Survivors of Suicide Loss Greater Fort Hood Break Silence

Local organization fights mental health stigma one story at a time
Killeen Daily Herald
By Lauren Dodd
Herald staff writer
August 1, 2015

“I couldn’t even say the word suicide, but my body screamed it. Five years ago, I would not be telling people about an event like this. I could not even say the word.”

MIKE BARTOSZEK
Suicide Prevention Fundraiser
SOS Greater Fort Hood founders, Janet Sutton and Clarena Tobon stand side by side during a fundraiser in support of suicide prevention held at Stillhouse Wine Room July 31st 2015

The word suicide, for good reason, typically evokes dark emotions of sadness, grief and loss. But Clarena Tobon-Guevara, co-founder of Survivors of Suicide Loss Greater Fort Hood, wants the community to know there is life after suicide.

“Suicide does not have to be dark and sad. The people that we lost — how do we carry on their lives, their names and their legacies — if we think about it as a dark place?” Tobon said.

“Of course it’s upsetting. I’ll never forget that day, seeing my mom, but the reality is that’s how she ended, that’s not how she lived.”

At the Stillhouse Wine Room in Killeen on Friday night, dozens of people gathered to share stories, raise suicide awareness and money for the upcoming Out of the Darkness Walk through the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention in October.

Survivors of Suicide co-founder Janet Sutton explained how important it is for her to share her own story as well.

“The day after (my son) Christopher died, I set up my first memorial fund and we raised $5,700. I swore that his death would not be in vain and that I would not keep it secret. I felt if I kept it secret someone else’s family would get hurt, someone else would die,” Sutton said.
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Marine's Homecoming Shocks Wife---And Lover

Marine 'finds wife cheating with another man' after he surprises her with early homecoming 
Daily Mirror
BY KARA O'NEILL
1 AUGUST 2015

A US marine who wanted to surprise his wife and daughter by returning home early from duty has posted the video online of the moment he allegedly found his naked wife cheating on him another veteran.

Walking into the house, the husband appears to enter a small bathroom, where he appears to find his wife sitting naked on the toilet while a clothed man leans over her.

Clearly surprised by his arrival, the wife looks up at her husband but barely attempts to cover herself up as he yells: "What's up? You're f*****." read more here

NSA Leaks Army Public Affairs Took on Hot Shows

Army Docs Show Interest in 'American Idol,' 'X Factor': 'Good Possibility It Will Be a Ratings Hit'
Billboard.com
By Marc Schneider
July 31, 2015

It doesn’t exactly rise to the level of Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks, but a new batch of Pentagon documents showing the military’s keen interest in Hollywood has still raised a few eyeballs. A recent FOIA request by SpyCulture.com’s Tom Secker produced about 1,400 pages of documents from the U.S. Army’s Office of the Chief of Public Affairs (OCPA-West) -- which acts as a liaison between the entertainment industry and the Army.

Unsurprisingly, the documents show highly organized efforts by the military to cultivate positive relationships with Hollywood studios in the making of films and television. Some of the data is essentially a spreadsheet of ongoing projects, like a request to allow Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe to shoot footage at Fort Hood, or noting that several non-commissioned officers had just appeared on Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen.

In another document, the Army seemed genuinely bummed at the ouster of a season 10 American Idol contestant who was also a PSYOP (psychological operations) specialist based out of Fort Bragg. “Unfortunately she was voted off the show late last week during filming in Hollywood,” the entry said. The singer-soldier’s name is redacted and the Army goes on to list several positives of the show, such as ratings and international reach. Idol even visited Fort Bragg to “tape her participating in an airborne operation and to shoot interviews with her.”
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From Spyculture

This is only one branch of the US military, the Army. The Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard and National Guard all have their own Entertainment Liaison Offices. While the Army is perhaps the busiest in terms of involvement in the entertainment industry, we can be confident that the scale of the overall DOD involvement is at least double the size of what these Army documents reveal. I have filed requests with the Navy and the Marine Corps for similar reports but so far no luck.

Today the Daily Mirror (technically their Sunday paper the Sunday People) published an article mentioning these documents but failing to mention my name. To be clear, I submitted the request as the result of conversations with academic Matt Alford, who pressed the Mirror into publishing the article. As per usual, you can’t trust the mainstream media to get a story straight.

Why Do Members of Congress Hide Deadly Results?

It is very troubling for members of Congress, especially those who served, repeating the falsehood of "22 veterans a day committing suicide." How can we expect anything to change when they fail to understand the fact that veteran suicides are double the civilian population and over 70% of them are over the age of 50? How can we expect them to actually do something about taking care of younger veterans when their rate is triple their peer rate after billions have been spent in "prevention" and "raising awareness" so they can heal?

