

The shelter had an all-service honor guard made up of volunteers from the vets who lived at the shelter. We were very proud of the services that they performed.
We had vets from the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force and the Coast Guard, all in uniforms and all with flags, and each time this honor guard went to a funeral, I was proud.
We had mock rifles donated that shot blanks and we had a commander of the honor guard along with a weapons detail that marched at the front and rear of the honor guard and could shoot a twenty-one gun salute at funerals.
The idea came up to have this honor guard present the colors at the Democratic National Convention at Madison Square Garden in New York City when Bill Clinton and Al Gore were nominated.
At the time, George H. W. Bush was the president and it was a given that Clinton and Gore would be the nominees. We had sent requests to both campaigns and asked both candidates to come to the shelter for a tour. One day I got a call from some event planner from the Democratic convention saying that our request to have the honor guard present the colors at the Democratic National Convention had been approved.
At the time I had a woman on my staff named Lori Rubin and she was tasked with getting all the details and arrangements in proper order and it seemed everything was on target.
The day came that we were supposed to depart for the convention and we didn’t have the train tickets promised to us, so I raided the petty cash account of the shelter and took just enough money for train fare for twenty two of us.
The train ride was great and we all were psyched about being on the stage at Madison Square Garden at the Democratic National Convention.
We arrived at Penn station six hours before we were needed. The convention hall was connected to the train station and after getting lost a couple of times and going through 36
tons of security, we finally found the person who was tasked with getting us ready for our grand performance.
“OK, your team is on at 5pm and you can wait here till its time for you to march on,” said some young gal who had clipboards and radios and all kinds of badges hung around her neck.
“Wait here? Wait right here? OK, but we need a place for our honor guard to change into their uniforms, where should we do that?”
“You can do it right here as we don’t have anyplace set aside, there is no ‘green room’ or anything we have planned around this.”
I was fuming. “So, you mean, we change right here? In this hallway?” (Actually it was the big concourse that goes around the entire Garden.)
“Yes, that’s what we have for you.”
“OK, now there must have been some kind of a mix-up as we never got the train tickets for the trip down here and I had to lean on our petty cash to get one-way tickets and we need reimbursement for that and of course tickets going the other one-way to get us back tonight.”
The young gal was not sure what to do about that, and said, “I’ll work on getting that taken care of, but in the meantime; you can get your staff organized and I’ll come back in a while.”
“OK,” I said, “Can you also tell me when we’re going to get our dinner? The person we talked to said that you guys would provide some dinner to these guys. Are you going to do that before or after we go on?”
Again, the young gal looked at her clipboards and talked on the radio and then said
“After” and walked away.
Now, getting an honor guard ready to preform is not rocket science, but all kinds of things needed to happen. The vets had to change into their class-A uniforms and the gear bags needed to be unfurled and prepped and I wanted to make sure we did this right, so I had them open the gear bags, get the flags out and get ready for a full dress rehearsal that went on for almost three hours. I found a soda machine and got everyone something to drink and began to worry about nobody at all coming to talk or brief us on what we were about to do.
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I sensed that all of the reasons we had come to this particular event were becoming unglued and somehow I knew that what was about to happen wasn't going to be good.
After what seemed like a good hour or two, I realized that our plan which had been so well put together was now coming off the rails. Now, the idea that we would present ourselves as the New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans, representing all homeless veterans across the country, just didn't seem to be happening right.
The young gal who was responsible for us came back and said. “Look, it’s time that you guys get ready to present.”
Mark Helberg and I lined up the honor guard and I gave them their final mission orders which was to remember that they were representing all veterans who were homeless across the country and I told them that I was very proud for doing this and to make me proud by walking tall.
As the honor guard marched out into Madison Square Garden’s stage the place erupted and people stood on their chairs and people were screaming and there were flags and banners and music and I remember an announcer saying something like “Ladies and gentlemen please stand for the presentation of the colors presented by the New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans.”
I could see the smiles on each an every vet’s face. It was an incredible moment, one that I will forever remember. As I looked around Madison Square Garden I could see tens of thousands of people clapping and screaming and I looked around the upper deck where the private boxes were and they all were filled with all kinds of dignitaries of some kind or another. I thought to myself we had done a good thing.
The honor guard remembered everything that I had asked them to do. They performed flawlessly right on cue and it couldn’t have gone any better. Everything was right on time, right on target, and it was like we had practiced forever and all the practices worked out.
Now, on a signal it was time for us to leave the Madison Square Garden stage and go back to our assembly area.
We marched out to where we had our gear and our equipment and the young gal who was the event planner came and shook my hand and Mark’s hand and said everything was great and my first question to her was did she find out when we would be fed because everyone was hungry. She said she would be right back in a couple moments and the honor 38
guard, in the middle of this concourse started taking off their uniforms and some guys were absolutely butt naked with no underwear and not caring as people walked by and it was around that time that the young lady returned.
