After son’s death, dad fights vet suicides
At a veterans appreciation event a few years ago, Michael K. Coon made his grandfather a promise.
Pointing to the combat infantryman badge on Phillip Coon’s uniform, he said, “Grandpa, I’m going to have one of those, too — just like the one on your chest,” recalled Michael’s father, Michael D. Coon.
He said it was the first time that his son, then 23, had indicated he planned to go into the military.
Phillip — a decorated World War II veteran who survived the infamous Bataan Death March — couldn’t have been more proud of the young man he still referred to as “my baby grandson.”
Going on to enlist in the Army, Michael K. Coon would represent the third generation of his family to serve, carrying on a tradition that, as a source of pride to the Coons, ranked second only to their Muscogee (Creek) heritage.
Recently, during a visit to Fort Gibson National Cemetery on Veterans Day, the memory of Michael K. Coon’s promise was again on his father’s mind.
For Michael D. Coon, Fort Gibson will, from now on, be the site of an annual pilgrimage.
What more appropriate way to observe Veterans Day, Coon said, than by visiting the graves of his father, Phillip, and son, Michael.
War at home
After 10 years of distinguished military service — including tours in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf, and various decorations as a squad leader — Army Staff Sgt. Michael Keith Coon took his own life in 2015.
Coon had recently completed his third tour of duty and was battling the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Today, nearly two years later, Michael D. Coon is carrying on a mission in memory of his son: to raise awareness of the issue of veteran suicides.
Coon, a Glenpool resident and former Vietnamera Army paratrooper, has long been active in veterans causes. He’s a part-time service officer for Disabled American Veterans and a member of Rolling Thunder.
Now, as Oklahoma ambassador for the national nonprofit Mission 22, he’s playing a role in the organization’s effort to combat veteran suicide.
It’s an effort he wants Tulsa to share in.
Specifically, he said, he wants the community to be the permanent home to a memorial to these veterans.
Mission 22’s War at Home Memorial, currently a traveling memorial, is dedicated to “the men and women who fought for America overseas, and then paid the ultimate price here at home.” The outdoor memorial is a series of steel-plate “silhouettes,” each created from the photograph of a veteran who committed suicide.
One of the memorial’s images is of Michael K. Coon. His father provided the photo — a picture of Michael using a mine detector in Iraq.
Coon said the national organization has identified Tulsa’s Veterans Park as the ideal spot to permanently house the memorial.
He’s working now to get Tulsa city officials on board.
Taking care of his squad
Michael K. Coon attended Jenks Public Schools where he played football and baseball. He graduated in 2000.
From there, he attended Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology in Okmulgee before enlisting in the Army.
Before his son went overseas on his first tour, Michael D. Coon said, his grandfather gave him the same talk he’d once given to him.
“You keep your focus on where you are at, not on what’s going on back here,” Phillip Coon told him. “That way you will come home again.”
Michael K. Coon heeded that advice. Three times, he would make it home from war safely.
Throughout his time of service, his grandfather’s counsel continued to be important.
After his tours — and sometimes during phone calls while there — Phillip helped him deal with some of his misgivings, Michael D. Coon said.
“Michael wasn’t proud of some of the things he’d done, and it bothered him,” he said.
Drawing on his own experiences from World War II and as a prisoner of war, Phillip Coon tried to ease his mind about killing the enemy. “He told him ‘They are war deaths. You are in combat, and you are taking care of your squad, just like I had to do,’” Michael D. Coon said.
By all accounts, squad leader was a job at which Michael excelled.
At his funeral, former members of his unit talked about how well he led and looked after them, his father recalled.
“They said he was a natural-born leader. I was like ‘Can this be the same boy I helped raise?’ ” Michael D. Coon said, laughing.
“He had gone from a jokester to a man of honor.”
‘Half of them were gone’
But that transformation came at a cost.
Michael K. Coon struggled emotionally with losing comrades, his father said.
He’d seen some close ones killed in combat, and while in Afghanistan, one committed suicide.
Those losses took a toll on Coon. And by the end of his final tour, it was clear all was not right.
On the wall of his Glenpool home, Michael D. Coon had displayed a photo of his son’s infantry school graduating class.
“He told me to take it down,” he said. “It reminded him too much of those who had died. Half of them were gone.”
Michael began drinking heavily, his father said. He was constantly on edge and could hardly sleep.
“He carried this big guilt that he really didn’t need to carry,” Michael D. Coon said.
A couple of times, he added, he saw his son fall to his knees and beat the ground, crying that “I didn’t do enough to save my brothers.”
Making matters worse during this time, family members were also dying. Michael’s grandparents — including his beloved grandfather Phillip, who made it to 95 — and his mother all died in close succession.
“All these things were hitting him left and right,” his father said.
Michael was diagnosed with PTSD and put on medication, but it was to no avail.
Two weeks after returning to Fort Bliss from his mother’s funeral, on Sept. 23, 2015, Michael K. Coon, committed suicide.
He was 33.
He left behind a wife and four children.
Long way to go
Before making the drive to Fort Gibson this year, Michael D. Coon had another stop-off first.
The annual Tulsa Veterans Day Parade.
Invited to ride in the event, Coon was joined there by his grandson, Dalton Coon, who afterward went with him to the cemetery.
Dalton, one of Michael K. Coon’s children who lives in Coweta, is proud of his dad and his family’s three generations of Army service.
“He says, ‘I’m going to be the fourth (generation),’” Michael D. Coon said, smiling.
Riding in the back of a truck in the parade, Dalton carried a large portrait of his dad. Beside him, his grandfather held a Mission 22 banner.
The organization, Coon said, took its name from a statistic about veteran suicides.
Once averaging 22 a day in the U.S., the number is actually down to 20 now, he said.
It’s progress. But there’s still a long way to go, he added.
In the meantime, he hopes the Mission 22 War at Home Memorial will continue to raise the issue.
For the next year, the memorial will be on display in Norfolk, Virginia. From there, if Coon has his way, it will move to Tulsa’s Veterans Park to stay.
“It would be a great healing process for the vets to have this here,” he said.
Coon said no parent should have to bury a child, and he hopes by his efforts to spare others the anguish he’s suffered.
But he’s proud at least of where his son lies. Countless members of Coon’s family and extended family are buried at Fort Gibson — cousins and uncles, veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam.
Most importantly, his son is near his grandfather Phillip.
“For me it’s a great honor (that they are buried at Fort Gibson),” he said. “They served their country.”
Before his service was done, Michael K. Coon made good on his vow to earn a combat infantryman badge.
In fact, he did his grandfather one better: He brought home two — one from Iraq, one from Afghanistan.
A distinction awarded to soldiers who fought in active ground combat, “Michael was most proud of those badges,” Michael D. Coon said.
“And my dad was proud of his grandson. We were all proud of him.”