Vets in Cumberland for Operation Stand Down
CUMBERLAND — The military transformation of Diamond Hill Park was complete on Friday and the large gathering of veterans and volunteers on hand helped kicked off the 26th annual edition of Operation Stand Down Rhode Island.
The outreach weekend for veterans in need has been held at Diamond Hill Park for the past 23 years and Friday’s opening showed this may be the best attended
weekend of them all.
“We had a huge turnout, so we are probably going to be over 500 participating veterans making this the biggest Operation Stand Down ever,” Dee DeQuattro, Operation Stand Down’s director of development said during a stop in the encampment’s mess tent.
This year Operation Stand Down is offering veterans a full-time legal assistance program with the help of Rhode Island Judiciary, and DeQuattro said about 61 visitors to the camp met with a member of the legal staff. Members of the Rhode Island Judiciary were scheduled to operate a temporary court at the camp on Saturday that would afford veterans the opportunity to clear motor vehicle violations and other pending legal matters where possible.
A DENTAL CLINIC
was set up in another of the camp’s mobile operations tents and was making referrals to partnering dentists for any additional dental work needed.
“We have over 50 participating service providers this weekend,” DeQuattro said while explaining the services could help the veterans find permanent housing, counseling and employment assistance, healthcare services and the legal assistance.
“It is an incredible collaboration of individual volunteers, local businesses, non-profit organizations and state agencies,” she said. “Without that, none of this would be possible,” DeQuattro said.
After sitting down to a spaghetti and meatball dinner prepared by the chefs from Johnson & Wales University, Grego, a U.S. Army veteran from Providence, said he had come to Operation Stand Down to take advantage of some its free assistance and also relax a bit after a busy week at work.
The traffic court staff at the camp had helped him resolve a problem with his license stemming from a past child support medical coverage issue and Grego said it was just another way Operation Stand Down has helped him get his life in order over the past three years.
“Just getting my driver’s license back will help because I feel better if I am working,” Grego said.
While he hasn’t had his license, Grego has relied on Operation Stand Down assistance for bus transportation to get back and forth to his job with a shipping company.
He has also received food assistance from the organization, which, in turn, allowed him to pay his rent and keep an apartment.
During the day on Friday, a day he took off to get set up at Operation Stand Down, Grego also had a dental exam and was scheduled to go for further dental care during the coming week.
THE VETERANS
who visit Operation Stand Down can get a lot of their needs addressed but only if they want to put in effort to that end themselves, Grego said.
“It works if you put your mind to it and take the initiative to do it. It’s like they say it’s not a hand out, it’s a hand up,” Grego said. “If you go to meet with them and show initiative to do something for yourself it can help,” he added.
Having served at Fort Benning and Fort Gordon in Georgia before heading off to overseas duty in Germany and Lebanon, Grego said he also enjoyed the brief return to military-style living for weekend.
“Why not? I need a break too,” Grego said while noting he has been working a lot lately and it would be good to enjoy the camp’s amenities, three well-cooked meals a day and more, for the rest of weekend.
Paul Dwyer, 75, a veteran serving with the Army from 1963 to 1968, and spending a year in Vietnam,has been participating with Operation Stand Down since it began back in 1993, and does volunteer work a bus monitor on the morning bus runs to the camp.
“How we help them while they are here is that they feel safe and they learn how to trust themselves,” Dwyer said. “When I started here, I didn’t know how to trust Paul and now I know who Paul is,” Dwyer said of himself.
That, he said, ensures that he keeps “doing better and doing better.”
When he was in the service, Dwyer said he became so tied to the fellow soldiers in his unit, he didn’t want to leave when his tour was coming to an end.
He had received calls from both Senator John Pastore and Senator Claiborne Pell telling him it was time to catch a flight out but it was only when the fellow members of his unit circled him on his last night and made it clear he was going to take the flight home that he knew he would survive.
“I will remember that circle the rest of my life,” Dwyer said.
That support was not available when he arrived back in Rhode Island and Dwyer said he, like many returning Vietnam servicemen at the time, was shocked to find they were the targets of public anger over the war. “It wasn’t like it is now, people didn’t want us to come home,” Dwyer said.
Joining Dwyer for dinner in the mess tent, Michelle Savoie of Burrillville, another longtime volunteer, recalled how her late husband, Dan “Paco” Savoie, a former Marine and member of the Vietnam Veterans Motorcycle Club, got her involved with Operation Stand Down from its early days when the initial gatherings were held at the state’s Ladd School in Exeter.
“I think this is an awesome event,” Savoie said while explaining she has continued to be a volunteer even after her husband’s death in 2010.
“I BELIEVE
if just one man or one woman is helped by this weekend then we have accomplished what we set out to do. And I believe more than that are helped each year,” she added.
Another of the mess tent diners and no stranger to such meals, Major Gen. Christopher P. Callahan, adjutant general of the Rhode Island National Guard, also had strong praise for Operation Stand Down’s encampment weekend and the assistance it provides veterans.
“It’s going very well and Dee said it is the biggest weekend they’ve ever had,” Calla- han said. “It’s the services and the geographic component (Diamond Hill Park), and the ‘one-stop-shopping’ approach to meeting the veterans’ needs,” Callahan said.
The veterans, he added, also seem to enjoy taking a step back in time and donning their old military personas, their identities and special traits from their respective branches of service.
Having worked the food service line earlier, Callahan noted he saw a number of the veterans voicing their tried and true responses to members of the competing branches of service, all in good fun, but just the way it would have been in a real base mess hall.
“When you look around, you see that is because of the camaraderie they have experienced and they are just making light of their cohorts,” Callahan said.
The weekend offers many such experiences for the veterans and that in turn allows them to feel more comfortable about accessing the services they may need, according to Callahan.
“I think they have greater opportunity to take advantage of the services because of the outreach that is in place and the self-support that results from the fact they can sit down with someone and talk about doing what they need to do,” he said.
The Operation Stand Down encampment was in operation at Diamond Hill Park through Sunday. For more information on Operation Stand Down Rhode Island’s full time services in Johnston and at its satellite operations, call 401-3834730.