PTSD Veteran Getting Help After Smashing Cars in Canada

Driver In HSC Parking Lot Was Veteran Suffering Extreme PTSD 
VOCM News 
December 20, 2016 

A 42-year-old combat veteran is in hospital and getting the care he needs following an unusual incident in the Health Sciences parking lot last night.

Police were called to the Health Sciences around 11:45 last night following reports of a man driving erratically in the lot and smashing his pickup into vehicles and other property. 

The man had to be subdued by police using a taser A family member tells VOCM News the man, who served many years in the military both in Canada and in Bosnia, had gone to the hospital seeking help but never had the nerve to go in. She says he's now receiving care and she encourages any military veterans or others struggling with PTSD to reach out and get the help they need.

Elgin VFW Post 1307 Needs Help To Hope Again

Tough choice for struggling Elgin VFW post: Time to sell building?
Daily Herald
Elena Ferrarin
December 17, 2016

If you walked into the members- and guests-only bar of Elgin VFW Post 1307 on an average Friday night, you'd be lucky to find 10 people.

There is no bingo or fish fry anymore, although twice-monthly country line dancing and weekly raffles have survived. Occasionally, the hall gets rented for events.

And now, the post's membership will make a pivotal decision about its future on Jan. 2: Sell the building, or mortgage it to make much-needed repairs with no foreseeable means of repaying the debt.

Post Commander Art Buckheister and Post Quartermaster Scott Webb believe it's best to sell.

"The VFW is not about bars and canteens and things," Webb said. "The VFW is about veterans. Serving veterans and serving our community. That's what must be paramount. It's time to get out of the bar business."

Buckheister agreed. "We were pretty good at it for a lot of years. Now things have changed and it's time to refocus."
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Iraq Veteran's Life Ended "A single shot followed, then silence"

The life and death of a Marine
Lincoln Journal Star
CINDY LANGE-KUBICK
Updated 2 hrs ago

Later, his roommate would tell Josh's grieving parents their son’s face went blank -- like a curtain came down -- before he turned away from the television and went to his room, then returned to the hallway.

A single shot followed, then silence.

Joshua Markel loved being a Marine. Here, he hands out candy to kids during his first deployment to Iraq, where he also made friends with local police. Courtesy photo

He had a beer at the bar with his dad that Saturday, then headed home to watch his Huskers play a night game.

Josh Markel had been living in the civilian world for nearly three years by Oct. 6, 2012, a Lincoln North Star graduate deployed twice as an infantryman in Fox Company — 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment.

Josh was the corporal who always had a joke but was steady under fire. Looked up to by his fellow Marines.

Back in Lincoln, the 25-year-old worked as a correctional officer at the Nebraska State Penitentiary, receiving honors for his work ethic and his role in attempting to save an inmate critically injured in an altercation.

And he was closing in on his dream of a law enforcement career, with a job offer from the Hall County Sheriff’s Department.

He was also drinking too much. He was struggling to sleep. He was going through a divorce.

He went to the VA for help, but didn’t want to take the medication doctors recommended, his father says.

Later, at the urging of his mother, he saw a counselor, declaring himself fine after a pair of sessions.

And everything seemed fine that last day.

Josh worked until mid-afternoon, talked football with his dad at the bar and called his parents several times during the game, a matchup with Ohio State in Columbus.

The tight-knit trio talked often, and Josh went over weekly for supper and to play cards, four-point pitch, his favorite.

Their son sounded like himself, Jim and Patti Markel remember.

“I know he was a little disappointed in the score,” Patti says. “But Josh was always positive that Nebraska would pull it off.”

In the end, Ohio State rolled over the Huskers and Patti went to bed thinking: I bet Josh is madder than heck ...

A police officer rang their doorbell at 1:30 a.m.
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Trumps Picks Army Secretary with Ties to Florida, and 101st

Army veteran Vincent Viola, billionaire owner of the Florida Panthers, named Trump’s Army secretary
Washington Post
Dan Lamothe
December 19, 2016

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated as his Army secretary Vincent Viola, an Army veteran who became a billionaire after founding an electronic trading firm and went on to buy the Florida Panthers hockey team.

Businessman Vincent Viola enters Trump Tower in Manhattan on Dec. 16.

(Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

Viola is a 1977 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., and funded the creation of its highly regarded Combating Terrorism Center after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. A former infantry officer and Ranger School graduate, he has pressed for innovation in cyber warfare, saying at a conference five years ago that the Army of the future will be built on a “gestalt of geekdom.”

Viola was raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., by Italian immigrants, and served in the 101st Airborne Division after the Vietnam War ended. His father and several uncles served in combat in World War II, and he grew up believing that serving in the military was a deeply honorable profession, he recalled in an interview for the West Point Center for Oral History.
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Over 44,000 Volunteers Placed Wreaths At Arlington National Cemetery

Stunning images of Arlington National Cemetery with Wreaths Across America.

Photos: 44,000 volunteers brave icy weather to lay wreaths for veterans
WTOP News
By Kathy Stewart
December 17, 2016

ARLINGTON, Va. — More than 44,000 volunteers turned out even in the icy, cold and rainy weather to carefully lay 245,000 remembrance wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery on Saturday, as part of “Wreaths Across America.”

It was the 25th year that wreaths have been placed at Arlington National Cemetery. The theme for this year’s event was #SayTheirNames.

The wreaths are placed at grave sites nationwide to honor and remember fallen veterans and their service. After placing a wreath, volunteers are encouraged to take time to read the headstone, to honor the memory of that fallen hero and to say the veteran’s name out loud.

For Julie Hunter from Mt. Laurel, New Jersey, this has become an annual pilgrimage. The experience, for her, is a somber one.

“You see all kinds of people that come together from all different walks of life just being grateful for the service and the lives that were lost,” Hunter said.

This year was the first time that Wendy Nixon from North Carolina volunteered to place the wreaths. She lost her 21-year-old brother-in-law; he was killed in Iraq. She was awe-struck by the event at Arlington National Cemetery on Saturday.

“People come from all over just to do this,” she said. “No words can even describe, you know?”

And when the volunteers’ work was all done, the scene left behind is breathtaking: a sea of beautiful balsam wreaths with red bows at Christmastime.
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