Old Writings Recast

May 15th, 2014  |   

I have been reading, as I said I would do back in March, over thirty years worth of Notes From Under The Fig Tree. I said I would do what Philip Roth has done. He has stopped writing, and gone back to reread his 31 books, in order to see if he had “wasted his time.”

A number of my readers encouraged me to keep on writing. Looking at my old Notes, and other writings I have done since I was ordained fifty years ago, convinces me that I should heed that advice. Some of my writings seem fresh, others dated. I see places where I would like to recast what I have written in ways that speak to the present and the future. I even see the possibility of organizing a collection of some of my pieces, recast and rewritten.

In this issue of Notes, I am trying a bit of a new form. As you will see, I have read and reworked a piece that focused on an experience that took place in 1971. I hope you find this issue of Notes interesting and somewhat innovative. As always, I would welcome responses from readers who look at life from beneath a variety of trees.

Gas Was Forty Cents A Gallon & My Phone Exploded

The year 1971 was a memorable one. Gas was forty cents a gallon; the average price of a new home was $25,250 while the average income in the country was $10,600. I could mail a letter for a nickel and three pennies, on the way to a movie that cost me $1.50.

And because I was an avid Baltimore Colts football fan back then, I still remember the Super Bowl in which they defeated Dallas 16-13.

There were no cell phones in those days, only those bulky old black, heavy-duty-plastic phones with a rotary dial activated with one’s index finger. It may sound a bit strange to make an analogical connection between a phone and a grenade, but it is not inappropriate.

A grenade will not explode unless someone pulls the pin. Nor will a phone ring unless someone dials a number. And a phone, particularly on a dark night, can detonate with an alarming jolt.

On a moonlit 1971 night, the phone exploded on the bedside table next to the bed where Judy and I were enjoying those first beatifically sweet hours of sleep. The clock next to the phone read 12:30. Fumbling to smother the sound, I discovered a hysterical woman on the other end of the line.

That was the year the Vietnam War came under a severe critique when Daniel Ellsberg released The Pentagon Papers for publication. On the other end of the phone that had exploded in our bedroom was another harsh reminder that the Vietnam War had come home to roost. It was as if shrapnel from Vietnam had penetrated the body politic of the nation, and in the bodies of veterans who had come home from the war.

The message was clear; the woman on the other end of the phone was having a fight with her husband, a Vietnam War veteran. The messenger, however, was not clear; she was drunk. Having counseled with this couple, I knew they were both substance abusers.

Sober up, I told her, and we will be able to talk in the morning. Hanging up the phone, I went looking for the sleep I had abandoned when the phone had exploded.

Thirty minutes later the phone rang again. Her husband was threatening to kill himself and an officer from the sheriff’s department had just arrived. Please come, she begged; please come, she screamed.

Out of bed and into my clothes, I left Judy in bed as she sent me off with a “be careful.”

A CNN Investigative Report On VA Medical Care

Scott Bronstein and I met in 1998. He was a producer doing pieces for Mike Wallace at Sixty Minutes. I was working for the Episcopal Diocese of Delaware doing social justice work in rural Sussex County in southern Delaware. Scott called me the morning a New York Times article was published featuring my work with poultry workers and farmers who were getting the short end of the stick from companies like Perdue and Tyson. That contact resulted in a December 1999 Sixty Minutes piece.

That was the beginning of a friendship that has continued for15 years, over a period of time that has seen him become the Senior Investigative Producer at CNN in Washington. When I get discouraged or cynical about television news and commentary, I think of Scott’s superlative work, his idealism and dedication in digging out the truth that lies beneath so much subterfuge.

After the Malaysia flight 370 disappeared, and CNN sent large numbers of reporters, camera crews and staff to the region, I spoke with Scott. He told me about the work he had been doing investigating serious problems in VA hospitals. He advised me to keep an eye out for his piece about to be aired, pertaining to the death of U.S. veterans due to extensive delays in VA hospital treatment.

Anyone watching CNN knows very well how extensively the flight 370 stories have been covered, too much coverage in my opinion. Looking for a plane that might be resting deep below the sea, we were inundated with 24/7 media coverage of the search and recovery efforts.

