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VIETNAM VETERAN LOOKING FOR HELICOPTER TO HELP
IRAQ VETS RECOVER -- "To have some kind of a
helicopter
ride experience for Iraqi vets would be a
powerful trigger
to bring things they are avoiding to the
surface."
Dallas Wittgenfeld
For more information about PTSD, use the VA
Watchdog search engine...click here...
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Story here...
http://www.news-journalonline
.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/Headl
ines/frtHEAD04081107.htm
Story below:
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Vet looking for helicopter to help Iraq
soldiers recover
By AUDREY PARENTE
Staff Writer
DELAND -- Dallas Wittgenfeld's life after Vietnam travels two paths --
one exhilarating, the other somber.
He wisecracks about leaping out of airplanes, helicopters and hot-air
balloons into mall parking lots, speedways and even the Cayman Islands
-- as Thunder Chicken or Sky Pirate.
"I wore out two hot-air balloons, and the first time Volusia County ever
saw Thunder Chicken was flying Grand National Winston Cup champion
Donnie Allison off a hotel roof," says Wittgenfeld of Orange City.
But the two-time Purple Heart Vietnam veteran Airborne Ranger nearly
cries if you ask him about his military service.
About a June leap with the Liberty Jump Team over Normandy to re-create
Word War II history, the former paratrooper says:
"In France, I was introduced as a Vietnam veteran. They already had a
hole in their hearts from their history in Vietnam and respect Vietnam
veterans. They bent their flags to me, and I thought, 'Wow, they never
did that for me back home.' "
The 58-year-old says the adrenaline rush from sky diving was a sort of
catharsis for post-traumatic stress disorder, the aftermath of war for
thousands of veterans then and now. The Department of Veterans Affairs
reports PTSD affects nearly 18 percent of Iraq war veterans.
Now, Wittgenfeld is appealing to veterans organizations for funding and
working with Dr. Ray Scurfield, former director of Veterans Affairs
National PTSD Center in Honolulu, to develop a therapy program to help
veterans suffering from the disorder.
For 20 years, Scurfield directed VA post-traumatic stress programs,
including helicopter-ride therapy for traumatized Vietnam, Korea and
World War II veterans.
"It's a very powerful trigger," Scurfield explains in a phone interview
from the University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast School of Social
Work, where he now is a professor.
"In the Iraq war, helicopters and Humvees are two things people most
relate to the war. So to have some kind of a helicopter ride experience
for U.S. Iraqi vets would be a powerful trigger to bring things they are
avoiding to the surface."
Wittgenfeld says he didn't get that kind of help early enough.
"When I came home from Vietnam, I was 20 years old, on leave. I wore my
uniform with my friends and went out drinking, but I couldn't vote or
buy booze anywhere -- and they made fun of me, so I got up and left,"
Wittgenfeld recalls.
"I was proud of what I had done, and when I came back, I thought I was a
hero -- but no one else did."
So he laid low and "didn't talk about the military," but instead became
a thrill-seeking clown.
In 1993, after hearing news of "Black Hawk Down," an incident that began
as a Somalian humanitarian mission but ended in fighting and death,
Wittgenfeld says he "lost it."
A nurse friend said, " 'You have a problem,' so I went to the VA and
told them."
Diagnosis: PTSD. He got help and says, "It was like pulling a raw scab
off my heart."
Wittgenfeld continued sky diving but says, "After 9/11, everybody went
into big red, white and blue spirit."
He switched to patriotic themes.
"I am an old, baldheaded, toothless guy now, but this is my country," he
says. "Now, I go to the Military Order of the Purple Hearts, and they
bring up PTSD. I am looking for a way to help. I am looking for a
helicopter."
He hopes veterans groups will help fund an appropriate program.
Scurfield says a helicopter therapy program would need "a helicopter,
maintenance and transporting and a mental-health support piece to it."
Dr. Thomas Hundersmarck, coordinator of the VA PTSD Clinic in
Gainesville, says programs need secure therapeutic environments and
careful screening to assess reactions.
"Most therapies involve exposing the past," Hundersmarck says.
"(Veterans) can come to understand what it meant then, what it means now
and, in a sense, detoxify very fearful, terrible moments they've gone
through."
Scurfield supports Wittgenfeld's therapy program efforts.
"He has a contagion to him that is positive, and things get off the
ground that way."
audrey.parente@news-jrnl.com
Did You Know?
Parachutes have changed shape over the centuries.
· The first-known written account of a parachute concept is found in
Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks from about l495.
· Parachutes evolved from the 1700s through the early 1900s to the
conventional round solid silk cloth used during the 1930s.
· The development of square and winged sport parachutes beyond solid to
slotted cloth with cells came in the early 1960s.
· Modern square chutes are generally constructed of seven to nine cells.
· Round parachutes have always been considered sound and safe, but
modern square parachutes have vastly superior maneuverability.
SOURCES: Compiled by Staff Writer Audrey Parente from American Institute
of Aeronautics and Astronautics and parachutehistory.com
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Larry Scott --
