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Standing Up for Homeless Vets

Stand Down’s legacy of grass-roots intervention continues

IN MILITARY PARLANCE, a “stand down” is a period of combat inactivity and recuperation in the midst of battle zones. Troops are temporarily removed — oftentimes in whole platoons — to makeshift base camps where they tend to basic needs and decompress from the havoc of military conflict. The oxymoron’s origins go back centuries, but its martial application dates back at least as far as the conclusion of World War I. Edward S. Farrow, a West Point Instructor of Tactics, aptly defined it in a Dictionary of Military Terms in 1918. In contrast to a stand-to action that readied infantry for volleys of trench-warfare assaults, a stand down is described as “an order given in the trenches at break of dawn to let the men know their night watch is ended.”

Today, Stand Down is an annual assistance program that meets the needs of homeless veterans and their families. Each summer San Diego High School hosts the weekend event that provides a range of essential services. Shelter, hygiene, clothing, medical and dental care, legal assistance, veterans’ benefits education, substance-abuse treatment, mental-health counseling and transitional-housing placement are all available. At 2007’s Stand Down, 10,247 meals were served. All 792 participants received fresh clothes and blankets. Medical care was accessed by 231 patients. About 26 percent sought information about Veterans Affairs (VA) benefits. Transitional housing was granted to 11 percent. More than 600 court cases were adjudicated for 135 vets.

Tents are arranged in a horseshoe formation on an open field. Each tent houses 20-25 vets and is given unit monikers such as Alpha, Delta, Tango and Zulu. Two tent leaders guide the activities of tent groups, while two squad leaders are elected by their fellow residents to oversee individual companies. These “platoons” attend services and eat together throughout the experience. The group dynamic and organization are not unintentional. They promote camaraderie as vets gel into family structures. “We’re trying to evoke in them a memory of when they wore the uniform, when they felt proud,” co-founder Dr. Jon Nachison explains. But to understand Stand Down’s legacy, it is instructive to start at the beginning.

Modern-day torchbearers, Nachison and Robert Van Keuren both served in Vietnam. They defy the widespread stereotypes of the ruined, shell-shocked Vietnam vet. However, it’s no mystery to them that ghosts still haunt many soldiers who served during that era’s guerilla warfare. Nachison, in particular, has sought to address the myriad psychological injuries that can reemerge if untreated.

With a trimmed grey beard that matches his hair, Nachison’s soft inflection lends a professorial tenor to his speech. He holds a Ph.D. in psychology from Syracuse University — yet ironically, his academic neglect brought him before the draft board. Less interested in academics than diversions, he dropped out of college in 1966 — a year after Lyndon Johnson ordered the United States ground campaign’s first 3,500 deployments on South Vietnamese soil. Nachison is reticent about the exact nature of his tour of duty.

Nachison and Van Keuren met in early 1982 as competing applicants for a position at Occupational Training Services (OTS), a nonprofit placement service for adult and continuing education. Desirous of the talents of both candidates, recruiters hired them as partners to fill the role. Both men immediately set to work devising and building programs that addressed vets’ needs. Among others, one such program established job placement vouchers specifically for out-of-work vets.

Eventually, both Nachison and Van Keuren ended their tenures at OTS. However, they resumed their work on behalf of vets by pooling their successes from OTS into what was then known as Vietnam Veterans of San Diego (VVSD). Once a fraternal organization, VVSD expanded its scope to take up the multidimensional challenges of a service provider. Outreach activities ran the gamut from employment programs to alcohol treatment — the broad aim was to reach a forgotten generation as it neared middle age.

A “startling epiphany,” as Nachison describes it, arose. The accumulation of vets surviving on the streets was staggering. For several years, a void had been widening larger and larger, without any real governmental or societal mechanisms in place to curtail this national epidemic.