Scott’s investigative work on the VA hospitals has, like that phone by my bedside, exploded. The CNN investigative piece has prompted a congressional investigation, White House attention, and the major media coverage it deserves.

We went to war, now what’s being done to help the men and women who have come back decimated by it?

“You’re A Gook! You’re A Gook! I Have To Kill Gooks!”

The desperate woman, who had pulled the pin on my phone with her call, lived with her suicidal husband just outside the city limits of Martinsburg. Nearing their mobile home, I was met by the headlights of an oncoming car. It was the officer from the sheriff’s department. He stopped to let me know that since no crime had been committed he was forced to leave when the ”man-of-the-house” told him to go. “But,” he said, “I warn you. it’s crazy in there.”

And, indeed, it was crazy. Approaching the front door, I heard the woman screaming. Her cries were coming from the bathroom where I found her standing in the bathtub with her arms around her husband. In one hand he had a razorblade that he had used to slice away at his other arm. There was blood all over him and the bathtub.

Moving his wife out of the bathtub, I climbed in and held him, being careful to keep the razor blade away from his own body and mine. I looked into his eyes. “It’s Jim, your friend. Please, let me help.” He looked back into my eyes, but it was clear that he didn’t see me. He saw someone else.

“You’re a Gook! You’re a Gook! I have to kill Gooks!

What happened then happened fast. We ended up on the floor, outside the bathroom, with me on top of him. The razor blade now in the empty bloodstained tub, I held him down with the full weight of my body. His wife, drunk and crying, was able to follow my instructions. I told her to call Judy and have her get the Rescue Squad out here in a hurry.

The two medical attendants who finally arrived looked like angels to me. I gave them names not present on the nametags attached to their uniforms. One is Raphael, said in the apocryphal book of Enoch to have healed the earth when it was defiled by the sins of the fallen angels. To the other, I assigned the name Gabriel, the angel who foretold the birth of Jesus to the Virgin Mary.

Jesus, was I ever glad to see these angels!

Restrained and packed into the ambulance with his wife, I followed the vehicle as this troubled veteran was escorted to nearby Newton D. Baker V.A. Hospital. 

The Truth Of The Matter

Last month Kryn Milner was shot to death by one of his four children because he was threatening to kill his entire family. His widow is now speaking out about his death in order to call attention to the need for better treatment for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.

Only 44 at the time of his death, this 27-year veteran had been deployed 11 times to Iraq and Afghanistan. Last September he tried to commit suicide. Every day 32 veterans from these deployments either attempt or succeed in committing suicide.

Kryn was caught in the dilemma that so many veterans have to suffer, the situation depicted in the CNN expose of the VA hospital system. They are literally dying for help while waiting for diagnosis and treatment. “The truth of the matter,” says Milner’s wife, Amy,  “is if we can’t take care of our veterans, we shouldn’t be sending them off to war. It doesn’t make sense. Because they’re coming back and this is the result and it’s happening more and more.”

Veterans Affairs Secretary, Retired General Eric Shinseki is being called on the carpet for the failures of the VA hospitals. He is being subpoenaed to appear before the House Veteran’s Affairs Committee, chaired by Republican Jeff Miller from Florida. Yes, certainly the buck stops with General Shinseki, and he must answer the tough questions, but there’s more than meets the eye here.

The truth of the matter:

·      Rep. Miller, a real estate broker, has never stepped into a war zone as a member of the military. That may not be important to some people, but it is to me, since he has used his power in Congress, distanced from the hell of war, to vote in favor of going to war in Iraq. He continues to support U.S. military presence there. 

·      General Shinseki is an honorable man who was vilified, marginalized, then fired by the Bush administration for his warning that a war with Iraq would take huge numbers of troops and resources, more than Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz assured us would bring victory there. Get it? The Bush/Rumsfeld/ Wolfowitz Gang, with Millers vote, sent us to war, and now General Shinseki will be blamed for the human cost of that war.

·      Shinseki is a quiet, capable man, loyal to the military he has served, a man who survived a grievous injury in Vietnam. He has refused to spill the beans about the fools who took us to war. He is an ideal scapegoat for the political ideologues on Capitol Hill who will use him as a ploy to push the blame up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House and President Obama’s administration.

