School is part of plan to give veterans place to recover

The Boston Globe - March 16, 2007
By Brian MacQuarrie

With backing from key state legislators, a veterans group and a community college in Central Massachusetts plan to build what is believed to be the country's first residential treatment and education facility for injured veterans and their families.

The center would be on 10 acres of land donated by Mount Wachusett Community College in Gardner and provide 20 two-bedroom cottages, where veterans from across the country could recover in the company of their families for up to two years, according to planners.

Many of the veterans are expected to have traumatic brain injuries caused by roadside bombs and firefights in Iraq, as well as burns, amputations, and post-traumatic stress syndrome.

The veterans could attend classes at government expense at the community college and use its swimming pool and track. The college, in turn, would provide students in physical and occupational therapy to help in the veterans' rehabilitation.

"This is a win-win for everybody," said Leslie Lightfoot, a former Army medic and founder of the Veterans Hospice Homestead in Fitchburg, which is spearheading the project.

The group is seeking to raise about one-third of the estimated $5 million needed to open the Northeast Veterans Training Rehabilitation Center and expects the remainder to come from the state and federal governments.

Daniel M. Asquino, president of Mount Wachusett Community College, said he supports the project and expects the college's trustees to endorse the plan this spring.

"Whether you believe in the war or not, they're sacrificing life and limb," Asquino said. ". . . Those individuals need a compassionate place to recover and get their life back in order."

The medical care received by veterans returning from Iraq has become a white-hot political issue after a scandal over outpatient treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. The furor led this month to the firing of the two-star Army general in charge of the hospital, the resignation of the secretary of the Army, and on Monday the forced retirement of the Army's surgeon general.

Because of better military equipment and much improved combat medical care, more service members in Iraq are surviving serious wounds than in previous wars.

"I've been taking care of these guys for 30 years, and we knew what to expect" in previous wars, Lightfoot said.

In Iraq, she said, "we weren't really sure there would be so many traumatic brain injuries. Eighty percent of these injuries will be moderate, if they're not sent back into combat, and can be rehabbed."

Lightfoot said the only similar veterans facility in the country is the $50 million Center for the Intrepid, which opened in January on the grounds of Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. Privately funded with 600,000 individual donations, the center has 21 rooms in each of two buildings to house recovering veterans and their families.

But that center does not have the educational component that is planned for the Gardner campus, Lightfoot said. Jo Schuda, a Department of Veterans Affairs spokeswoman, said officials at the agency are not aware of another such program in the nation.

A national veterans advocate, however, suggested yesterday that the need for such private facilities means that federal officials are falling short.

"Why does it take private donors to make these facilities happen?" asked Steve Robinson, director of veterans affairs at Veterans for America, a nonprofit organization based in Washington.

"It's noble and good to help veterans, but why are civilians being forced to fill the void where the federal government is responsible for providing services for veterans."

If the Gardner project receives approval from college trustees, the plan would need approval from the Legislature. State Representative Anthony J. Verga, a Gloucester Democrat who is cochairman of the Joint Committee on Veterans and Federal Affairs, endorses the project.

State Senator Stephen M. Brewer, a Democrat from Barre who is the committee's other cochairman, said legislative approval for transferring the state land to the trauma center would be "a slam-dunk."

"This is God's work, quite honestly," Brewer said. "It's good stuff. We ought to be doing that and a heck of a lot more for our veterans."

Ray Fanelli, development director for the Veterans Hospice Homestead, said he does not anticipate a problem with fund-raising. "I suspect that by the end of the year, if Leslie has anything to say about it, we might be able to start doing this project in steps," Fanelli said.

More than 23,000 American service members have been wounded in combat in Iraq, and the signature injury of the conflict has been brain trauma. Estimates of the extent of the injuries vary widely, but the Department of Defense says that 30 percent of patients seen at Walter Reed with combat-related injuries between 2003 and 2005 had suffered a traumatic brain injury.

Lightfoot said that many of the veterans expected at the trauma center will have such wounds, whose effects often take months or years to manifest themselves.

Thomas St. George, an Army veteran from Hudson who suffered a brain injury in a 2005 helicopter crash in Afghanistan, said such facilities are sorely needed.

"It's something I wish I had at the time, but it will definitely help future people" who get such injuries in war, said St. George, 25, who is treated weekly at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Jamaica Plain. "Unfortunately, the supply will be there, and the demand will be there as well."

In addition to rehabilitation at the proposed facility, counseling provided to families and patients will prepare them for the possibility of years-long care, officials said.

"The family therapy will be just as important as the personal therapy," Fanelli said. "Living with somebody who has just come back from war with a traumatic injury is traumatic in itself."

Dan Stack, Massachusetts deputy adjutant for the Disabled American Veterans, said such counseling is crucial.

"If we can educate the families about what to look out for, what would be the symptoms that would come up, they would be able to get intervention as soon as possible," Stack said. "The traumatic brain injury is almost equal to what we Vietnam vets had with post-traumatic stress. It wasn't recognized right off."

Fanelli said the trauma center would bill patients 30 percent of their income for housing and services. If the veterans have no income, he said, they will not be charged.

"Wherever there's a veteran in need -- we don't care where they're coming from," Fanelli said.

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