In early April 1988, Nachison and Van Keuren served barbecued chicken to the homeless in Balboa Park. As the homeless veterans began to gather, the co-founders spread the word via bullhorns about an upcoming event designed to attend to their peers’ needs. As this was taking place, they were also surveying the homeless in order to determine their most urgent needs. This fateful event would be dubbed the “bullhorn meeting,” and it would mark the baseline of 21 years of grass-roots intervention.

The inaugural Stand Down occurred on a vacant grass field near Pacific Coast Highway and Lindbergh Field July 1988. Active-duty military personnel set up tents, veterans’ service groups provided clothing and charitable organizations served food. “It was all in-kind donations,” Nachison remembers. Due to latent doubts, however, it was a modest success.

Trust was not so easily earned. By and large, these veterans were suspicious of Nachison and Van Keuren’s motives. “Folks thought this was an elaborate sting operation,” Nachison recalls. A spate of longstanding factors contributed to this distrust, but perhaps none more so than the docket of petty crimes — from vagrancy to public intoxication — that mounted against them over the years.

However, the word was out.

Nachison has since written that the program’s goal is to “transform the immobility of homelessness into the momentum necessary to … get off the streets.” On an individual level, it’s intended to serve as the impetus to a life-altering breakthrough. “The real measure of the success of the event is the number of formerly homeless veterans that came through Stand Down … that come back to the event each year to be volunteers.” Nachison offers a useful simile. “Stand Down is like a river. And when you enter it, the force of the river just pulls you.”

For most, the homeless recede into the backdrop of urban scenery. Here lies the deception of mainstream cant. Of course, there is more to “supporting the troops” than purchasing novelty flags in bulk or bleating clichés during wartime. It requires a purposeful commitment to dignify those who have borne the well-being of a country on their shoulders. Many soldiers jeopardize their young lives with little more than each other’s shared heritage and loyalty to rely upon. Yet at home, they can become the castaways of fickle patriotism.

IN THE CLOSING DAYS of April 1975, the tumultuous fall of Saigon signaled the end of American military involvement in the Vietnam War. Weeks earlier, North Vietnamese and Vietcong armed forces had laid siege to points southward en route to South Vietnam’s capital. Arteries out of the city were barricaded with advancing communist soldiers. Nearby airstrips were pounded with tactical air raids accompanied by small-arms fire on the ground. Meanwhile, Saigon was in the throes of chaos.

Despite the swiftness of the Red march, American military strategists on the ground had evacuation orders at the ready. Operation Frequent Wind was designed to coordinate a small airlift from the U.S. embassy to offshore Navy ships. However, a multitude of panicked refugees lined the walls of the compound, desperate to flee. Eventually, thousands of American soldiers and civilians, South Vietnamese and foreign nationals would be rescued from the onslaught.

As North Vietnamese artillerymen blasted crowds with machine guns outside the embassy compound, Marines inside loaded evacuees onto helicopters. One Marine, a year removed from boot camp at age 19, helped those boarding the aircrafts. Under fire, he scooped up three French children handed to him by their mother, raised them over the wall, and delivered them to a rooftop escape. Quickly returning for her, he found her mortally shot, dying. “She had a smile on her face” he confides with a grimace, “’cause she knew her kids were safe.” That hero is Wally Hunt.

Hunt was raised mostly in Sacramento, the product of a severely dysfunctional family. “I come from a long line of alcoholics and drug addicts,” he confesses. One of eight children, he began a prolonged cycle of alcohol and drug abuse at the age of 12. His siblings were not spared self-destructive tendencies. In fact, most remain hooked today. Hunt’s father died an alcoholic. However, he found an outlet for his torment in the glorified images of John Wayne, particularly in the WWII classic, Sands of Iwo Jima. Immediately after high school in 1974, he enlisted in the Marine Corps.

