There were all kinds of vets who attended our combat support group that met weekly, but no one was as interesting to me as a guy named Steve whom we called Cookie Man.
Cookie Man was a combat Vietnam vet who looked to be no more than 140 pounds soaking wet. The first couple of meetings that he attended were uneventful as he just sat back and listened and never said anything.
Just around this time, the space shuttle Challenger blew up. We all remember that it had the teacher, Christa McAuliffe, on the flight, and I can still see in my mind the launch and then the unexpected and horrific explosion.
Like most Americans I was shocked and saddened, but after a week or two, I moved on.
Cookie Man never did.
Somehow, and I am not sure how, the explosion and the destruction of that shuttle played in a loop in his head. It became a chore at group when all he wanted to discuss was the shuttle explosion.
A couple of times some of the vets in group would get angry and say, Look, this is a group about combat in Vietnam, not about a space shuttle blowing up, and as many times as it was said to him, he always brought back the explosion as something he needed to get off his chest. Tears would be rolling off his cheeks as he said that he had seen something like that before, in Nam. Everyone would roll their eyes and again attempt to tell him that the shuttle was never in Nam.
Cookie Man was a vagabond kind of guy and nobody really knew where he lived or where he worked. When pressed he said that he did odd jobs and lived in Cambridge.
One night, after group, Mark and I followed him to see where he went. We had nothing else to do, and it gave us some insight to who this guy was.
After driving around for maybe half an hour, he took off like a bat out of hell and ended up at a large apartment building.
“This building is owned by John Wilder,” I said. John was our counselors at group.
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“You sure?” replied Mark.
“Yes, I’m sure, and it looks to me like this guy is living with John. Can that be happening?”
That was when we came to understand more about John Wilder.
He was more than a counselor. He actually cared for veterans.
Years later, in a conversation with John, well after group and well after I had left the management of the shelter, John said, you know, Cookie Man was in Nam in the late sixties, and a 122mm rocket exploded maybe forty yards away from the bunker he was in. He could see where it landed in another bunker opposite to where he was. The bunker that took the direct hit was full of medical staff and when the all clear was given, Cookie Man was one of the first on the scene looking for survivors. When he arrived at the site of the rocket blast, the inside of the bunker was something that no human being should ever see.
It resembled the refuse pile at the slaughterhouse, with the burned and mangled parts being the former medical staff who had been treating Cookie Man and others just before the rocket attack.
Now, twenty years later, the shuttle explosion played on TV and on CNN the broadcasters were talking about the explosion when one asked, “Do you think any of them could survive?” Another said, “No, they were blown up and burnt beyond recognition,” and that’s what sent Cookie man into a tailspin about the shuttle explosion.
It was around this time that I was morphing into a veteran’s advocate and every so often I would lock horns with the VA. Mostly about simple stuff, and mostly about one vet at a time.
Fast forward, and the shelter has been open maybe six months, and they were very rough months. One day, on my day off, I got a call from the shelter duty officer asking for some advice and counsel.
We have a huge problem, he said. There must be a psych doctor over at the VA hospital who is not doing his job. We’re getting fifteen hardcore psych clients a dayvets who are off their medications and well beyond any help we can offer. These hardcore psych clients are a loud distraction to all the others we’re trying to help, and they take up eighty percent of our staff time every day.
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They were still our brothers, psych or not, and yet, the VA wouldn’t or couldn’t do anything about the problem.
I made my way into the shelter an hour or so later, got to the front desk, and sitting in the penalty box was a marinea big marine. This guy was six foot four, by the looks of him he worked out, and he had the body to show for it. He was muttering to himself.
The best treatment we had to offer at the time was our puppy: JD, the German shepherd that had been donated to us by the dog handler from Nam. The dog would walk over to the troubled vet, start licking his hands, and pretty soon, the vet was petting the puppy and distracted enough where we could attempt to make arrangements to have him sent over to the VA to get his meds right again, or to get him admitted into one of their psych units. Most times we drove the vet in our van with some of our vet guards along for the ride, but sometimes this had to happen in a police car, and that could get ugly.
I went to the sick bay and found the medic on duty.
“What’s the problem with the VA?” I asked.
The medics who did work for us were overworked, underpaid, and did the work of angels. When they said something was really broke, it was.
