsyth Medical Center in Winston-Salem, where doctors diagnosed him with a stomach tumor. His health had diminished during the year he didn’t receive treatment, and two years later, he died.
Shabazz turned her grief into a mission by forming the nonprofit Harry’s Veteran Community Outreach Services, through which she helps vets with their battles with the VA in addition to a variety of other services. On the nonprofit’s website is a link to click: “How can Harry help me?”
Shabazz’s office is always buzzing with phone calls and visitors, and her file cabinets overflow with the paperwork that she’s helping veterans complete. Recently, two Vietnam vets whose claims had been denied by the V.A. came to see her for help in filing appeals. “It looks to me that their records clearly indicate that their injuries are service-related,” Shabazz told Scott Sexton of the Winston-Salem Journal. “The appeals process can take up to two years. It looks as if the VA is dealing with its backlog by just denying the claims and moving them into appeals.” Her hunch may be right: In March 2013, the VA reported a backlog of 611,000 cases, according to Sexton.
Shabazz will help these veterans and all the others who come to her as a way of honoring the memory of her brother. “My brother died because the VA failed to diagnose and treat him in a timely manner,” she said. “As a result of that, I’m in pain. I feel the men and women who served this country deserve to be treated fairly and be compensated for injuries sustained during the time they served our country.”
With Ciat Shabazz on their side, many more veterans are likely to get a fair shake.
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When Immigrant Families Struggle With Reunions, This Educator Can Help
Many of us can’t imagine what it would feel like to spend part of our childhoods away from our parents, and then move to a new country to live with our parents—perhaps without knowing them well.
But it was situation seen often by Robin Hamby, who works as a family partnership specialist for the Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia. Hamby noticed there was a special set of problems facing immigrant families in this situation—kids who might have missed their former caregiver and home country struggled to adapt to their new surroundings, sometimes becoming defiant with their parents as a result. Meanwhile, parents sometimes didn’t know their kids as well as they would have liked.
To help alleviate this disconnect, Hamby and others created a “Reunification of Immigrant Families” program with resources for parents, teachers, and schools. The program offers lots of resources for teachers, such as summaries of research related to these types of families and seminars about how to help such kids in their classes. At the heart of Hamby’s efforts is the Parent Project, a series of classes in English and Spanish for parents whose kids are having difficulty adjusting to America.
A video interview (English starts at 2:53) with Miguel and Jessica, parents who’ve participated in the program, makes it clear how valuable these lessons are. “One of the things that I love about this program is the way it changed [my ability] to understand my kids,” Miguel said. “To listen to the words he was trying to express, to understand their feelings and to change the way I was listening to my kids.” His wife Jessica has been equally impressed with the program. “It’s been so much easier to set our expectations for our children, and learn their expectations for us,” she says. “They know the consequences now. They know that we love them. I think that we thought that they knew, but the program really teaches us to be more expressive and more affectionate with them, and to give them…active supervision so that they know that we are in control.”
Hamby’s work isn’t just getting praise from those involved with the program, though. She was recently honored by a Virginia nonprofit called SCAN (Stop Child Abuse Now) for the work she does to prevent child abuse and neglect. When accepting her honor, Hamby told the audience that, “Welcoming is not just a mat by the door, but an attitude that inspires feelings of safety and connection,” according to the Fairfax Times. Many immigrant families would probably agree with that—and they have Hamby to thank, among others, for smooth transitions as they reunite.
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Can Being Naked Help Treat PTSD?
A group of veterans in Florida says they’ve discovered an (ahem) interesting way to treat their PTSD: By taking off all their clothes.
Max Sanchez is one such Vietnam veteran who lives with other vets at the clothing-optional condo complex The Fountains at Paradise Lakes north of Tampa, Florida.
Sanchez told Jennifer Titus of WTSP that he served in the Army for “four years, six months, three days.” Ever since Vietnam, he’s suffered from PTSD. Despite seeing counselors for therapy on and off ever since, only one thing really helps him — living the nudist lifestyle. “I don’t want to be violent. I don’t want to be angry,” he said. When he’s naked among fellow nudists, he said, “I forget about the whole world, I forget the outside world especially…It’s not a cure-all for everybody. I’m happy it’s pretty helpful for me.”
Titus spoke to Dr. Kevin Kip at the University of South Florida’s College of Nursing to find out whether nudism could possibly be a valid PTSD therapy. Dr. Kip has treated hundreds of people suffering from PTSD, and he explained, “The images from a traumatic experience, all of the emotions, the sights, the sounds, the smells, everything, the images — they get stored incorrectly in the brain. And if you don’t have a therapy that helps, essentially, store it properly, it will be chronic, disabling, and you’ll have nightmares, flashbacks.”
Sometimes unconventional approaches such as a radical change in lifestyle can be just the thing people need to prevent those troubling images from returning. “I’m always open to new therapies,” Dr. Kipp said. “Anything that’s stress reducing is likely to be beneficial.” Of nudism, he mused, “Perhaps it lowers inhibition, perhaps it lowers stress.”
With five million sufferers from PTSD in the country, any therapy — regardless of how non-traditional it is — that can reduce the number of afflicted is a welcome one.
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Meet the Business Owner Who Gives Vets The Skills They Need to Start Their Own Businesses
Starting a company takes courage, energy, and determination — all qualities that many servicemen and women display on a daily basis.
John Panaccione served as an 82nd Airborne paratrooper and then started a software company, LogicBay, in Wilmington, North Carolina. He’s convinced that other vets have what it takes to start their own businesses. Through VetToCEO, the nonprofit he co-founded, he’s showing them just how to do it.