An expert shot, Hunt’s combat duties lasted four months in Vietnam. It was a brutal period that sowed his psyche with the seeds of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). “I’ve seen enough to where I still have nightmares,” Hunt says. Drug use was rampant among combat soldiers as well. “The only time we weren’t [using] is when we were on duty, either drunk or high. It helped me forget the problems and what was going on around me.” He was honorably discharged in 1977.

Back in Sacramento he worked odd jobs in roofing despite the tug of his old life. But night terrors and family discord soon won out and he turned to the only coping mechanism he knew. Full-blown methamphetamine addiction began. In 1982 he followed dope dealers to San Diego. “They set me up in business down in El Cajon.” On a number of occasions Hunt served jail time after various run-ins with law enforcement. He acknowledges that he was a junkie, and anything but a saint. Not unlike most long-term addicts, his sense of time is disjointed, with considerable stretches lost to the past. His way of life continued unchanged until 1996, when he became homeless.

A retired Hell’s Angel and friend wound up being Hunt’s saving grace. He told him about Stand Down in 1999. There, he took full part in all the services and was admitted into a recovery home. “[Stand Down] gave me a life,” Hunt says, “’cause I didn’t know what a sober life was.” For 30 years, he had been a self-professed drug addict and alcoholic. Not only was treatment’s methodology vitally necessary, it was a revelation. Every summer he returned to volunteer until 2003. That year the same friend who urged him to participate in Stand Down was shot and died in Hunt’s arms. This triggered a surge of emotions that led to a relapse — not an extraordinary occurrence for someone grappling with a lifetime of addiction issues.

However, he came back to Stand Down in 2006 to resurrect the ongoing process of sobriety. AA and NA meetings are now part of his weekly routine. Last year he regained custody of two teenage daughters from whom he had been long absent. Recently he obtained a truck driver’s license. In ’07 Hunt volunteered at his sixth Stand Down. He is estranged from two adult sons, but hopes to reconnect with them if he can. Principal among his set of goals is to make amends to those he has wronged. It’s a critical ethos of 12-step programs. Hunt yearns to rectify a broken past.

Traditionally, obtaining raw data on homelessness has been problematic. Isolating a smaller segment of this fluctuating population is all the more fraught with challenges. However, approximate statistics can help quantify the extent of the dilemma. The growing tally of veterans residing in the US today is approaching 24 million, according to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. With the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, that figure is skyrocketing. VA estimates that about one-third of homeless persons are veterans. About 45 percent suffer from mental illness; in excess of 70 percent are plagued with alcohol or substance abuse. Of course, these factors are often interconnected, with inextricable causes and effects.

At the outset, Stand Down’s progenitors had a vision to cobble together resources and coordinate services in a single place, under one banner. It was spawned by a desire to bypass the bureaucratic red tape that frustrated and prevented veterans from practical solutions to assistance issues. Instead of a fractionalized system of agencies that treated individual symptoms, the cofounders of Stand Down visualized a one-time, three-day umbrella event. In practical terms, this meant spurring the recovery from an assortment of problems. Alcoholism, substance abuse, deteriorating health, mental illnesses (not the least of which PTSD), outstanding legal charges, difficulty with readjustment, and social isolation were only a handful of barriers.

A recent study published in April by the nonprofit RAND Corporation—renowned for large-scale data gathering and nonpartisan analysis—underscored the dangers facing vets returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Since initial deployments began in October 2001, about 1.6 million troops have served overseas in these conflicts. Of that number, one in five service members suffer from symptoms of PTSD or major depression due to repeated exposure to traumatic events. Further compounding the issue, “Only slightly more than half have sought treatment.” The report cited gaping inadequacies in the mental health system and soldiers’ fears of breakdowns in confidentiality as the root causes. Clearly, the research suggests that, unless circumstances significantly change, a catastrophic spike in homeless veterans may be unavoidable.

