“Military Culture: Better Serving Those Who Served” was the theme of a veterans event at the Port Townsend Elks Lodge April 21, jointly sponsored by the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding and the state Department of Veterans Affairs.

Following the group discussions and networking period, The Leader asked the panelists and audience members to share their ideas and experiences on how veterans can transition to civilian life.

John Farias

After four years in the Navy, John Farias left the service 21 years ago, but he wouldn’t recommend that anyone follow his post-military example.

“I went back home to my old friends in Texas, but I didn’t feel the same,” Farias said. “I wasn’t the same person who left, so I just tried to pretend that I’d never left.”

Farias didn’t explore his mental health options until 2011, and he considers himself lucky that he hadn’t harmed himself or others during the intervening 16 years.

“In retrospect, I would have liked to see a little more detailed debriefing process at the end,” Farias said. “All those years I went to work, trying not to think about what happened, just put an unnecessary strain on my life.”

Jon Ferguson

Jon Ferguson’s 14 years in the U.S. Marine Corps ended in 1993, after he’d served overseas as a corpsman in the first Persian Gulf War.

“I flew search-and-rescue missions,” Ferguson said. “My job was to save lives, not take them. I always did what I could to protect my fellow troops, and even care for the POWs we’d taken. Human life is human life.”

Ferguson’s team-centric way of working conflicted with collaborative classroom projects in which he saw his civilian fellow students not contributing fully.

“It was very disruptive to me,” Ferguson said. “I was told you weren’t supposed to do that.”

Ferguson was also haunted by the sight of oil-well fires in the gulf, which demonstrated to him the need for a transition period for veterans.

“When tribes used to send warriors out to fight, they wouldn’t come straight back,” Ferguson said. “They spent some time getting their heads straight first. We need to try and reconnect veterans to the community.”

Mike McEvoy

Mike McEvoy served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War. He now works with veterans as the consolidated veterans service representative at the state Employment Security Department, to make up for the lack of resources and support he encountered when he came back home.

“They told you not to wear your uniform when you came back, but they wouldn’t tell you it was because people would call you a baby killer,” McEvoy said. “You expected your country to have your back, like the guys you served with had your back. They should have spit on the politicians instead of us.”

McEvoy noted that, even today, not all veterans cope well with the post-service decompression.

“When you go from military structure to relatively little structure as a civilian, where nobody’s there to tell you all the things you can’t do, not everyone is ready for that,” McEvoy said. “That can make maintaining work or school schedules difficult.”

McEvoy recommended equine and agricultural therapies as means of helping veterans focus on tangible activities, but he noted that those who go in for such therapy need to “know that they’re ready.”

Karen Naulty

Karen Naulty retired from the Coast Guard in 2007 after 27 years of service, and as she put it, the end of her nearly three decades of military service ironically meant “I had to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up.”

Naulty took stock of her interests and talents, and found that she’d worked well with her hands when she was in uniform, which piqued her curiosity about wooden boatbuilding. This, in turn, inspired her to move to Port Townsend.

While Naulty offered praise for her alma mater of the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding, she conceded that one area of culture shock she experienced, as a now civilian student, was knowing how to treat her instructors.

“I think military members see instructors the same way they would troop leaders,” Naulty said. “So we’re always asking, ‘Tell me exactly what you want,’ because the result is that it will get done.”

Since graduating from the boatbuilding school last September, Naulty has expanded her studies to include American maritime history as a way of unifying her Coast Guard career and her civilian pursuits.

“Plus, Port Townsend is just a nice fit,” Naulty said.

Chris Townsend

Chris Townsend’s five-year stint in the U.S. Army came to an end in 2011, and the conclusion he’s drawn from his post-service, post-graduate educational career is that schools could stand to be slightly less sensitive to veterans.

“In some ways, they could do less,” Townsend said. “Aside from vegans, no one on campus is more likely to tell you about their status than a veteran. But the fact is that veterans are pretty self-reliant.”

Rather than treating veterans as though they’ve all experienced the same things and suffered the same traumas, Townsend encouraged schools and employers to acknowledge that veterans include a whole range of backgrounds, just like civilians.

“Being a veteran could mean you were in combat or supply,” Townsend said. “Everyone’s story is different.”

At the same time, Townsend acknowledged that many veterans find a lack of attention to detail to be off-putting. With his own stint at the boatbuilding school, he’s gone from enjoying the detailed craftsmanship to appreciating the artistry.

“I find it very pleasing,” Townsend said. “It’s Zen. You can get lost in your art. You start out with a living tree, but you turn it into a boat, which is a tool that was used to conquer nations.”

Townsend also lauded Vet Connect and Olympic Community Action Programs (OlyCAP) for “doing a great job” in facilitating his own progress.

James Van Wert

James Van Wert put in eight years part-time and another eight years full-time in the U.S. Army Reserve before leaving the service in 2012.

His primary recommendation to civilian schools and employers would be to take veterans’ mental health seriously.

“You don’t have to treat us special, or act like we’ve got things growing out of our forehands,” Van Wert said, laughing, “but it helps if we can receive accommodations at certain times.”

Van Wert has found the entire Veterans Administration helpful in coping with post-traumatic stress disorder, and touted the value of programs ranging from counseling to veterans’ court.

“There’s this whole web of resources out there, and a lot of veterans don’t even know they’re available until they fall into them.”

Although Van Wert has since gone into massage therapy, he credited his time at the Northwest School of Wooden Boat Building for serving as “a catalyst” that guided him toward his later interests.