Vets helping vets in Tri-Cities adjust to life back home

Vets helping vets in Tri-Cities adjust to life back home

By Joe Chapman, Herald staff writer

Herald
Geoff Smith of Kennewick, left, gets advice from Mike Black at the end of a recent veterans resource panel at Columbia Basin College.


The jungles of Vietnam are a long way from the sands of Iraq or the mountains of Afghanistan.

But in the Tri-Cities, veterans of those faraway wars have found enough in common to support each other as they readjust to life on the home front.

In particular, two veterans who served in Vietnam and Southeast Asia have been offering job assistance, educational advice and support to about six veterans of service in Iraq, Afghanistan and Bosnia for the past six months.

It's one of many ways the Tri-Cities' veteran community is coming together to pool resources and meet their respective needs.

Many of the newer veterans don't realize the variety of options they have or how to tap into the numerous resources available to them, said the mentors, Jack Carolla of Burbank and Mike Black of Kennewick.

"The young ones are clueless about what to do, where to go," Carolla said. "Older veterans that have scratched and clawed their way, they know where all the land mines are."

Carolla benefited from the help of an older veteran after getting back from Vietnam in 1969. He floundered for more than 10 years until a professor at the University of Idaho who was a former prisoner of war helped get him enrolled there.

Carolla and Black earned bachelor's degrees in engineering from the University of Idaho. Black went on to own a consulting business for 14 years until he sold it three years ago. Now the two are partners at Columbia Engineers, a civil engineering firm.

They often come into contact with younger veterans through Jeanie Nelson, a veterans advocate at WorkSource Columbia Basin. When she refers someone to them, they'll form a relationship with him, meeting him for lunch, getting together at his home or theirs, even rendezvousing at a parking lot just to exchange papers.

"It's not just a counseling office where a guy stops in," Carolla said. "You've got to make an effort one-on-one."

One such veteran, Scott Dawson, 26, of Kennewick, served with the Marines near Fallujah in 2004. He met Carolla at the VA's community-based outpatient clinic in Richland one day as they were both walking out.

Carolla overheard Dawson talking with Nelson about a land surveying class he was taking at Columbia Basin College, and Carolla ended up handing Dawson his card. A few days later, Dawson met Carolla and Black at a restaurant for lunch.

"I wish I'd met Jack and Mike when I got out of the service," Dawson said. Transitioning into civilian life was hard at the time, and it's still hard, he said.

"Those two being at least in the military and through some sort of hell, it makes things a lot better," Dawson said of their ability to relate to him.

Another veteran, Geoff Smith, 24, of Kennewick, said Black and Carolla don't presume to know exactly what it was like in the more recent wars.

"They always stress that 'This isn't about our war. This is about your war. This is about you guys and we don't want to leave you out in the wind like we got left,' " Smith said.

Smith served in Iraq almost all of 2005, working in convoy security about 60 miles south of Baghdad. Over that year, his convoy was hit by improvised explosive devices and rocket-propelled grenades 37 times, his own vehicle taking hits six times. Two years after he got out of the Army, he still struggles with problems of concentration, memory, anger and paranoia. When Nelson referred him to Black and Carolla, he had lost his job and was in danger of not having a place to live.

So they put him to work as a field technician at Columbia Engineers, and with their guidance, Smith plans to enroll at CBC this fall. On Wednesday, Smith attended a veterans forum at the college, at which Black was a panel speaker.

Veteran students and prospective students who attended learned about options such as the new Post-9/11 G.I. Bill that will go into effect next year, tuition waivers, and translating military training into college credits.

"Really, we have the support structures (for veterans) in place," said Jason Schlegel, CBC's director of student success and retention, who coordinated the forum.

"It's just the question is, are service members willing to take advantage of those and utilize those to help them? And I hope they do."

CBC itself could end up playing an even bigger role in serving veterans, Black said. He and Carolla are working on an arrangement to rent office space from CBC. With a more official home base from which to operate, they feel they could begin to reach hundreds of veterans.

And CBC could be in the cards as the Columbia Basin Veterans Coalition, which Black and Carolla support, continues exploring options for establishing a veterans resource center for the Tri-Cities, Black said.

Such a center would be a one-stop shop where veterans could get a variety of services, such as medical treatment, counseling, job assistance and educational resources.

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