“There’s a doctor on duty at the VA and he keeps saying he’s not a homeless counselor,”
said the medic. “He won’t even let me give him a heads up that I am sending this guy over there, and I’ve tried calling several times. Last time, they just hung up.”
“Let me see if I can get this guy on the phone,” I said. “Get ready for a transport and see if you can find the captain of the guard. Have him get six or eight of our biggest vet guards and have them out of uniform and ready to travel with me. Also, tell our bus driver we’re going to the VA hospital using the bus.”
All of this took maybe thirty minutes, and when all was ready, I went over to the vet, with the leash for the puppy.
This guy wasn’t even on this planet. He was talking to who knows who, and had eyes that had dark circles under them. He was physically there, but at the same time, not there.
He reminded me of the vet in the scene in the latrine in the movie Full Metal Jacket.
“Hey troop, you wanta help me take JD for a walk?” was all I said as I held up the leash.
He looked at me and then at the dog and again at me.
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“Yeah, yeah, I’ll take the dog for a walk.”
I told him that because we were in the city, they forced us to take the dog on our bus to the place where we could do the walk, the dog park, but that I was going too, and handed him the leash and said, clip it on and let’s go.
We walked onto the bus and Bert the captain of the guard had a half-dozen vet guards all sitting and talking and paying us no attention. I said, let’s go.
Twenty minutes later we pulled up to the VA hospital and while the psych vet and the vet guards walked JD on the grass at the front of the hospital, I made my way to the ER.
When I got to the ER there was a nurse’s station and one nurse said, “Can I help you?”
“Yeah, my name is Ken Smith and I’m the director over at the vet shelter. Is the psych OD in at the moment?”
‘Well, he is, but I think he’s busy at the moment.”
Just as she was saying that, I saw some guy, in scrubs, eating Chinese food watching a TV in a room right behind her. Without even asking, I walked right around her and into the room and did it so fast, she was right behind me and I said, “You the psych OD on right now?”
The guy was eating from the takeout container with chop sticks and he looked at me and then at the nurse right behind me who was saying, “I said you were busy doctor, please Mr. Smith, leave this room right now.”
“Who are you?” said this guy.
“I’m Ken Smith, the director of the vet shelter downtown, and I wanted to come here and have a discussion with you about how you’re not working with us on the psych clients we are seeing every day.”
The guys jumped up, grabbed a phone into which he yelled “code green” or code something, and then he said to me, “Get out!”
In what seemed to be ten seconds, all kinds of people were in the ER: federal cops with guns, other nurses, orderlies, and all kinds of people.
One guy I recognizedhe was in charge of one of the vet centers.
“What’s going on here?” he demanded.
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Before I could say anything this doctor said, this guyand he points at meis a threat to this facility, he walks right in and is telling me that our facility is not a help to the supposed psychiatric clients he gets at that veterans’ homeless home, or whatever they are calling that dive downtown.
I’d had it.
“Let me tell you something, you punk,” I hissed at him. “I came here with every intention of working with you and your lousy attitude. Now you’ve pissed me off. I promise you this, you will be sorry the day you screwed vets who have psych issues and I swear that I will be back and when I come, I will not come alone.”
I turned around and went back outside and told everyone to get back into the bus and asked the driver to take us to another VA hospital maybe thirty miles away.
Boston had four VA hospitals and the closest was the one we were at, but there were others and I knew the director of one personally and he had told me to call him anytime.
I called this other VA hospital, and the director told me to come right in. We showed up and the psych OD there interviewed the marine and admitted him right away and we left.
I had read a New York Times headline once that said, “Derwinski Confirmed as Veterans Secretary.” This was a direct result of President George H. W. Bush. Bush had elevated the office of VA administrator to a cabinet position. I was determined to get the issue with the VA not working on psych clients solved and wrote a letter inviting the secretary to come for a personal tour of the shelter.
Two weeks later I got a call from the office of the secretary and some guy said, “The secretary will be in town next week, can you make time on Tuesday evening at seven for the tour?”
“Yes!” was my response.
Sure enough, the secretary, along with a few of his staff, showed up right at seven. He couldn’t have come at a better time. It was what we called “high tide”right after mealtimeand due to the inclement weather at that moment we had five or six psych cases sitting in the penalty box.