The Department of Defense (DoD) tabulates weekly casualty figures on Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF: Afghanistan and satellite sites) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF: Iraq and satellite sites). As of late April, almost 32,000 military personnel have been wounded in action per DoD records. Of that number, 45 percent did not return to duty within 72 hours. As the RAND study demonstrates, these wounded warriors stand an exponentially higher risk of developing mental illness. In addition, the psychological toll of bereavement is impossible to gloss over. DoD statistics indicate that 4,547 total deaths have occurred between OEF and OIF. Obviously, the nexus between mental illness and homelessness is well-documented and indisputable.

According to Stand Down coordinator Darcy Pavitch, about 40 percent of San Diego’s homeless population are veterans. She estimates about one-third of that demographic subset enters the program. The average yearly attendance is almost 800. Participation is multigenerational; it’s misleading to believe that Vietnam-era veterans constitute the majority of attendees. Much like a modernized VVSD has grown beyond the exclusive service of one age group — as evinced by its name change to Veterans Village of San Diego — the faces of Stand Down have also changed.

During the last 10 years, Pavitch’s personal responsibility has been enormous. Aside from tending to matters of faith as VVSD’s chaplain, the run-up to Stand Down each year demands 60-hour workweeks. From fund-raising and solicitations to logistics and paperwork, her efforts are the cornerstone of what makes Stand Down possible. Nonetheless, her devotion to the cause is unflagging. “It’s an incredible service with a community organization that comes together that you won’t see anywhere else.” By virtue of her hands-on preparation, she possesses keen insights into the reasons why veterans become homeless.

Through anecdotal observation, she recognizes repetitive themes. “Many people join the military at a young age to escape an environment that is unhealthy. They come into the military and discover a family they’ve never had. So they come out and they have no real support system. Most of them don’t have families to go home to.” Others return to poverty-stricken circumstances. She maintains that a huge percentage is a setback away from the financial ruin that precedes homelessness. Once homeless, options dwindle and afflictions intensify. “There are only a few ways to get money on the streets: petty thefts, drug dealing, prostitution — things like that. And that becomes a lifestyle on its own.” It’s a snowball effect. Additionally, she sees PTSD as a crisis that combat vets cannot typically overcome alone. Whatever the psychological or material cause, it’s seldom a quick fix. This awareness informs every aspect of Stand Down.

Because the homeless frequently commit misdemeanor crimes as a byproduct of privation, Stand Down addresses this reality with Homeless Court. A groundbreaking achievement, judges and public defenders volunteer their free time to appear pro bono at the remote location. Vets submit applications beforehand, courts forward their records, and cases are heard on site. Verdicts are rendered and plea bargains of community service and court-ordered drug treatment replace the typical jail sentences. Again, the object is rehabilitation, not regression. While Stand Down was founded in San Diego, its program has branched out to more than 70 events nationwide in 2008. Homeless Court is a feature at many events.

In a 2007 report published by the National Coalition for the Homeless, about 1.35 million children are likely to experience homelessness in a given year. It stands to reason that a wide cross section of homeless veterans are parents. As a result, Stand Down’s leadership established a supervised “Kid’s Zone.” Toys, games, arts and crafts, and other fun activities transform the children’s tent into a veritable rumpus room. In the meantime parents are allowed the unencumbered freedom to improve their family’s quality of life.

At the conclusion of Stand Down, the stirring “Graduation Ceremony” takes place. As bagpipes and snare drums are broadcast over a loudspeaker, each company marches in single-file groups to form a procession. Celebratory applause greets each veteran upon presentation of a commemorative button and hat to mark completion of the program. Led by flag bearers, the units and volunteers gradually halt in an unbroken circle around the main stage. Each participant takes a few moments to absorb the impact of the accomplishment.

SANDY BORUM WAS BORN AND RAISED in Philadelphia. The product of a typical upbringing, Borum joined the Air Force after high school in 1975 in a spur-of-the-moment decision hinted at by her mother. Tabbed with choreographing the aerial paths of multimillion-dollar aircraft and the people aboard, she flourished as an 18-year-old air traffic controller. Every day was a tremendous thrill. “I loved it,” Borum recounts. “It was one of the best experiences of my life.” Brimming with pride, she considered herself a “hotshot.” Borum was stationed between such exotic and stateside bases as Okinawa and rural Georgia.