VetToCEO enrolls former servicemen and women in an eight-to-10-week program that groups them with other vets who are at different stages along the road to launching their businesses. Together, they learn to craft a business plan, find potential investors, deliver presentations, connect with mentors, and potentially find a business partner that also happens to be a fellow vet. The organization also offers the in-person and online classes to reach more participants, and the course is free to all vets, funded by donations and corporate grants.
“Statistically, there are thousands of veterans all over that have an interest in entrepreneurship — and many of them are outside the U.S.,” Panaccione told Ben Brown of Port City Daily. Veterans and service members stationed as far away as Kuwait are participating in the program.
Brown spoke to one of VetToCEO’s successful graduates, army veteran Joel Damin, who started his own restaurant and pub in Sanford, North Carolina. Damin said that the skills he learned in the military immediately transferred to his busy career as a restaurateur. “You’re always reacting, you’re always adapting, and you can’t just throw your hands up and go, ‘I don’t know, this isn’t what I wanted to do,’ and just stomp your feet. You can’t do that, because there are lives on the line and you have to complete the mission.”
Now that there are just tasty dinners on the line instead of lives, Damin is thriving.
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The Unique Way That Charlotte Houses Its Homeless
Giving apartments to the chronically homeless sounds like a nutty idea, right? Turns out, it might not be so crazy after all.
When the Urban Ministry Center in Charlotte, North Carolina proposed building apartments to gift to homeless individuals in the community, some greeted the idea with derision. Naysayers believed that doing so rewarded bad behavior. But the interfaith organization forged ahead with the plan, using government grants and private donations to build a $6 million housing complex consisting of 85 units.
And now, a University of North Carolina at Charlotte study examining the first year of results found that giving housing to the homeless — even to those who have substance addictions or are mentally ill or can’t meet the requirements to stay in regular shelters — saved the city money. A lot of money, in fact: $1.8 million dollars.
Not only did the occupants of the complex, called Moore Place, visit a hospital 447 fewer times, but they also were admitted for 372 fewer days. Arrest numbers of residents also decreased by 74 percent, and tenants spent 84 percent fewer days in jail. These drops in city service usage is what resulted in the more than one million dollars in savings.
These findings have motivated Charlotte officials to build more projects that take a housing-first approach to helping the homeless. Charlotte’s Neighborhood and Business Service Department is currently considering proposals for ten more homeless housing projects. Plus, there are plans to expand Moore Place to 120 units.
One disabled Moore Place resident, Michael Byrd, visited emergency rooms 24 times the year before he moved in, accumulating $268,000 in medical bills. The year he moved in, he visited the hospital just five times, costing taxpayers only $9,000. Byrd told Mark Price of the Charlotte Observer, “When I was on the streets, my worst night was trying to sleep bundled up in an abandoned car when it was below freezing. It scared me.”
Caroline Chambre, director of HousingWorks for the Urban Ministry Center, told Price, “You can’t argue with the statistics. This approach was controversial at one time because of the stereotype of who the homeless are, and we had to change that stereotype.”
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This Organization Knows How to Simultaneously Save Veterans and Dogs
Sometimes all someone needs is a best friend. And that’s exactly how several nonprofits are changing veterans lives — whether it’s by pairing them with service animals or reuniting them with the dogs they befriended in Afghanistan. And now, Canines for Veterans is doing the same for both incarcerated service members and those injured and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The unique program works like this: Program coordinators search for dogs through pet rescue organizations. These animals are then paired with veterans serving time at the Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, South Carolina. After completing a service-dog training course, each inmate is assigned a dog, selects a name for it and lives with it, training the animal to perform such tasks as opening a refrigerator or loading a washing machine for a disabled veteran or comforting one suffering from PTSD. After nine to 12 months of training, Canines for Veterans reviews applications from veterans who’d like a service animal, then pairs each dog with the veteran. The veteran then visits Charleston to learn how to work with the dog. Eventually, the pair goes home together.
“The prisoner in some cases has never completed anything (before),” Rick Hairston, president and CEO of Canines for Service told Mike Spencer of the Star News. “They haven’t been able to complete their military service. They’re looking for somebody who wants to give them a chance and this program does it.” He hopes the dog training program provides prisoners with job skills and a sense of accomplishment that will pave the way to a more promising future when they leave the facility.
One prisoner who trains dogs said, “It’s good for me because it helps my time here go by fast and it gives me the feeling of helping someone…They put their lives on the line for us and the only way I can thank them is by training this dog.”
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Meet the Musicians Helping Veterans Write Their Own Country Songs
Everyone’s heard the old joke about what you get when you play a country song backwards: You get your truck back, you get your dog back, and you get your wife back.
Some Nashville musicians hoped their efforts would be more uplifting than reversing a sad song when they recently teamed up with veterans in Columbus, Georgia to write country songs — often about painful experiences these vets have been carrying with them since their service.
The participants included Bob Regan, who has written such songs as “Busy Man” by Billy Ray Cyrus and “Thinkin’ About You” by Trisha Yearwood, and Tim Maggart, a singer-songwriter and Army veteran himself. These two, in addition to other musicians, first spent time getting to know the vets, then collaborated on a song about their life before performing the songs around a campfire at the Warrior Outreach retreat.
Don Goodman, who wrote several songs for Lee Greenwood including “Ring on Her Finger, Time on Her Hands,” and “Angels Among Us” by Alabama, told Dante Renzulli of WTVM that the vets’ songs all tell different personal stories. “Sometimes it’s a story about their car, their truck, their girlfriend, their mom, their dad. They get things out that they want to say to them, but they can’t. But when we get in there, playing the guitar, and get caught up in the music, they let go of demons that they’ve been carrying around for years. I just worked with a man who fought in Vietnam who let go of a demon he’d been carrying fifty years. He finally told another human being what was killing him. And from that day on, his life has changed, and that was more important to me than any number one song I’ve ever written.”
Now that sounds like a song worth singing.
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