Veteran Marine Survived Deployments, Cancer And Still Thinks of Others

Former Marine Saves Up to Make Big Gift to Food Bank
Associated Press
by Ben Muir
Jul 25, 2016

Skorna left the Marines in 2011 after four years of active duty, but he said the time he spent in stricken areas fueled his desire to donate.

OLYMPIA, Wash. — The Thurston County Food Bank receives emails from people who want to help every day. Some offer an egg carton or loaf of bread. Others help wash cars or give cash donations, usually $10 to $50. Wealthier local residents sometimes make donations in the range of $1,000 or $2,000, reported The Olympian.

So when Fran Potasnik, a full-time volunteer at the food bank, checked her inbox and found an email from another prospective donor in April, she didn't think much of it.

Until she opened it and read, "Hi my name is John, and I plan on giving $10,000."

John Skorna, 27, vowed to donate the $10,000 to the food bank's summer lunch program. Potasnik told him a gift like that would provide 2,762 lunches — 20 percent of the 10,777 meals distributed to kids every summer.

"I thought, 'OK, what is this guy?'" Potasnik said. "I then forwarded it to the director and said, 'I don't know if this is for real or not.'"

"My first thought was a little bit of skepticism, but not in a negative way," Food Bank Director Robert Coit said. "John's email had a sense of sincerity and passion. Both Fran and I felt there was something about it that seemed real."

Skorna wrote to Coit that he had most of the $10,000, but would need more time to collect the rest. Coit said he understood and reminded him that no matter the amount, any donation is noble and they would be grateful.

"He's the epitome of what a service person looks like," Ravancho said. "He'll do selfless things with integrity, and he doesn't need someone to say thank you. He could have come in here, given the check and left without saying a word to anyone. That would have been enough for him."
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How Coffee Became Salvation for Soldiers and Veterans

If you read Wounded Times then you know about Point Man International Ministries being started by a Vietnam veteran, Seattle Police Officer meeting other veterans for coffee to help them heal. Just thinking about that simple act of kindness and time saving so many lives makes me proud to be among them.

If War Is Hell, Then Coffee Has Offered U.S. Soldiers Some Salvation
KAZU NPR
By THE KITCHEN SISTERS
July 25, 2016

"The UFO became a place where soldiers could gather and talk openly about their worries and frustrations, without the military brass around," Gardner recalls. And in Columbia, says Gardner, UFO was a rarity ­­-- a place that "not just black and white but students and soldiers" could share.

During the Vietnam War, GI coffeehouses located near military posts became a place for soldiers to gather and organize against the war. Since 2007, veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

In April 1865, at the bloody, bitter end of the Civil War, Ebenezer Nelson Gilpin, a Union cavalryman, wrote in his diary, "Everything is chaos here. The suspense is almost unbearable."

"We are reduced to quarter rations and no coffee," he continued. "And nobody can soldier without coffee."

If war is hell, then for many soldiers throughout American history, it is coffee that has offered some small salvation. Hidden Kitchens looks at three American wars through the lens of coffee: the Civil War, Vietnam and Afghanistan.
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Australian Veteran Legacy Supports Families After Suicide

How Legacy makes life easier for those left behind
Sun Shine Coast Daily
Janine Hill
25th Jul 2016

"Keeping a promise to a mate is a value ingrained in the Aussie consciousness but, for Legacy, it's not just a belief; it's a solemn duty the organisation has proudly upheld for more than 90 years," Terry Dillon.

LEGACY OF GIVING: Terry Dillon has been giving to Legacy for 37 years.

John McCutcheon

TERRY Dillon might look more like a grandfather than a hero but he is both.

As a volunteer with Legacy, Mr Dillon has made life a little better for the spouses and children of veterans who did not return intact from conflict zones as he did, or who have since passed away.

During 37 years as a Legatee, he has helped "fill the gap" for about 200 of widows and their children whose husbands have died or been incapacitated by post traumatic stress disorder.

He is one of 46 Legatees on the Coast who support 1300 widows,15 children, including five under 10, and 15 dependents with disabilities.

The Vietnam Veteran could have put his energy into the community in any one of ways but was drawn to looking after the dependents of less fortunate diggers.

"Being a returned servicemen, I wanted to look after the widows and children of returned servicemen," he said.
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Marine Veteran-Firefighter Lost Home While Fighting Fire at Camp Pendleton

FIREFIGHTER LOSES HOME IN SAND FIRE WHILE BATTLING CAMP PENDLETON FIRE
ABC 7 News
By ABC7.com staff
Sunday, July 24, 2016

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. (KABC) -- A firefighter with the U.S. Forest Service learned his home was burned to the ground by the Sand Fire while he was battling a blaze at Camp Pendleton.

Sergio Toscano was sent to Camp Pendleton in San Diego County to battle the Roblar Fire, which broke out Thursday evening.

While Toscano was battling the Roblar Fire, he received word that the Sand Fire was nearing his home on Little Tujunga Canyon Road in Santa Clarita.

"We were assigned to a fire at Camp Pendleton, the Roblar Fire, I was getting text and phone calls from back home updating me on the fire that was going on back home," Toscano told ABC7.

