Key to veteran health, wellness is continued contact
Iam sometimes asked, “How is it you are able to do this up in the Antelope Valley?” And the question revolves around how is it that so many veterans have so much contact with each other, and that it seems to be helpful to their lives.
The answer seems to be provided by the context of the question, and that answer is contact — social contact that is healthy and promotes mental health and well-being.
About 15 years ago, a half-dozen or so veterans scrambled around to find a place to gather for a weekly coffee gathering, and Jin Hur, then proprietor of Crazy Otto’s Diner on Avenue I, obliged. Over the years, the Coffee4Vets gathering has grown to about a hundred veterans with guests, friends and partners. It has also spurred the formation of several other gatherings on different days of the week.
You cannot really compare it to a 12-step recovery program, except for this. If you want to find a meeting on a different day of the week, you probably can.
The Coffee4Vets gathering, with its coffee free for veterans, offered a model, and a venue for sharing information. This benefits legitimate nonprofit organizations servicing veterans, and occasionally it exposes bad actors trying to crowd into the field. The bad actors, who turn up in veteran activities like any other nonprofit field, tend to expose themselves sooner, or later.
Eventually, Coffee4Vets became a nonprofit, and that weekly gathering gives the floor to others doing work on behalf of those who served in the armed forces. Among the regulars who share about their good works are Vets4Veterans of the Antelope Valley, Mental Health America Los Angeles and its Veterans Resource Center, the VA Vet Center, Blue Star Mothers of the Antelope Valley, Veterans Peer Access Network, Homes4Families building 56 homes for veterans in Palmdale, and the William J. “Pete” Knight Veterans Home in Lancaster, run by CalVet, the California Department of Veterans.
The social gatherings offer a key to how the rolling stone got rolling. The foundation reasoning is that veterans who served, in wartime, outside combat, on long deployments on sea, land, and in the air, have earned benefits because they frequently risked their lives in service, sometimes with the trauma of being wounded, physically or mentally as a result of their service. The poor treatment inflicted on Vietnam War veterans, all in their 70s or older now, became a warning to how more recent generations of veterans should be treated.
On March 16, a Saturday, at Poncitlán Square, the group called the Boots On Ground Alliance will host a third annual “Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans.” Each time it happened previously, Vietnam veterans showed up who experienced a warm welcome, perhaps for the first time, perhaps not, but welcome just the same.
On March 22, Homes4Families, a robust nonprofit organization modeled after Habitat For Humanity, will hold its Builders Ball, an annual gala fundraiser at Sheraton Universal, with funds devoted to building high-value homes for low-income veterans, dozens of the homes under construction in Palmdale with financial assistance from the city and CalVet.
Vietnam Veterans Day in California and across the nation in March 30. The AV Veterans Community Action Coalition on that evening, 4 to 8 p.m., will host its annual Veterans Dinner at Legacy Commons Center for Active Seniors in Palmdale. It is free for veterans, $40 for non-vets. RSVP to avvcac4@yahoo.com.
AV Vets4Veterans, one of the most effective full spectrum veterans service organizations, recognized as the 34th Assembly District’s “Nonprofit of the Year,” hosts its annual Evening of Community Support on April 5 at the Hellenic Center in Lancaster. Cost of dinner is $125, but the event attracts major community sponsors because the group does so much in feeding, sheltering, housing, training and helping educate veterans via scholarships. See www.avvets4veterans.org for details.
In a spring packed with activity, the AV Wall Committee, the guardians of the Antelope Valley Mobile Vietnam Memorial overseen by the Point Man of the AV team will be ferrying the halfscale Vietnam Memorial to the City of Pico Rivera for the week of Memorial Day in May.
In the Antelope Valley, there is no reason for a veteran to feel abandoned or to be without access to hope, friendship, or camaraderie, and all of those are key to mental health and well-being.
Dennis Anderson is a licensed clinical social worker at High Desert Medical Group. An Army paratrooper veteran who covered the Iraq War for the Antelope Valley Press, he serves as Supervisor Kathryn Barger’s appointee on the Los Angeles County Veterans Advisory Commission.