It's a Tuesday morning at the Avondale senior resource center. A group of veterans are listening to Coral Hoffman, a retired Navy chief, talk about who inspired her to join.
“I had a great-great-grandfather that was in the Union Army during the Civil War,” she explains.
This is the monthly meeting of Veterans Affinity, a nonprofit group. Their mission: help seniors vets access things like VA health care, benefits and housing.
“My grandfather was 14 years old and went into World War I, and celebrated his 15th birthday over Normandy. My dad was in the Korean War. So I felt the need to honor their service and do my duty, Hoffman said.
And she did that by serving in the first and second Gulf Wars. The room erupts in applause for her service.
Women in war
Women have long been active in America’s wars — from following their husbands in the Revolutionary War where they did laundry or gathered supplies, to serving as nurses and spies in the Civil War.
In Vietnam, women continued to serve, mostly as nurses. Many of the roughly 11,000 women who were in-country worked near combat areas, endured extraordinarily long hours and difficult conditions, while also handling mass casualty events like the Tet Offensive.
“They opened up doors,” says retired Navy Senior Chief Joyce Kanlan. She served in the Cold War era — that period after Vietnam and before the second Gulf War and Afghanistan.
“And so you can't help yourself to say, ‘welcome home and thank you.’ Thank you for your service and thank you for opening the path.’ And hopefully I did the same thing," Kanlan said.
She went to her first Veterans Affinity meeting 16 months ago.
“Well, Veterans Affinity kind of saved my backside. When I retired, I had a difficult time. I felt like a piece of a puzzle, but I was just a piece, but I couldn't find the rest of the puzzle. So where did I fit?”
Kanlan describes herself as direct. And navigating civilian life was hard. She says she was made fun of — people would say things like, ‘roger,’ or quiz her about why she backed her car into a parking spot.
"Because of the motors in Iraq,” she explains. “When you have to run with your vehicle, you can’t afford to back out, you have to pull out.”
After that meeting, she kept coming back.
“Then I heard they volunteered to help people who are shut-ins, people who are amputees from Iraq or Agent Orange from Vietnam, and I said, 'I want a piece of that.' And my little piece of the puzzle … it was the piece I was looking for, so I can complete me," Kanlan said.
'What we do is we go find them'
Retired Army Command Sergeant Major Rick Kreiberg founded Veterans Affinity after serving for 35 years.
“So the challenge that I see is that society as a whole, we address the veterans that we can see and we can hear.”
It’s a squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease situation.
“But the veterans from the Vietnam-era and older, a lot of them are in long-term care facilities,” says Kreiberg.
“A lot of them don't wear caps, nothing. They don't identify themselves as a veteran, and so they're forgotten. And they fade away. And so what we do is we go find them.”
“A lot of them don't wear caps, nothing. They don't identify themselves as a veteran, and so they're forgotten. And they fade away. And so what we do is we go find them.”
And invite them to a meeting, like the one on this day, where donuts and coffee are served and stories are shared — along with plenty of good natured ribbing.
'They had nothing'
Anita Jones is a Vietnam War-era Navy veteran. She didn’t serve in-country, but she remembers what it was like for those coming home.
“World War II, it was like they were so welcomed when they came home. They had ticker tape parades. Vietnam, they had nothing — they had absolutely nothing.”
That included the women who were saving American and Vietnamese lives.
“The women coming back, even that, they weren't welcomed. None of our military were welcomed.”
According to the VA, there’s limited information about the women who served in Vietnam and the medical issues they may have faced related to things like Agent Orange, PTSD and other traumas.
“So having a a Vietnam War veteran connect with a Vietnam War veteran — they understand what they went through,” says Kreiberg. “You have a woman veteran that can connect with another woman veteran, they know how they feel and what they went through.”
Kreiberg says it's a lot like a matchmaking game.
“So when we do coffee hours, I always pay attention to caps or anything. ‘Wait, you were in the Navy? You're on a ship? I've got a Navy veteran over here who was on a ship.’ Let me connect you guys together.”
And sometimes it's kismet.
“‘Oh my God, you were on the same ship in Vietnam and you don't know each other?’ Things like that happen.”
Something else happens, too: They start talking about their experiences with each other and with civilians.
“If we would have done this a year ago, you wouldn't have got the same story today. Those three women are evolving. So the story that they told today is much longer, much more in depth than it was a year ago.”
Because talking about it here — in a space where the people share the same language and a similar history — provides some closure for many veterans who’ve been holding on to the trauma, the grief, that moral injury that is the result of war.
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