PDA

View Full Version : From soldier to civilian



thedrifter
04-12-09, 07:38 AM
From soldier to civilian

By Blake Jones
bjones@poststar.com
Sunday, April 12, 2009 1:10 AM EDT

BALLSTON SPA - Bernie Hennessey spent the last 15 years in California -- the first eight with the Marines and the next seven, as he put it, "trying to cope with civilian life."

After losing his job last summer, Hennessey returned to upstate New York to be closer to his family and sort things out. By November, he was without housing or work.

At that point, he said, he needed more than a job. On referral from a veterans counselor at the One-Stop Career Center in Queensbury, Hennessey, 35, moved into a transitional home for veterans in Ballston Spa.

Run by the Saratoga County Rural Preservation Co., the house has given Hennessey a place to regroup. Staffers there have matched him with a job he loves, working with cars at Hoffman Car Wash and Jiffy Lube in Saratoga Springs.

Leslie Carroll, one of two employment specialists who run the Saratoga County Rural Preservation Co.'s Hire-A-Vet program, said the number of vets who need help is growing.

Last year, the organization placed about five to six veterans a month in jobs. Now, Hire-A-Vet is managing just one placement a month, but inquiries have tripled.

In March, the organization had 70 inquiries, many from Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. The program is also seeing vets who, like Hennessey, were laid off after working in the civilian world.

Carroll said veterans face myriad issues in the current job market.

For younger and recently returned veterans, writing a resume or interviewing for a job can be foreign tasks.

"There are so many people where they're coming back from service that have been employed with the military, and they think those military skills are going to translate into civilian jobs," Carroll said. "They do, but they don't know how to explain it."

According to the U.S. Department of Labor's Veterans' Employment and Training Service, unemployment among people 20 to 24 is higher among veterans than civilians.

Gordon J. Burke Jr., director of operations and programs for Veterans' Employment and Training Service, said younger veterans are "churning" for 36 to 38 weeks after leaving the military.

"What we're finding in that age group is a lot of men and woman may not go to work right away," Burke said.

The veterans need time to regroup or recover from an injury or prepare to go to school. Some are trying to find jobs, but failing.

Burke said the young veterans tend to get back to normal levels of employment after the "churning" period. Still, the Department of Labor is working to increase participation in workshops that help veterans find civilian jobs.

And for combat veterans who do return directly to work, acclimating can be a challenge.

Thomas Myers, another veteran working at Hoffman Car Wash, returned to his job as assistant manager of the East Greenbush location on Jan. 15, just 10 days after coming home from a yearlong deployment in Iraq.

He's happy to have a job and grateful for the support the company has offered him over the years.

But the transition has been stressful at times, he said, and it can be hard to reconnect with a civilian workforce that didn't change much while he was gone.

"I feel like I've matured, and everyone else is the same people," he said.

Emotional and psychological issues come up often, especially among veterans who work with the Saratoga County Rural Preservation Co.

Hire-A-Vet works with veterans who are homeless or on the verge of homelessness, and post-traumatic stress disorder usually contributes to their circumstances.

According to the National Center for PTSD, the condition can be brought on by traumatic experiences during combat and can result in physical, emotional and behavioral changes such as difficulty sleeping, trouble concentrating, outbursts of anger or feelings of detachment.

PTSD symptoms can surface years after military service because of a job loss or other traumatic event.

"It doesn't take many months of unemployment for everything to suddenly be on the line," Carroll said.

"When you have a good position in the military, you identify with that," she continued. "When you become jobless, you lose that identity and it is a real assault on who they thought they were."

Navy veteran Mike Brown, 46, arrived at the veterans home in 2006. He had injured his back a year and a half earlier, lost his job and slid into a depression.

"The job went away, and the other issues just kind of piled on," he said.

Facing eviction, Brown moved into the shelter, where he was able to deal with some of the problems that came on during his bout with unemployment.

Hire-A-Vet eventually found him work this fall within the program as a part-time IT person. Brown has since designed the program's Web site, and worked on brochures and videos that educate employers about Hire-A-Vet.

He's now living on his own in Ballston Spa.

"The job makes me feel better about myself," he said. "It's another step in the process to take me back to where I want to be."

Ellie