Two veteran advocacy group leaders are speaking out on the practical ways people can help veterans in their community, not only throughout Military Appreciation Month in May but all year long.
Both Cole Lyle, director of Mission Roll Call, and John Jones, chief of development for America’s Warrior Partnership, said preventing veteran suicide is at the forefront of both their non-profit's efforts to provide help and healing to members of the military community.
Lyle served in the Marine Corps from 2008 to 2014 and deployed to Afghanistan while in the service. When he left the Corps, he said he was struggling to find his purpose, didn’t have a job, wasn’t in school, and was going through what he called a “nasty divorce.”
“I found myself with a gun in my mouth one night and you know, probably been drinking too much, didn’t have a service dog at the time,” he said. “Another Marine intervened, thank God he did.”
The next day, Lyle said he felt “super clear.” He locked himself in a room until he came up with a realistic plan for what he wanted to achieve in life.
That led him to pursue a career in politics as an advocate for veterans.
“I still need to find a way to negate the symptoms of post-traumatic stress and the issues I’m dealing with,” Lyle said, adding that at the time he was doing counseling at Veterans Administration medical centers and was prescribed sleep aids and anti-depressants.
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One of Lyle’s friends had a service dog and he soon found that the VA did not provide funding for that.
“I looked to non-profits who had wait times of up to a year, didn’t feel like I had that time to wait and so I went and spent a lot of my own money to acquire my service dog,” he explained.
Lyle’s service dog, a German Shepherd named Kaya, was with him as he was interning on Capitol Hill. The pair was together when they were stopped by a senator who asked why he had a service when he had no visible injuries.
Lyle told the senator his story and was invited to his office to discuss the issue of pairing veterans with service dogs.
“Nothing came of that meeting, because I only had the problem, I didn’t have the solution,” he said.
But, that meeting sparked Lyle to look for a solution, which would eventually lead Congress to pass the Puppies Assisting Wounded Service Act (PAWS).
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While all of that was going on, Lyle was pursuing his degree in political science from Texas A&M. Following graduation, he moved to Washington, D.C. where he worked for The American Legion, VA, on Capitol Hill and consulted with a couple of veterans service organizations.
“Then the withdrawal in Afghanistan happens,” Lyle said. “I had several personal friends reach out to me because I was the only person in my former unit who worked at the federal policy level. They were trying to rationalize why the American government, why are we botching this?”
Lyle said he talked several of his friends out of committing suicide during those discussions. “One had a gun in his mouth, one was truck driving talking about running off the road,” he said. “I had to talk them down.”
Soon after that, the position at Mission Roll Call came up. The nonprofit’s main priority is veteran suicide prevention.
“It was something that I had personally dealt with as an end-user of the VA,” explained Lyle. “It was something I had seen from Congress and the VA’s perspective as well as helping out personal friends. I felt very strongly it was something that I was being led to do, something I was being called to do.”
Lyle said suicide is a complicated problem for several reasons. “The VA looks at this problem and they couple suicide directly with mental health,” he said.
Only 30 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have been diagnosed with mental health issues, continued Lyle.
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“At the moment of decision, when someone is thinking about making that irreversible decision, it may not be a mental health issue,” he said. ‘“It could be financial stress. It could be relationship stress. It might be any number of things that get them to that point.”
Lyle said when he talks to veterans when they are at that moment it is more feeling about being hopeless, alone and they have no options.
“They just feel they have no options,” he said. “It sounds corny and cheesy, but you start with love. They just want to feel love. They just want to feel that somebody cares.”
Jones is also a Marine veteran. He joined the Corps in 1994 and lost both legs while serving in Iraq.
Like Lyle, Jones said he didn’t really know what he was going to do after he left the Corps and went straight to college.
“That was probably the worse thing for me to do,” he said. Jones said he was neither physically nor mentally ready for college. “It just wasn’t a good fit at the beginning."
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Jones had done a movie “Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq” when he received a call from Gen. Peter Pace, the 16th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff offering to train him and get him a job on Wall Street.
“I ended up going through brokerage training with Gen. Pace’s program, Wall Street Warfighters,” he said.
Jones ended up running the program for a time and stressed that the transition from the military to the civilian world should start about six months before leaving the military.
Jones said AWP not only helps with career transition but supports community-based veteran service programs to end suicide.
“We partner with the community in order to prevent veteran suicide,” he explained. “We utilize an upstream approach so we are actually looking for the veterans.”
AWP’s four-point plan is based on connecting, education, advocacy, and collaboration. “We want to improve the quality of life of all veterans that in return will end veteran suicide,” he said.
Jones called veteran suicide a multigenerational issue that didn’t just begin with Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.
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“We have to look a Vietnam, Korea, all the way down the road,” he said. “It’s been an issue in America and the world for generations.”
Jones said suicide prevention hasn’t been properly addressed on many levels.
“How we get you to not go down that route is by maintaining your community,” he said. “We want to get to the veteran before they go into crisis."
Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com.
If you’re a veteran having thoughts of suicide or you know one who is, contact the Veterans Crisis Line 24/7/365 days a year. Call?1-800-273-8255 and Press 1, chat online or text to 838255.