U.S. Rep. Steve Stivers, R-Upper Arlington wrote in the Chillicothe Gazette,

"I have served in the Army National Guard for nearly 30 years, and as a member of Congress, I have had the privilege of meeting so many of the brave men and women who have put their lives on the line to keep us all safe. As a nation, we owe our veterans a great debt of gratitude and I believe the most important way we can express our thanks is by ensuring they get the care they need when they come home.

Many of service members are suffering from things we cannot see, like post-traumatic stress disorder and the after effects of traumatic brain injury. This contributes to an unusually high and heartbreaking number of suicides. In fact, it is estimated that 22 current and former service members commit suicide each day.

While, Congress has taken tangible steps to improve treatments for PTSD, I believe more must be done to curb this epidemic and to find the right combination of therapies and treatments that work for each and every individual veteran. One type of therapy that has proven extremely effective for many veterans is service dog training. That’s why I am currently working on bipartisan legislation that would make this special form of therapy more available to veterans through our Veterans Administration facilities."

Stivers is pushing for PTSD Service dogs, which is a great thing however, they are not the answer for all veterans. As a matter of fact, they are only part of the answer for some of the veterans aided by them. He was in the National Guard for 30 years and should know all of that. So why doesn't he?

It isn't that the facts are being hidden. They are in plain view for anyone wanting to know what is really going on. As of the 10th of August, Wounded Times will be 8 years old. With over 24,600 posts focused on veterans, I can assure you that all the reports are there for anyone wanting to learn the truth.

After reading about suicides along with claims of what is being done to help veterans heal, it is obvious that no one in Congress has really paid much attention.

They have invested billions on PTSD within the military as well as in the veteran community but the results prove nothing has changed for the better.

As a matter of fact it is actually worse now for current military given the fact there are less serving while suicides went up. Sequestration cut the size of the military after the war in Iraq ended along with those deployed into Afghanistan. Less serving actually translates into less to count in the military and the rise in the number of suicides proves what they are doing does not work.

This is the result after all these years.

The Army National Guard and Air National Guard also counted more suicides in the first quarter of 2015 than the same time period the previous year. The Army National Guard saw 20 suicides in the first three months of this year and just 16 the previous year, an increase of 25 percent. Suicides among members of the Air National Guard increased from six to seven.

Current military committing suicide after all these years of Congress holding hearings and repeating the same stuff that pricelessly failed while no one was held accountable made sense to these folks and we should wonder why they were not appalled enough to change what they were doing.

Veterans committing suicide after all these years of "awareness" followed by ambivalence until some family decided to talk to members of the press about their sons and daughters being failed by those in charge. Members of Congress decided to call in their constituents to tell their heartbreaking stories so they could pretend to be paying attention yet avoid any responsibility to the next family having to appear before Congress to repeat the same emotional price paid for what Congress failed to do.

We see them facing off with SWAT Teams, police officers, being shot on our streets and being buried because they could not find one single reason to hope for a better day. Yet, oh no, lets not talk about all that already failed when they can pretend to be doing something about what we live with every single day.

Why should members of Congress actually learn what they are supposed to be in control over? Because until they do, we will continue to see the deadly results.

Home of the Brave Homeless Veterans Get Pot

Homeless veterans were discovering apartment walls don't make a home when they have nothing to cook with. A veteran faced that fact when he wanted to cook a meal for himself. Now he is doing what he can to make sure homeless veterans have pots, pans and everything else they need to start again.

Once homeless vet helping others with home basics
Courier Post
Carol Comegno
CherryHill
July 31, 2015

Former homeless veteran Fred Silhol sits in his Audubon apartment with the apartment starter kit he put together for other homeless vets transitioning to permanent housing from Volunteers of America homeless shelters. (Photo: JOHN ZIOMEK/COURIER-POST)

AUDUBON – A homeless and divorced military retiree from Cherry Hill found himself living in a car and then a seedy motel until reluctantly landing at the Home of the Brave, a homeless shelter in Camden for veterans.

After getting rehired to his old job as a bartender at the Crowne Plaza hotel on Route 70, Fred Silhol was able to leave the shelter for an apartment in Audubon with the assistance of Volunteers of America Delaware Valley, the Home of the Brave operator.

Excited to be in his own home again, the retired U.S. Army master sergeant wanted to cook dinner that first night but suddenly came to a ballon-bursting realization. He did not have a pot or pan, dish or cup, silverware, can opener or anything else to prepare a meal and eat it except for his stove.

Resolute, he scraped $50 together to buy some basic, but essential, items for his new home.

That gave Silhol the idea to pull together another apartment starter kit for a homeless veteran transitioning from a shelter to permanent housing.

The VOA accepted his donation and embraced the concept, creating a new program kicking off this month called ASK, the Apartment Starter Kit.

“I just wanted to give back something for what the VOA did for me and to help other veterans who may find themselves in the same predicament as I did when leaving the shelter,” said Silhol, 54, a who served as a paratrooper in both the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions and as a drill sergeant.
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