Indiana veteran influx a challenge for colleges, agencies

FORT WAYNE, Ind. — When Tiffany Kravec-Kelly wanted to reach fellow veterans on IPFW’s campus, she took a page out of her psychological-operations playbook.

“I have, literally, gone out in the middle of the quad with a bullhorn,” said Kravec-Kelly, who spent a tour in Iraq gathering intelligence and spreading the U.S. coalition’s message to the local population.

The influx of veterans returning to northeast Indiana over the past decade - often after multiple combat tours - has changed the complexion of local colleges and universities, hospitals and service agencies.

But part of the challenge of helping veterans, Kravec-Kelly said, is identifying them in the first place.

Some students at IPFW are comfortable talking about their service and happy for others to know about it. But there’s a subsection of students who aren’t.

“These people are ghosts,” she said. “They blend in.”

When Kravec-Kelly restarted her education after her service, she found a university structure not quite prepared to provide for the unusual challenges of student veterans.

It has taken a few years, but that has been changing. In October 2010, IPFW opened its Military Student Services office to assist veteran students, but Kravec-Kelly hopes more changes are planned.

She’d like to see a special gathering place on campus where veterans can meet, study and share their experiences.

Jo Vaughan, coordinator for Military Student Services, said she too hopes that idea can soon become reality.

Vaughan was working in West Lafayette when IPFW opened its office after receiving a grant through Purdue University’s Military Family Research Institute.

Vaughan has a simple job description - finding out what students need to be successful as they transition from military to civilian life.

That job description, though, covers a vast array of tasks, from helping students apply for GI benefits to helping them obtain credit for courses taken while serving in the military.

Vaughan began counseling combat veterans with substance abuse issues in 1986, and she has two family members who are disabled veterans, so the issues facing her students are familiar.

But they are diverse. Some have physical disabilities or have suffered traumatic brain injuries. Some suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Some are not veterans of the recent conflicts - they may have been out of the service for 25 years - but are just now learning of the benefits available to them.

“The variety of experience we have is vast,” Vaughan said. “Every student who comes in is unique.”

The center’s second year will end in June, and a caveat of the grant was that the university would commit to funding its position after the grant money ran out, Vaughan said.

Fortunately, she said, she has found a warm response from the campus community. Vaughan said campuses have been stereotyped as places sometimes hostile to military, but even people at IPFW who may be anti-military are not “anti-student.”

“I was pleasantly surprised by the huge amount of support that I’ve received from the administration here,” she said.

Perhaps nowhere has the lack of preparation for the needs of returning veterans been more apparent than at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where a Washington Post exposé of neglect in 2007 led to an extensive review of all VA medical facilities.

Fort Wayne’s VA Medical Center passed that systemwide review, but it has still been the site of changes. And more are proposed, including a housing development for homeless veterans.

Driving the increase in benefits sought by veterans, both medical and otherwise, is the increased knowledge by veterans of what’s available, said Allen County Veterans’ Service Officer George Jarboe.

The VA Medical Center handles most medical-related benefits, while Jarboe’s office tends to handle anything else. He doesn’t keep track of caseload numbers, he said, because there’s no time.

“The pace has increased,” he said. “A lot more PTSD, traumatic brain injury. Hearing-loss claims like you wouldn’t believe.”

In addition to the increase in claims by returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, many veterans of past conflicts - World War II, Korea, and especially Vietnam - have been seeking benefits, Jarboe said. He speculates the economy has something to do with it, but he also thinks the increased effort by the military and support organizations deserve much credit. In past eras, returning veterans weren’t given much direction.

“It was pretty much, `Sign here, thanks for your service,’ and that was it,” Jarboe said.

Now there are pre-deployment briefings, post-deployment briefings, briefings for family members and transition programs.

Jarboe only sees himself getting busier, especially as veterans who have served multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan come to terms with their experiences.

Many Vietnam veterans did not realize they suffered from PTSD for years; Jarboe sees many recent vets having the same issues. Some may already realize they have it, but are hesitant to seek help because they are still in the National Guard or Reserves and don’t want to jeopardize their employment.

“PTSD is going to come more to the forefront as time goes on,” he said. “There’s just a continual need for this type of service.”