I entered the military at eighteen. In eight to twelve weeks, they broke me down and built me into something new, and I carried that for twenty-three years, until I retired from the United States Navy on January 1, 2007. Nobody tells you that the hardest order you'll ever follow is the one that never comes. The discharge papers don't come with instructions for how to be a civilian.
I remember walking the streets for miles, crying, because after twenty-three years my life had changed and I didn't know the structure of being a civilian anymore. I was waking up at 5 a.m., running two miles, just trying to figure out how I was going to survive the day. There was no one to my left and no one to my right who knew my journey — who understood what it took to serve, what you gain over the years, and what you lose the day it ends.
The years that followed weren't easy. I went through my own fight with the VA over care that was supposed to help and, for a while, made things harder instead. I looked for work that fit what I'd been — a leader of men and women — and found entry-level jobs instead, civilian rules I'd never operated under: unions, breaks, no standard operating procedures, nothing that resembled structure.
What I carried out of the Navy never fit in a duffel bag. They told us when we enlisted: you can't put your family in your seabag. I left believing that meant leaving pieces of myself behind too — and my seabag has stayed packed ever since, ready if they call.
This is why I started visiting the VA hospital and the VA clinics. Not for research. I didn't know most of their names — you don't need to. You sit there and you understand. Some of them didn't even have an appointment that day. They came anyway, just to be among other veterans, in a room where nobody had to explain themselves.
That's where I met the Vietnam veterans at the Canton VA Clinic — men who went in as boys, seventeen to twenty-four years old, some for as little as six months, into something with no structure and no leadership on the ground, and came home to a country that never said welcome home. Sitting across from them, I felt embarrassed to talk about my own transition. Their battle was different, and for many of them, it never really ended either. That's part of why Mission After Service holds a special place for Vietnam veterans. They're owed a welcome home with dignity, honor, and respect. Better late than never. Read my letter to them →
“The uniform came off. The watch continues.”
Twenty-three years in the military. What came after didn't end in a year, or five, or twenty. You carry it in your duffel bag and your seabag for the rest of your life. That's what those words mean to me — and it's why Mission After Service exists: because the day the uniform comes off is not the day the need for support ends. For a lot of us, it's the day it begins.