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Stepping Stones
serves veterans still reeling
from war
By Brandi
Watters, Herald Bulletin Staff
Writer
ANDERSON — The millions of
soldiers who fell in battle in
service to their country will be
honored Monday across a grateful
nation, but just as flags are
flown to honor the fallen,
programs are in place to help
those who came home with battle
wounds, both visible and
invisible.
In
Anderson, Stepping Stones for
Veterans serves as the front
line for men and women who
returned home from war and never
quite found their footing.
From substance abuse and
homelessness to post-traumatic
stress disorder and the
long-term effects of battle
wounds, the center offers
soldiers who’ve lost their way a
place to lay their heads and get
back on their feet.
The faces of those who come and
go from the modest boarding home
and adjoining meeting hall on
West 11th Street are always
changing, but the story of
service to their country remains
the same.
Norman Robinson, 61, Army
medic, Vietnam veteran
Norman Robinson was hit with
three grenades and lived to tell
about it.
The date is still burned into
his mind.
“May 26, 1969,” Robinson
recalled on Sunday at Stepping
Stones, where he’s lived for two
years.
“It was an ambush, at 7, no, 4
a.m.,” the Purple Heart
recipient pondered.
He now leans on a cane from
years of football and
soldiering, can’t hear in his
right ear, and has scars on his
left arm and leg from shrapnel,
but said his real wound, the one
that keeps nagging him, is less
obvious.
“PTSD,” the soldier explained,
is what’s really become his
burden. “It’s a life-threatening
condition.”
For the first few years after he
watched his platoon commander
die in the ambush that left him
deaf in one ear, Robinson had
recurring nightmares about the
war.
Even though the war has been
done for over 30 years, Robinson
said he still responds to
sudden, loud noises and the
sound of helicopters overhead.
He has been having a hard time
getting diagnosed with PTSD, and
feels as though the military has
failed him, and many other vets
with the disorder.
He enjoys living at the Stepping
Stones boarding home and said it
sometimes helps to be near other
soldiers. “They know what you’re
going through.”
Unlike many of his peers,
Robinson never became addicted
to alcohol or drugs, and even
got a degree in political
science from Ball State
University on the GI Bill.
Now, he worries about the future
of today’s Iraq war veterans.
Vietnam was tough, he said, but
coming home from Iraq and
Afghanistan may be more
difficult. “It’s harder for them
because when they come back,
they’ve got no jobs.”
Donald Winters, 57, Marine
Corps, Vietnam veteran
After two tours in Vietnam,
Donald Winters still can’t hear
out of his right ear. A rocket
exploded near him, busting his
ear drum, but instead of getting
treated for the hearing loss,
the Marine picked up his weapon
and went back to duty.
“In the Marine Corps, if you
don’t have a bullet or shrapnel,
you don’t go to sick hall.”
He thought it would return a
week or so after the explosion.
“It never did come back.”
He wouldn’t have even been in
that bunker that day if he’d
been able to find a job.
After one tour from 1969 to
1973, Winters went home in one
piece after watching his fellow
soldiers die or lose limbs.
On his 72nd day home from war,
fed up with looking for work,
Winters returned to duty and
served until 1975.
He couldn’t find work, the vet
said, because Americans didn’t
see him the way they view
veterans today.
When he first got off the plane
from Vietnam in California,
Winters said, a crowd waited
outside and hurled rotten eggs
and tomatoes at him and other
soldiers, screaming “baby
killer” and “child molester.”
Today, things are better, he
said, but the boys who returned
from Vietnam never really got
their “heroes’ welcome.”
“It’s taken a long time for a
Vietnam veteran to be
recognized.”
Michael Sparks, 57, Air Force
mechanic, Vietnam veteran
In 1971, Michael Sparks enlisted
in the Air Force and was shipped
to Thailand to work as an
aircraft maintenance mechanic,
making frequent trips to the Da
Nang Air Force Base in Vietnam.
While he did not serve his
country with a gun in his hand
at all times, Sparks said he saw
his fair share of danger while
at Da Nang.
On one occasion, a rocket was
fired into Michael’s room and
drove through the floor, but
failed to explode.
Unlike his countrymen who served
in the jungle under a constant
hail of bullets, Sparks was able
to use skills he learned back
home in Anderson while working
at Bickel’s Bicycle and Key Shop
to serve his country.
When he left the service in
1974, Sparks returned and
shrugged off the stink of war
without much trouble. “I
acclimated myself very well.”
Being on a tour in Vietnam “in
country” was such a unique
experience that coming back home
to the states was often referred
to as returning to “the world.”
Luckily, Sparks never suffered
from post-traumatic stress
disorder like his buddies in the
infantry who shot and were shot
at, and he made a life for
himself, starting with a job at
Brockway Glass in Lapel. He
retired after 29 years and now
works two days a week in the
office at Stepping Stones,
helping those who didn’t rebound
from war as easily as he did.
Bill Arnold, 42, Navy,
1989-1995
Bill Arnold never saw war, but
every day, he sees its effects
on the faces of those at
Stepping Stones.
Serving from 1989 to 1995,
Arnold worked on weapons systems
and missile directors for the
Navy.
After he left the service,
Arnold suffered from alcoholism
and drug addiction.
He entered Stepping Stones twice
as a client, and admitted that
he had trouble following the
rules.
Now, as a case manager, Arnold
helps keep other soldiers in
step at the center.
“Some people are just down on
their luck,” he said.
Although the place is not run
like the military, “the
camaraderie is the same,” he
said.
Coming to the facility after
facing down the Vietcong is not
easy.
Asking for help, he said, “is
probably the hardest thing these
guys do.”
Once they ask, Stepping Stones
offers counseling and direction,
along with discipline and chores
to keep the old soldiers
accountable.
Although they’ve come to the
place wounded and broken from
life after war, Arnold said the
men are still capable of serving
their country. “These guys, if
you put all these guys together,
they could probably do
anything.” |