After learning his home had been destroyed, Toscano was pulled from the Roblar Fire and assigned the Sand Fire.
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Female Pilot Flying Again After Losing Leg

Female Air Force pilot amputee returns to the skies
Air Force Times
Oriana Pawlyk
July 23, 2016

Capt. Christy Wise frantically waved her headlamp flashlight to alert a boat jetting toward her to turn away. But Wise, a HC-130J rescue squadron pilot, quickly realizing it was too late, dove as far down to save herself. When she surfaced, she knew the boat’s propeller had severed her right leg.

Capt. Christy Wise, 71st Rescue Squadron. (Photo: Courtesy photo)

Almost a year later, Wise — who thought it would be the end of her pilot career — is back in the cockpit, and flew her first mission Friday at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia, where she is stationed. She is the first female Air Force amputee to return to flight, the service said.

“I have been blown away with the amount of support I’ve had to ... achieve my goals,” Wise told Air Force Times on July 21.

On April 11, 2015, she and her boyfriend were paddleboarding in a cove near Shalimar, Florida. “When I surfaced I immediately thought, ‘Dang it, I should have had a brighter flashlight’,” Wise said. But she later learned it was a hit-and-run accident as the boat did not stop or slow down.
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Do Not Pay the Price of Service With Your Life

About a week ago I got into a conversation with a young veteran about suicide. There have been numerous reports of veterans calling the Suicide Hotline and not getting the help they needed when they needed it. I asked her why they do not just call 911 and ask for help.  She said they do not want to get stuck with the bill.

Stunning I know but it very well may play a part in veteran in crisis not wanting to add more burden on their shoulders.

While Enhanced Eligibility for VA Healthcare has extended free care for combat veterans up to 5 years, too many veteran do not use it.  

Who's Eligible?
Veterans, including activated Reservists and members of the National Guard, are eligible if they served on active duty in a theater of combat operations after November 11, 1998, and have been discharged under other than dishonorable conditions.

• Eligible combat Veterans will have free medical care and medications for any condition that may be related to their service in theater.

• Immediate benefits of health care coverage.

• No enrollment fee, monthly premiums or deductibles.

• Low or no out-of-pocket costs.  During the five-year post discharge timeframe, there may be small medical care or prescription drug copayments for medical care for any condition not related to combat theater.   See our Copayment page for more information. (Copayment page)

• Once enrolled, the Veteran will remain enrolled.

• Enrollment with VA satisfies the health care law’s requirement to have health care coverage. 

• Medical care rated among the best in the United States.

• More than 1,700 places available to get health care.

• Choice Card Program eligibility.Click here for more information

• VA health care can be used along with Medicare and any other health insurance coverage.

And this part is something else to pay attention to.

Copays
Veterans who qualify under this special eligibility are not subject to copays for conditions potentially related to their combat service. However, unless otherwise exempted, combat Veterans must either disclose their prior year gross household income OR decline to provide their financial information and agree to make applicable copays for care or services VA determines are clearly unrelated to their military service.

If you know a veteran in crisis and they cannot get help from the Crisis line, have them call 911 and ask for fire rescue. I have talked to firefighters and police officers about this.  If you call for police, what happens is a veteran in crisis can find themselves under more stress when they see a police officer yet when a firefighter shows up, there is less stress.

Most of the time police officers will go with the department just in case but are there just in case things get out of control.

Keep in mind that a lot of police officers and firefighters are also veterans. They get it! As for the bill, let the VA sort that out afterwards.  

If you are among the veteran with less than honorable discharges CALL 911 and save your life so you can fight to have the discharge changed.  There are about 140,000 of you that happened to adding to the veterans from previous wars having their discharges changed. Do not pay the cost of service with your life!

Australian Army Captain Suicide Between Canada and New York

Behind a mask of despair
Townsville Bulletin
July 23, 2016

Since 2000, data suggests nearly three times as many active Australian soldiers and nearly five times as many veterans have committed suicide as have died in Afghanistan. But before Paul, almost none had been nationally recognised.

ON the second-last day of 2013, a stranger arrived in Saranac Lake, a 5400-person mountain town 112km shy of the Canadian border.

Set amid the patchwork of forest preserves and villages, Saranac Lake is the “Capital of the Adirondacks”, a one-time best small town of New York, and the place where I’m from.

He was a 31-year-old infantry captain in the Australian Army who had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after returning from Afghanistan two years before. He arrived on the one bus that comes each day: an Adirondack Trailways coach that chugs slowly uphill from Albany.

To get to Albany, he’d travelled more than 17,000km. He was good looking – wholesome and tidy, with intelligent eyes. He’d been a battle captain in Afghanistan’s Oruzgan province, near Kandahar, working as part of Mentoring Task Force 3 with about 700 other Townsville soldiers. But he had a medical review coming up and, his family would later tell the police, he feared he might be discharged.

On New Year’s Eve, he bought a shovel and a blanket at the shopping plaza and set off on foot towards Lake Placid.
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Grim Outcome With DOD First Quarter Suicide Report

Department of Defense released the first quarter of 2016 suicide report. In the first three months of 2016 there have been 110 reported suicides.

