Melvin T. Brown Jr. served in the U.S. Air Force as an airman in the early 1990s where he saw his friends get killed during an explosion.
But it wasn’t until a few years ago that the Waukegan resident discovered he had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
With help from the Captain James Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago, Brown said he is now recovering and working to help other veterans, adding that he came to the annual veterans resource fair and welcome home ceremony held Wednesday at the College of Lake County in Grayslake to celebrate veterans and offer a helping hand.
“We need to uplift each other,” he said.
Brown was visiting with Elizabeth La Combe at a booth before the ceremony, which featured keynote speaker Brian Riegler, a Navy commander and Purple Heart recipient who is also principal at Waukegan High School.
La Combe, the Lovell Center’s music therapist, encouraged Brown to enter his poetry, titled “I am PTSD,” into regional and then national creative veterans competitions this year. He won first place at both contests.
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La Combe said the Lovell Center recently hired her and an art therapist to help veterans. “They’re seeing how helpful creative expression can be for the veterans,” she said. “Music is a non-confrontational way for them to work through their issues.”
Brown said when he returned from service, he began working as a police officer for North Chicago, a job he later left. One day a few years ago while outside his home, he said a feeling overcame him where “reality began to look like water.”
He added that there is no other way to describe the feeling — it was like water was enveloping him. He recalled getting down on the ground and crawling into his home, something he was trained in the military to do whenever he felt he was in trouble.
“I was on my knees crawling across the yard,” he said, adding that his wife and his pastor told him he needed to get help. “It was shameful. I thought it was beneath me. Every veteran is trained to rise above that.”
But Brown added that he listened to his wife and pastor and entered a special program at the Lovell Center, where he learned cognitive behavior as a way to heal and also received music and art therapy.
While enrolled in the program, Brown met La Combe, who suggested he enter his poetry into the 2016 Veterans Creative Arts Festival.
“She made me do it,” he said. “She was very persuasive, in a sweet and loving way.”
“The way Melvin presents his poetry is rhythmical and musical,” La Combe said. “I knew it would be a life-changing experience for him. After he came back (from the national contest in Mississippi), he’s brighter. He’s shinier. He has more confidence.”
Now Brown spends time talking to other veterans to help them get the services they need and also serves as assistant pastor at Unity Temple in Waukegan.
Ken Parrish of Hainesville, a Vietnam War veteran who also came to the event, said there’s a lot more help for veterans in Lake County compared with when he came home from war, and more Americans are welcoming servicemen and women home.
“It makes me feel good that everybody is recognizing these guys,” he said of the veterans from recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Brown said it’s important for every veteran to be embraced and find healing help.
During the noon ceremony, a clarinetist, flutist and bassoonist from the Navy Band performed patriotic tunes, and “The Star-Spangled Banner” was sung.
Speakers talked about the myriad resources available for veterans in Lake County, and that a new Student Veterans Club has been formed at the college.
Army veteran Joseph R. Bochantin, who is veteran student services coordinator at CLC, spoke of how he returned to school to get a degree after service and was failing math.
By seeking support from local veterans, he said he was able to pass the class with a B.
“Veterans need veterans,” he told the audience.
Riegler, who serves in the Navy Reserve when he’s not on the job at Waukegan High, offered the audience some examples of the true meaning of a warrior. He’s been deployed several times, most recently to Afghanistan, where his base was attacked by a suicide bomber.
“It was here where I witnessed war up close,” he said.
He saw his colleagues run out and help others in the midst of the chaos — and said that is the definition of a true warrior.
“I’ve often been asked by people — as a veteran — who would I want to be my president and do I agree with our nation’s foreign policy?” he said.
Riegler said he responds: “We do as we are told, not for our leaders, not for who is president, but for our country.”
Sheryl DeVore is a freelance reporter for the News-Sun.
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