·      The VA hospitals are limited, by their very nature, to what they can do for veterans. We should fund and staff these facilities so that they are able to do the good things they do so well. What is so desperately needed now are creative alternative community resources that complement VA services.   

I hope that my readers will pay close attention to the hearings and the findings because this situation cannot continue. And the truth of the matter will be important.

The Newton D. Baker Veterans Administration Hospital

The drive is uneventful, no traffic on the road, as the sun is still on its way toward shining down on this Shenandoah Valley community. Known for it’s delicious apples and peaches, it is also a place that lures military veterans. They come for residency and treatment services available at the Newton D. Baker V.A. Hospital.

Newton Diehl Baker was a West Virginian, born in Martinsburg. He went on to get a law degree at my alma mater, Washington and Lee. On campus, a faculty office building is named in his honor.

President Wilson appointed Baker as the Secretary of War. He was described by one historian as “A civilian’s civilian,” a man who “saw the military as a necessity, but he had no awe of people in uniform, no romantic feelings toward them, and no dreams of glory.” He came under criticism for being a pacifist and was the leading proponent of President Wilson’s plan for the United States to join the League of Nations.

Speaking about soldiers he had seen die, he said  “I swore an obligation to the dead that in season and out, by day and by night, in church, in political meeting, in the market-place, I intended to lift up my voice always and ever until their sacrifice was really perfected.” And by perfected, he meant that there would be no more wars.

The blinking red lights on the rescue vehicle ahead of me hurry us along toward the Newton D. Baker Veterans Hospital sign, and the road on the grounds that leads directly to the emergency entrance.

My two angels pull up to the entrance and move to open the back doors of their vehicle. I follow along with the wife of the man strapped to the gurney. The doors open to the emergency room entrance.

When the doctor moves toward us, he looks directly at the man stretched out on the gurney— the man with the bloodied arm, disheveled attire, and wild eyes.

And then another grenade exploded. The man I had been able to restrain on the floor of his mobile home, went stark raving mad, screaming and straining against all that bound him in place.

The doctor was an Asian American man.

A Blood-Spattered Mustard Colored Jacket

Pitch, the resinous black substance that permeates the asphalt roads beneath the wheels that carry me home from the hospital, finds its reflection in the dark sky above. Pitch black, the sun will soon bleach and burn the darkness into retreat. Homes, swaddling people in sleep will soon be filled with their own light and heart-beating energy.

I enter our home through the kitchen and unzip my blood-spattered mustard-colored jacket. A bloody war in Vietnam has come home in more ways than one. A human being, wasted in Vietnam, has been dropped off at the Newton D. Baker VA Hospital. My blood-soaked jacket will be dropped into the washing machine at home. I’m thinking it all has something to do with reclamation and recycling. 

Slipping back into bed, Judy feels my presence next to her. She asks me if I am okay. I tell her that I am okay, hardly a way to begin the day—with a lie. I am not okay, nor are our men and women waging war in Vietnam, nor are the Vietnamese upon who we are waging war, nor are so many veterans who have brought the war home with them, nor are the families who suffer through the effects of a war that has taken such a terrible toll on them.

I Remember My Teammate Jay

Thinking about troops who have come back home maimed and broken, in need of being healed by a country that cares, brings to mind those who did not come home alive. I think of Jay Stull.

Jay was three years younger than me. Both of us entered the Marine Corps upon graduation. He died on February 28, 1968 when the helicopter he was in was downed by heavy automatic weapons fire as it was headed to Khe Sanh on a rescue mission. The helicopter crashed, rolled down a mountain, exploded and burned. There were no survivors. Twenty-three men were killed.

I came home alive; Jay was buried at Arlington Cemetery and remembered at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington—row 69, panel 41E.  

If you go up on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund webpage, you will see two pictures of Jay that someone has posted there. In one he is standing tall in his Marine uniform. The other picture, he is suited up in his lacrosse uniform, on the same field on which we played together on the lacrosse field in Lexington, Virginia. I don’t know where the man is who thought I was a Gook. My blood-spattered mustard-colored jacket is gone. But even after all these years, I remember Jay, my teammate.

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