In the first quarter of 2016, the military services reported the following:

 58 deaths by suicide in the Active Component

 18 deaths by suicide in the Reserves

 34 deaths by suicide in the National Guard

2012 

Active 321

Reserve 204

National Guard 132

2013

Active 255

Reserve 220

National Guard 134

2014

Active 273

Reserve 170

National Guard 91

2015

Active 266

Reserve 212

National Guard 124

All adds up to what they are doing is not working and they keep dying because no one is held accountable for failure to help them heal! 

Murder-Suicide Investigation: Police Officer Survived Iraq, Battled Cancer

Waterbury Officer's Death Ruled Suicide; Second Victim Identified
Hartford Courant
Bill Leukhardt
July 22, 2016

Yocher served six years in the U.S. Army, including one tour in Iraq. He then transferred to the Air Force and served a second tour in Iraq. He received honorable discharges from both branches, according to a Dream Foundation release about the September 2015 event.

WATERBURY — A Waterbury police officer who was found dead Wednesday morning outside a slain man's home had committed suicide, state police said Friday.

Hallock Yocher, 37, killed himself in the backyard of 31-33 Marion Ave., state police said.

Authorities on Friday also identified the second victim, James T. Stuart, 39, and said he died from multiple gunshot wounds in his third-floor apartment at 31-33 Marion.

State police are investigating the relationship between Yocher and Stuart. Investigators have not mentioned any suspect in Stuart's murder. Earlier, police called it "an isolated incident" and said there was no threat to the community.

Yocher, a 10-year veteran of the department, had been battling Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of part of the immune system. He was on the job despite his illness but off duty at the time of the Marion Avenue incident, police said.

In January 2014, Yocher, his wife and three children went to Walt Disney World, SeaWorld Orlando and Universal Orlando in Florida, a trip paid for by the Dream Foundation, a California nonprofit that helps terminally ill adults fulfill end-of-life dreams.
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The Gravity of PTSD

When Does Suicide Become An Unacceptable Outcome of War?
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
July 24, 2016

They call PTSD an "invisible wound" assuming it cannot be seen.  After all, it is not a wound of the flesh. Well, you cannot see gravity either, but you can see what it does.

Gravity keeps everything grounded so nothing is up in their air.

the force of attraction by which terrestrial bodies tend to fall toward the center of the earth.

In the same way, you cannot see this wound if you look at a veteran but you can see it if you know the veteran.

Cry for help goes unanswered, suicide follows, a report about Brandon Ketchum on Quad City Times, tells the story of a Marine with two deployments between 2004 and 2008 and then another one after he was diagnosed with PTSD.

He "posted to Facebook a 148-word account of his previous day's visit to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Iowa City. The 33-year-old Davenport man had hoped his "emergency appointment" would result in an admission to the psychiatric unit, where he'd found help before."

The thing is, no one saw it until it was too late. He sent the message at 2:11 am when most people were sleeping. Most of the country is still sleeping when it involves veterans in crisis.  When do we actually find suicide an unacceptable outcome of war?

Ketchum was in the Marines until 2013, long after all the "PTSD prevention" Power Point slides missed the power of the point that this is a wound not caused by any type of weakness but caused by the strength of their emotional core. Long after "suicide prevention" was supposed to keep more alive after combat and over four decades of efforts to help remove the stigma of this, yet he was still carrying it on his shoulders being crushed by the weight of his burden.

"Asking for help has only clouded my life with such a stigma that I have carried the 'crazy' or 'broken' labels, forcing me to have to fight for custody of my little girl that I love more than the world."

Some veterans have their families turning their backs on them and they end up alone, on the streets and still suffering. Ketchum had family and friends there for him.

There are some who never seek help, but Ketchum did. 

Brandon said he already had been diagnosed with PTSD by the time he left Iowa for his third deployment. He was taking antidepressants while serving in Afghanistan. By the end of that abbreviated tour, he was also prescribed narcotic pain pills.

He wanted to heal and wanted to start the next part of his life but was trapped because none of the help he received was enough to heal his soul.

The gravity of this wound is strengthened because the simple truth of it is not something they have been shown.  It attacks "serious or dignified behavior; dignity; solemnity" because they are left feeling ashamed of it instead of understanding it.

The same strength of their core that allowed them to carry that burden while others were in danger comes from the same place where it ravages them when the only ones in danger are themselves.

So when do we change the conversation? When do we stop using "invisible" as if that is an excuse for us leaving so many abandoned? If we do not see it, then it is easy to swallow the "raising awareness" crap when talking about the problem has nothing to do with the solution.

Are we finally ready to actually look at the "efforts" the DOD has been doing for over a decade and demand accountability considering evidence proves it does in fact to more harm than good? Are we ready to demand accountability from the thousands of folks running around the country getting plenty of press coverage for what they want to talk about without ever once having to answer for what they know nothing about?

How many more times do we actually have to read about veterans like Ketchum before we have reached the "one too many" suicides we find acceptable?