Meanwhile, during the first full year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency in 1981, the combination of FAA restructuring and labor strife within the air traffic controllers’ union created a window of opportunity in the private sector. At least, that’s what Borum believed. Amid mass firings by Reagan following an illegal labor strike, vets were filling newly vacant positions. Borum saw her chance. In 1983 she filed for and was granted a discharge. She immediately chased halcyon hopes to San Diego — a coastal destination that appeared like Shangri-la in contrast to Pennsylvania’s urban blight. Unfortunately, Borum was afflicted with the universal folly of young adults. She radically underestimated the gulf between perception and reality. “I didn’t do any research, which is pretty common for most veterans. You just hear air traffic controllers make good money, and you jump out of everything and you just think, ‘That’s what I’m gonna do.’”

Unable to land work in this prime location, Borum ultimately began her 10-plus-year descent into drug use and distribution, bouts of homelessness, felony arrests, and spiritual bankruptcy. “I got in over my head abusing … and slipped into addiction.” Employment and relationships fell by the wayside. Phone calls home tapered off during that span. Her mother was helpless to heal and could provide only meager assistance when her daughter found herself in trouble. It was an abysmal cycle.

Then, in the summer of ’89, a random event occurred. Someone on the streets anonymously placed a flyer in her hand. On July 14 of the same year Borum attended her first Stand Down. She took full advantage of the resources available. There, she made the lucky acquaintance of a psychiatric nurse, Liz Pinner, with the VA. This contact would prove instrumental in delivering Borum off the streets. At the time, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Yet her stubbornness derailed recovery. (Years later, the same stubbornness would spur her pursuit of a master’s degree after she eventually awoke to sobriety.) Denials breed rejection of the bleak circumstances of her situation. Years passed. Her substance abuse worsened as hardcore drugs like methamphetamines rampaged through her body. She did manage, however, to attend a handful of Stand Downs over those years. Consequently, she maintained contact with Pinner, her original mental-health case worker.

Rock bottom came soon after her final arrest in 1998. She had been living out of a Waste Management dumpster on a friend’s front lawn. It had just been set ablaze by junkies, and a looming conviction meant serious jail time. If her life wasn’t in shambles until then, it certainly was now. Borum phoned her VA contact to seek treatment. Admittedly, it was not for motives of self-improvement, but rather to escape incarceration. Soon afterward, however, her mindset changed. “Because she had always been so helpful over the years, and I promised her this time [it would be different] … This time I’m gonna do whatever people ask,” she vowed. Thus began her residency at VVSD on January 5, 1999. After treatment and sober living, she finally turned a corner. She has been clean and sober ever since.

Today, Borum serves as the assistant director of Employment Services at VVSD. She also became a homeowner in 2004. The cumulative years of hard living have not marred her youthful appearance. Her eyes radiate with optimism as she describes her rebirth. “My life is greater than anything I had ever imagined. And it’s been a culmination of services that were provided by the VA, by VVSD, and of course, practicing the things that they taught me.” The lingering disappointment that she often heard in her mother’s voice all those dreadful years ago has vanished. “She looks forward to my calls,” she adds with hard-won warmth.

Sandy Borum’s success story is not unique. On July 11-13, 2008, hundreds of homeless vets will start the journey back to self-reliance at Stand Down. Meanwhile, survivors like Borum and Hunt will share their triumphs. Together, a fortunate number of our nation’s lost patriots will experience the empowerment that one day could be theirs.

To become a tent sponsor at Stand Down (starting at $500), please call 619-520-8389. Prospective volunteers should dial 619-520-8389. General inquires are directed to 619-497-0142.

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