Wounded warriors look forward

[thedrifter]

Wounded warriors look forward
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Job fair aimed to help Marines make transition to civilian life
June 18, 2008 - 12:51AM
JENNIFER HLAD
THE DAILY NEWS

Johnny Burra doesn't want to stop serving his country just because he is getting out the Marine Corps.

For now, a broken foot is all that's keeping him from a career in law enforcement, but doctors tell the wounded warrior he should be back to 100 percent in about a year.

In the meantime, he is trying to find another type of job that matches the skills he learned as an infantry Marine.

Burra was one of dozens of Marines from the Wounded Warrior Battalion who took time Tuesday morning to meet employers at a job fair at Camp Lejeune.

Though the fair was open to everyone on base, the first two hours were reserved specifically for wounded warriors.

The idea is to make the transition from Marine to civilian seamless, said Richard Waller, employment transition coordinator for the Marine Corps' Wounded Warrior Regiment.

Waller, who served 23 years in the Marine Corps, said it can be difficult for wounded warriors, whose identity is often based on being a Marine.

"When your identity is taken away, you can fall into depression," Waller said. Helping the wounded warriors find a new job and possibly a new identity can ease their stress, he said.

Burra, who was injured in Sept. 2005, said it is frustrating to be "shut down" by employers with more physically demanding jobs, but he felt the employers were generally prepared and welcoming to the wounded.

Francisco Kelly still has a year left in the Marine Corps, as he waits for his medical board review.

But he hopes to find a security job when he gets out.

"I love the job," Kelly said, and hopes to find something similar in the civilian sector. Kelly was injured in a series of explosions in Iraq and has a traumatic brain injury and multiple retinal holes in each eye.

Northrop Grumman, a defense and technology company, had multiple recruiters at the job fair. Oliver Nelan said he recruits mainly former military service members because of their skills and their attitude.

‘They've got the work ethic. That's the key thing," he said.

Though Nelan was recruiting for jobs that could be performed by someone who had suffered some injuries, Duane Hardesty was looking specifically for the "severely wounded."

Hardesty, a Vietnam veteran and retired Army colonel, helped develop a program called Operation Impact for Northrop Grumman.

To qualify for the program, service members must have been severely injured in combat in the global war on terror, with at least a 30 percent disability rating from the Department of Defense or Veterans Affairs.

"This is not a job program, it is a career (program)," he said.

"We want to help them help themselves make this transition."

The program also will accept a spouse or other primary wage earner when the injured service member can no longer serve as the primary wage earner, Hardesty said.

One hour into the job fair, Hardesty already had 10 names on his sign-up sheet. He said he wants all the wounded warriors know they are valued.

"I really believe we've given them what we want to give them: hope," he said. "I want them to know there are people who care for them and appreciate their sacrifice."



Contact interactive content editor Jennifer Hlad at jhlad@freedomenc.com or 910-219-8467.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Fair aids wounded Marines
This time, it's civilian recruiters with prospect of jobs at Lejeune event
Jay Price, Staff Writer
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CAMP LEJEUNE - A pair of rocket-propelled grenades saddled Pvt. Robert Wild with back, neck and leg injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder and a traumatic brain injury. None of that discouraged 45 employers Tuesday at Camp Lejeune's first job fair for injured troops.

Such job fairs are new for the Marine Corps. The Corps held the first two in Virginia and California this year and plans to make them regular events, said Richard Waller, a civilian Marine Corps worker who came to Lejeune to help organize the event.

"Instead of making them go looking for employers, we wanted to bring the employers here to them," said Waller, who is with the Virginia-based Wounded Warrior Regiment, to which injured Marines are assigned while they recuperate and prepare for discharge.

Nearly all 42 Marines in Lejeune's Wounded Warrior Barracks attended, some hobbling from booth to booth or cradling an arm in a sling. Many, including Wild, wore "smart phones" on their belts, programmed to alert them to appointments because brain injuries had damaged their short-term memories.

Wild was injured when his unit's small outpost south of Fallujah in Iraq's Anbar province was attacked by insurgents. In less than two weeks, he will leave the service and he had little idea what he would do next, until the job fair.

"It gives you hope that once you get out, it's not the end of the world, that there are people out there who want to hire us," he said. "Until I came here and talked to some of these guys, I didn't know my options."

After talking Tuesday to a representative of Werner Enterprises, a Nebraska trucking company, Wild thinks that driving an 18-wheeler might be the best choice.

There are more troops like Wild almost every day; the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have created the highest ratio of wounded troops to those killed in U.S. military history. Advances in medical treatment and body and vehicle armor have allowed troops to survive attacks that in earlier wars would have been fatal. In August 2007, CQ Review, a weekly print and online report, said that about 3,100 troops had been severely injured in Iraq or Afghanistan, based on insurance records.

Employers said they hadn't come to the job fair out of charity, but because veterans, injured or not, can make top-notch hires.

John F. Moore, himself a former Marine, has recruited almost 50 from Camp Lejeune for Werner.

Veterans stick it out

Often civilians hear that they can make $50,000 a year driving a truck and think it's easy money. They drop out quickly when they discover it's not, he said. That doesn't happen as often with former service members; they're used to even tougher conditions, and time away from home on the road doesn't trouble them as much.

As long as a disabled veteran can pass the mandatory DOT physical and the requirements for a commercial driver's license, the company can hire him, Moore said. It has even taken on amputees, with DOT waivers. If they can't drive, they can be mechanics or perform other work for the company, he said.

Other veterans and their families were allowed in to Tuesday's job fair, but first two hours were reserved for wounded troops.

Cpl. James Parris, 24, who was injured in Iraq after being thrown from a flipping Humvee into a concrete barrier, said the variety of employers helped him see the range of things he could still do, despite a traumatic brain injury and other wounds.

Staff Sgt. Dominico Washington, 31, was heartened that employers were interested in enlisted Marines, not just former officers.

"There have been a couple of job fairs I've gone to where they were just looking for people with college degrees, and the junior Marines would go, and it really got them down," Washington said. "It's like, so we went out and served our country and this is what there is? Some guy saying, no, you can't have a real job, all you can do is maybe run a Xerox machine."

Washington was a bomb magnet in Iraq. Five improvised explosive devices detonated near his Humvees on different occasions, he said, four times when he was in the vulnerable position of turret gunner.

He was left with an accumulation of injuries, including post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. He wore his right arm in a sling Tuesday after a shoulder operation; the left shoulder is next.

The job fair was sponsored by the Wounded Warrior Regiment. The regiment, the job fairs and the employers' interest are measures of how attitudes about veterans have changed, inside and outside the military. They are partly a reaction to the shoddy treatment of many troops returning from the Vietnam War.

'Vivid memories'

"I have very vivid memories of coming home," said Duane Hardesty, a retired Army colonel who did a tour of duty in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969 and now recruits injured veterans for defense contractor Northrop Grumman. "There wasn't anything here for us. We were shunned, and some are still out on the street with a cup, begging.

"Well, not on our watch," he said. "Not this time."

(News researchers Susan Ebbs and Brooke Cain contributed to this report.)

jay.price@newsobserver.com or (919) 829-4526
News researchers Susan Ebbs and Brooke Cain contributed to this report.

Ellie