Veterans Gather to Fight a Different Battle

VENTURA — As patriotic tunes blared over a loudspeaker, veterans filed onto the Ventura College football field Friday, wearing tattered tennis shoes and layers of shabby clothes.

They arrived by bus and by foot, their faces were unshaven and their gait weary. Within an hour, however, they had taken showers, donned clean clothes and new shoes and received haircuts.

And the vets were assigned to their homes for the next three days--military cots under olive-colored tents. Steps away, representatives from a dozen social services agencies from around the county were on hand to help them find jobs and homes.

Once combat sergeants and fighter pilots, more than 150 veterans--both men and women--came to the eighth annual Ventura County Stand Down on Friday ready to fight a different kind of battle. This one against homelessness, drug addiction and mental illness.

“Sometimes it takes five or six Stand Downs before they smack themselves in the face and get out of the streets,” said founder Claire Hope.

“Stand down” is a military term for when troops move from the battlefield to safety. Ventura County’s event, which started Friday and ends Sunday, is an effort to help some of the nation’s estimated 275,000 homeless veterans combat daily life. Statewide, there are about eight such events each year.

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The Ventura County Stand Down draws veterans from Ventura, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. Many are seeking relief from nights sleeping on boxes, under bridges and in riverbeds.

James Rogers, 47, served with the Navy in Vietnam from 1968 until 1971. Back in America, Rogers said he got a degree from Cal State Long Beach. But soon he succumbed to drugs, lost his family and ended up homeless.

Rogers, who said he hasn’t used drugs in 47 days, is staying in a sober living home. He has attended seven Stand Downs and credits his fellow veterans for helping him break the addiction.

“I’m becoming part of society again,” he said. “There’s a lot of veterans like me that don’t know there is a way out.”

So Rogers is spending this weekend as a volunteer, guiding weary newcomers through the sprawling tent city, encouraging them to change their lives.

One of those first-timers was Bill Lewis, 77, who served throughout Europe during World War II. Lewis, a Texas native, said he has been homeless about four years. He knows getting off the streets will be a challenge.

“It’s a slow process to get built back up from nothing to something,” Lewis said.

The event, which costs about $10,000 to stage, depends on the work of many volunteers who transform the college into a mobile social services center and campground for as many as 300 veterans. This year the volunteers--many of them veterans--turned a classroom into a courtroom, a training center into a medical clinic and a gym into a department store.

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Stand Down organizers round up donations from across the county. FOOD Share in Oxnard provided meals and the Navy’s Seabee base in Port Hueneme loaned the cots and tents. One local resident raised money to buy 150 pairs of new shoes.

During the weekend, the veterans can receive help with their taxes, sign up for food stamps, attend drug and alcohol counseling or see a doctor. Dr. Lenny Mankin said the veterans often haven’t seen a doctor in years, so they come in with a host of problems that could have been taken care of with simple medication.

The vets also see a Superior Court judge in “Homeless Court,” where they can clear tickets by agreeing to complete community service hours. And they walk away with a trash bag full of new shirts and pants, as well as books, razors, soap, combs, deodorant and toothbrushes.

But many veterans say they come to Stand Down for more than the services, more than just a free bed and a few hot meals.

Sitting in the sun with a fellow Vietnam vet, E.J. Foust, 51, said he felt at peace for the first time in 25 years. Foust said he is still traumatized by his battle experiences and has prostate cancer.

Foust said he rarely meets anybody who understands the isolation, the anger and the anxiety he often feels.

“I’m really here for the camaraderie,” he said. “It’s nice to connect with other combat vets. They are the only ones that can relate.”