Standing Up

For those of us lucky enough to frequent Opportunity Place, this month has been revitalizing, renewing, and invigorating. We have met families of all ages and composition, each of whom shares a strength of purpose and a hope that belies the heartbreak that brought them there.

I've talked a lot about the families and the children. Without doubt, the sounds of children playing in the twilit night, laughing, tossing frisbees, batting beachballs, is particularly poignant here. But there are other stories as well, both moving and incredibly brave.

On October 16, Opportunity, Inc. will be among the organizations sponsoring the Stand Down, an event held annually to prepare homeless veterans for another hard winter. Services offered include medical and dental care, help in getting IDs, veterans' benefits, winter gear, showers, a hot meal, and an optional misdemeanor resolution court. It's a good day, and one in which homeless vets can feel support and gratitude from the public. It's a stand out day, because homeless vets don't always feel the love.

Most days of the year, the general public lumps the homeless veteran in with all the other chronic homeless on the streets. They see the mental illness and the substance abuse, and they judge.

But just as the public at large cannot or will not see the homeless families and children I work with every day, they also miss the diversity and dedication amongst the homeless vets as well.

There is a couple living at Opportunity Place, both in their mid-40s. He is an Army veteran of Desert Storm. She was a Marine.

Eighteen years ago, John flew into battle with nine of his comrades. He was the only one to fly back, carrying a bullet in his lungs. John mourns his buddies with every breath he takes. He spent today, the anniversary of this terrible moment, completing the rituals he carries out each year. He calls every family that lost a son that day, to let them know their child still lives in at least one heart. Most families are grateful. One mother screams at him every year, saying that he should have died, if he could not save her son. He says, "Yes, ma'am, I agree," and gently hangs up the phone.

He sends flowers to every grave, a true sacrifice because it means money that could go to food and shelter will go to long-distance floral arrangements instead. But honoring the fallen is more important than caring for his body. Finally, when all is done, he makes one last floral arrangement, and sets it adrift in the Choctaw Bay, and says his prayers.

Tomorrow he enters into radiation therapy. Now his battle is with a virulent cancer, and it is not a battle he is predicted to win. But he is throwing his all into this fight, because he has an amazing reason to live: his wife Jennifer.

Jennifer is a beautiful woman, but no one who meets her would ever doubt her Marine credentials. She, too, struggles with her health. Although fit and strong, she has genetic disease that has already led to two heart attacks, and keeps her in pulmonary distress. She fights through it, because John needs her.

This is not a couple who is afraid of work. The road that led them to homelessness was not of their making, or at least not much of it was. They are not bitter or angry, but they aren't passive either. They clean condos, do day labor, pick up jobs as furniture movers, and when they aren't working for pay, they are working for the shelter: painting, cleaning, installing doors, fixing anything that breaks. They worry about the shelter finances as much as their own, and are constantly looking for ways to save money. John purchased a collapsible clothesline so that we could dry the constant stream of sheets and towels on a clothesline rather than use costly electricity in the dryer. Jennifer installed lock boxes on the thermostats and passed out fans so that we could keep the thermostat set at levels uncomfortable for her due to her asthma. And I never see them without a smile, at least, not now.

When they first came to Opportunity Place, smiles were on the rare side. John had his tumor removed that same day, and came in sick from the procedure and from the prognosis. He looked much like a man who felt that if he was going to die anyway, he might as well slit his wrists now and get it over with. Jennifer was grim with worry and fear.

There is nothing really that has changed in their lives. They still live on odd jobs, paying for their food and rent as best they can through invaluable service to the facility and the residents. John and Jennifer remain very ill. But they have a huge support network now, and people who care deeply about what happens, and that seems to be enough. They work as though they were healthy 20-year-olds, and they face their disease with the courage you would expect from our military war vets.

On October 16, at First Presbyterian Church in Fort Walton Beach, we will be meeting a lot of Johns and Jennifers, each with their own stories of heroism and terror, despair and strength. If you wish, please come down and listen. Our vets will be honored with a few moments of earned respect, and we will be richer for having given it.