She told me that she had tried very hard but this is the best she could do for meals. She had with her about ten or twelve box lunches on a cart. In these box lunches were a sandwich, an apple, a bag of chips, and a Coke. I told her that with all my staff included and with all the members of the honor guard we had twenty-two people that I needed to feed, so another ten or twelve box lunches were needed.
She said she was sorry but that was all she could do.
It was around this time that I started to get little real angry as I thought about how we didn't get our travel paid for, about how we didn't really seem to have a place to get dressed or changed and because I was the advocate that I was, I became angry at this young gal who was the event planner.
I told her that I needed to have a conversation with her boss and she said that was impossible but that I could either call or e-mail him when I got back to Boston and she also told me that she did not have the authority to give us any kind of tickets for the train ride back and she said that if we wanted to we could wait outside this door while she double checked, and she pointed at a door. I said OK we can wait out there and she said she would be back.
Without really thinking about it I told everyone to go through that door and that I'd meet them in a moment because I wanted to take one more look around Madison Square Garden with Mark.
“Can you believe it?” I said. “We did it and then we got screwed in the process.”
As Mark and I walked through the door the others had gone through I realized that we were going outside, literally outside of Madison Square Garden onto the streets of New York and everyone assembled was looking at me as if to say “What is it you want us to do now?”
I was furious. I thought about how we have been promised certain things and none of those things had been delivered. I looked across the street and there was a McDonald's and I told everyone to make their way to McDonald's. I pulled out my credit card and told a member of my staff that everyone was to go to McDonald's and get some dinner even if they had been given a box lunch.
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On the way over to McDonald's Mark and I decided that the best course of action was to call the media. I found a phone book and in the phone book I found the number for the ABC
News headquarters in New York and I picked up the phone and asked for the assignment editor on World News Tonight and somebody came on the phone and I said, look, my name is Ken Smith I’m in charge of the homeless veteran honor guard that was just at Madison Square Garden for the Democratic National Convention and I have a huge complaint, a huge complaint, and if you want, you can have someone come and I will give my complaint on tape.
About thirty minutes later while standing outside of this McDonald’s, a news truck with a cameraman and reporter came up and asked me if I was Ken Smith from the homeless veteran shelter. I said yes.
The interview lasted maybe ten minutes as they said they were on a deadline, and for the most part it was a rant by me about how I felt that these homeless veterans had not been given the proper respect. I told the interviewer that we had been promised transportation from Boston and that didn't happen; we been told that we needed to change in a hallway that was a public hallway in front of everybody in the convention and it embarrassed these guys to have to do that; that we had been told we were going to be fed and while I was looking up at the private boxes in Madison Square Garden I saw that people were eating cracked crab and beef bourguignon and here we are, homeless vets, and yet we were given a box lunchactually, we were given less than a full complement of box lunches. And now here we are standing outside of Madison Square Garden and we’re hungry. I said I didn’t have enough money to get all of these homeless veterans back to the shelter in Boston because I spent what little money I had buying them dinner at McDonald's and I thought that it was an embarrasement that this had happened to American veterans even though they were homeless. Shame on the Democratic Convention planners, I said.
The reporter and a cameraman left and I went into McDonald's. Fifteen minutes later a guy came across the street from Madison Square Garden and identified himself as the boss of the woman who had told us where we could change and was the one who'd given us 40
some box lunches. He pulled out three $100 bills and said to please get these guys some dinner here and he will make arrangements for the train tickets to go back to Boston.
Then another guy approached me. Bud Bershoni said he was an American veteran and that he’d seen on the news what happened to us. He said, “I’d like you to know that I own a hotel here in New York and I’d like you to be my guests. I want you all to stay at my hotel tonight and I'd like to give you a better dinner than you’ll get at McDonald's.”
The staff member whom I had with me then told me that she had been checking her voice messages in Boston and that there were all kinds of politicians trying to contact me. It seems that Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Barney Frank, and a host of other Massachusetts Democratic dignitaries were attempting to reach me and explain to me that what happened was a complete mix-up.
We all went to the hotel and sure enough we all were given rooms and fed dinner and the next morning Bud paid for tickets on the train to get us back to Boston.
After we arrived in Boston from the train there were a slew of media trucks parked out front of the shelter and I immediately knew that my interview on ABC News had caught national attention.
I brought everyone into the shelter and I told those reporters in attendance that I would be speaking to them soon. I went to my office and there were messages from everywhere, including a message from Al Gore.
As I was sitting in my office I got a phone call from Barney Frank who proceeded to rip me a new ass because he said that I disrespected Democrats, that I was ungrateful for what had happened, and that there was going to be a new Democratic president and that he, Barney Frank, was disgusted with my actions and found me to be unpatriotic and that I had just made a ton of enemies.
Over the next two weeks I received phone calls from both Democrats and Republicans, all telling me one way or another what they thought of me. Some were good, some bad.
One of the phone calls was from a senior Republican consultant who told me that the honor guard would be welcomed at the Republican National Convention to be held in Houston and that he would send me the information about how we would have transport to Houston and how we would be well taken care of by the Republicans.
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