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The secretary came in, got his tour, and said he was amazed at what we were doing. Just as we got to the front door and he was getting ready to leave he said, “Ken, what do you need?”
I told him that we were having a serious problem with one VA hospital in particularactually one psych OD in particular who was not responsive to the needs of vets who were in crisis. Just as I said that, one of the vets who was in the penalty box stood up, started reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, dropped his pants, and started to urinate on the floor.
We both watched as the staff of the shelter went to work. They didn’t yell, they didn’t scream, it just was a fact and they dealt with it. They took care of the pee on the floor and made the guy pull his pants back up.
I said, “Mr. Secretary, I invite you to listen in on the call I am about to make about that very vet you just witnessed.’
I took the secretary into the sickbay and using that phone I called the VA and asked for the psych OD.
I got the very same guy on the phone from two weeks ago and I was trying to tell him that I had a psych case to refer when this guy goes off like a Chinese firecracker. “I TOLD
YOU ALREADY SMITH, AND YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED ABOUT CALLING HERE, YOU CALL
AGAIN AND I WILL REPORT YOU TO THE POLICE.”
Just as he stopped screaming, the secretary came on the line and said, “This is Secretary Derwinski and I am here at this shelter on a tour and I want your name and your VA identification number.”
The doctor screamed back, “NOW YOU’VE DONE IT SMITHYOU’RE IMPERSONATING
A FEDERAL EMPLOYEE!”
The secretary hung up the phone, opened the door, waved to one of his aides, and said,
“Get me the director of this VA hospital on the phone right now.” Then he calmly said to me,
“How do you do your psych transports, Ken?”
I said, “We do them with our own van. We have security ride along with our staff medic and we sometimes trick the vet to go along by using our dog.”
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“Why don’t you load him up, and we’ll follow you to make sure that this vet will be admitted.”
We did what we always dogot the prep paperwork done and the van loaded, and sure enough the secretary’s car with his aids followed us all the way to the hospital.
When we arrived, there had to be forty people waiting for us at the front entranceway, including the director of the hospital.
I started to walk the vet and the security guards towards the ER and the director said,
“Ken, this marine is going right to the psych unit and we can take it from here.” Two hospital aides escorted the vet to an elevator bank.
The secretary asked who was the psych OD whom he had talked to earlier.
As he stepped forward the guy who had been such a dick whined, “Mr. Secretary, I had no idea it was you sir. You see, this shelter wastes a lot of our time with clients that are not”
Before he could finish his sentence, Secretary Derwinski looked right at him and said,
“You’re fired.” And he then turned to the hospital director and said, “I want him out of this rotation and I want this fixed and fixed now, and when these guys from Court Street call and tell you they have a psych case, you are to dispatch one of your vans and your security and you are to work with this team in the care of these veterans. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” the director said.
As they took away the vet who was in crisis, I walked by the nitwit doctor and whispered, “Asshole.”
He gave me a look that could kill.
The next day, the director of the VA hospital made an unannounced “first” trip to the shelter and after a thirty-minute tour said, “Ken, I had no idea.” From that moment on, the issue of veterans in psych crises was smoother.
I told the director about one vet in particular whom I was concerned aboutCookie Man. The director gave me his card and on the back he wrote his home phone number.
“Have this vet come to our shop, ask for me, and I will have the chief of psychiatry take a swing at his case.”
Cookie Man was going to get the help he needed.
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Chapter 28: John’s In Trouble
Floyd “Shad” Meshad has been working with veterans since 1970. Shad was a medical service officer during the Vietnam War and even though I have never met him, the stories I have been told about him reminded me of the psych officer you would see from time to time on the TV show MASH.
It was his work, along with another, that was the impetus for the vet centers around the country. Like lots of combat Vietnam vets around the country, I owe him a huge thank you.
The best thing the VA ever did was take his model of community care for combat vets and expand it nationwide.
The shelter had been opened for a few years when I got word that the VA vet center national director was not happy with John Wilder, the guy who had led the group I attended.
Seems that there is politics everywhere, I thought.
The big reason that John was in trouble had to do with “body count.” The VA was developing its vet center funding based on the actual number of vets that were counseled at each vet center and it reminded me of the body count system that was used in Vietnam to keep score of who was winning and who was losing.
