Tag: veterans

"I didn’t start to feel like a woman at a certain age—I started to feel like a girl. I was five years old, growing up in Arizona, and I prayed to God to turn me into a girl. You can’t tell me that this is a choice."

This Veterans Day, Army officers Paul Tocci, Kevin Epp, Brendan Buckley, Corey Reiser, and Eric Osteen will give back to their community by debuting in Atlanta a new mobile app that seeks to make giving to charity an everyday task—ReSupply

An airplane fanatic since he was six, Willard Womack climbs onto the wing of a Bell P-63 Kingcobra and beholds it like some immense phoenix brought back to life. In four days, after a 25-year restoration, the P-63 will fly again or for the first time since 1974.

“Once you hit the water, it’s so relaxing; all anxiety is gone. You’re away from your PTSD. You’re away from any injuries you have. It’s just you and the aquarium.”

Everywhere Jason Smith turned, it seemed death surrounded him. As a medic in the smoldering battlegrounds of Iraq, he performed CPR on fatally wounded Marines. Back home he was involved in a car wreck that left him with a traumatic brain injury and killed a friend. Before long he began hallucinating.

The military veterans of Post 105 had spent their best years doing hazardous jobs on behalf of their country, and now, on a windy blue morning, they did one more. Nearly 700 worn-out American flags had accumulated at their headquarters, deposited by various local patriots, and it was time for the quarterly cremation.

Outside the Fulton County Accountability Court headquarters, a cold wind ripped through the Bankhead neighborhood west of downtown. Standing inside before two dozen veterans of conflicts from Vietnam to Afghanistan, John L. Walsh, a real estate broker and a Vietnam War veteran, gave his pitch with all the fervor of a seasoned recruiting sergeant.

Sometimes the best way to overcome a traumatic experience is to relive it. Researchers at Emory have been exploring ways that combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder could be tackled by using virtual reality.

Back in 2012, after Atlanta bested thirteen other cities in a contest to house 100 homeless veterans in 100 days, Mayor Kasim Reed announced that the city would do even better in 2013 by helping 800 chronically homeless Atlantans—a significant percentage of whom are veterans—move into permanent homes by the end of the year. As of late September, the [Unsheltered No More Initiative][1] was on its way to meeting that goal, with 700 people moved off the street.