Without telling John I made an appointment to meet with the regional director, the guy who was John’s boss’s boss. This guy, whom I will call Clyde, was a nice enough guy, and getting the appointment wasn’t hard, even though Clyde was in a different New England state.
The day of the appointment I showed up a bit early to get the lay of the land. This guy’s office was typical government. Sterile is how I remember it, with very few things that told me anything about the guy.
When I went into his office after his secretary had announced me and offered me a cup of bad coffee, the first thing this guy says to me is, “Ken, I’ve waited a long time to meet you, and I wanted to thank you for what you do for veterans.”
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“That’s great Clyde, I appreciate that.”
There was a little more small talk, nothing real important, and then I dropped a bomb.
“If you don’t back off of John Wilder, and if you don’t find a way to keep him in his position, I will find a way to stick forty feet of guardrail up your ass.”
“Excuse me?” is what I think he said.
“You heard me,” I said. “I understand, and know, that John Wilder has been put in the crosshairs by Art Blank, the national director. John is one thing the VA has done right. Back away from him, or I will come to the table hunting bear.”
“Excuse me?” said Clyde again.
“You heard me, and don’t make me come back here again,” and I got up and left, even as Clyde was trying to talk to me.
A few days later, the usual vet center counselor who came into the shelter every week showed up.
“You can’t stay here,” I said.
“What? Why?” he asked.
“Have your boss call Clyde,” I said, “and don’t come back in here again until your boss makes the call. Have him tell Clyde that until I hear from Wilder, you and anyone of your team is persona non grata at this shelter and I am spreading the word to the other shelters too. You will have to find another way to get your body count.”
Now the guy who was coming to the shelter was some junior guy and he didn’t know squat about the politics and his whole job really was to come into the shelter and identify vets and let them know about VA benefits and set them up with an appointment at the vet center clear across town. They even gave the vets two subway tokens to come to the
“important meeting” at their shop, and that is how they got their body count.
I then leaned on my contact at Congressman Kennedy’s office.
“Look, I said to Jim Spencer, I did you right by that Mendoza guy, and you need to help me out here. There is a guy who runs the whole national show for vet centers, and he along with his district one director is putting the wood to one of the best counselors that the VA has ever produced and it’s all about body count.”
“Whatta ya mean?” said Kennedy’s guy.
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“What I’m telling you is that every vet who comes into the shelter, along with vets from other shelters, are being counted as vets who are getting counseling from vet centers. It’s happening nationwide, and they are even trying to recruit vets who are Canadian, for God’s sake.”
“Are you sure of this?” said the Kennedy guy.
“Oh yeah, I’m sure.”
“And you think Art Blank knows of this?”
“I know he knows, and I’m telling you that it’s a nationwide issue to get the body count as high as they can, to get the budget increased. Even a moron can figure it out, but your guy who sits on the Veterans Affairs Committee doesn’t see it, as well as the chairman of the committee doesn’t see it, and I know the media would love a story like this.”
“Whoa, wait a minute, before you go off to the media, let’s see what we can find out.
A few days later I get a call from John Wilder.
“What have you done?” he says.
“Whatta ya mean?”
“Don’t play stupid with me, what have you done?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Well, two weeks ago I get a call from Clyde, who says, ‘You think that Smith can protect you?’ Then two weeks later, out of the clear blue, Clyde is now my best friend. What did you do?”
“I only told him that you were a good guy and that the VA would be stupid to lose you.”
“Just so you know,” said John, “the VA has changed the way that they count vets who come in for services, and now the whole game is changing. Just out of curiosity, how did you get a meeting with Clyde anyway?”
“I asked for it.”
“Well, I wish you wouldn’t have done that. It looks like I cried to you about a problem that I was handling on my own.”
“John, I know you’re tough and I know your heart’s in the right place. The VA has to wake up to the other good counselors, the other Johns around the country, and stop with the stupid body count.”
“Who told you about that?”
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“What? Body count? It’s obvious, John. I can see it and so can others.”
Weeks went by and one day I got a call from Art Blank.
“You know, Mr. Smith, it wasn’t necessary for you to go to the congressman to voice your concerns; you could and should have come direct to me.”
“Yeah. right,” I said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
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