Six Degrees Of Separation - We Will Always Be Red Sox Fans

When Red Sox celebrate, so do I

There is much to the power of connections. Many have heard of the "six degrees of separation" theory -- the idea that everyone in the world is separated from everyone else by no more than six links. (1) Jan's friend's daughter is a consultant to the Boston Red Sox Foundation who helped set up the Home Base Program for Veterans with Massachusetts General Hospital. Through that connection, Jan's friend's daughter got us in touch with a social worker at Home Base who was able to connect us to a specialist in Portland, Oregon who could help our son outside of the Veterans Administration medical system. The BoSox were always a team of interest to me, especially when they made their recent runs and wins for the Baseball World Series (I have a friend from New England who just can't watch their games in the championship runs for fear of jinxing the outcome - I don't think he changes his underwear either). Our oldest son often wears a Boston ball cap, and has always has followed them, and when Jacoby Ellsbury from the Oregon State Beavers College World Series teams played with them, that made the team even more personal. But that Home Base folks were so helpful to us, we are established as a Red Sox family, forever.

Boston Globe Writer Kevin Cullen once featured Home Base in his Sunday column. He is the same writer who wrote about Adam Dickmyer's funeral at Arlington National Cemetery. Adam had been the squadron leader of the funeral detail for Senator Ted Kennedy, and Adam and Mike had served together at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier - more connections. Adam, Mike, Jan; Denise, Norma, Jan; Jan, Social Worker in Boston, someone in Oregon, Larry; Adam, the Senator's wife and doctor's nephew, Kevin; and me to these - less than six degrees of separation to all.
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Preparing Clinicians to Serve Veterans and Military Families (2)

As more Post 9/11 veterans choose to receive health care outside the VA, it is critical that community clinicians are prepared to understand military culture, and recognize and treat the “invisible wounds” of war. Thanks to new funding, Home Base is leading this effort in the New England area.

In addition to generous support from the Welcome Back Veterans Initiative of Major League Baseball and the McCormick Foundation, Home Base has received funding new from the Bob Woodruff Foundation and the MA Attorney General’s Office to significantly enhance our clinical education efforts through The Training Institute at Home Base: a Welcome Back Veterans education initiative to heal the invisible wounds of war. With funding from the Woodruff Foundation, Home Base will conduct a comprehensive needs assessment of non-VA clinicians throughout New England in order to document their willingness to treat Post 9/11 veterans and military families in their practices. The web-based survey will assess community clinicians’ experience in providing evidence-based mental health treatment, and their interest in receiving additional training in evidence-based therapy. In addition, the grant will allow Home Base to map and document the location and accessibility of evidence-based clinical treatment for the invisible wounds of war in New England.

“This year, it’s estimated that 40% of returning veterans will be cared for in non-VA, community health care settings. We know from our work in educating communities about the needs of returning veterans and their families that clinicians want to learn how to help fill gaps in care. For the first time, this generous grant from the Woodruff Foundation will enable us to fully document clinical training needs and optimally target our efforts to ensure that veterans and their families have access to evidence-based treatment that is sensitive to the needs of our Post 9/11 veterans and military families impacted by the invisible wounds such as PTSD and traumatic brain injury,” said Naomi Simon, MD, Chief Medical Officer of Home Base.

In May, Home Base was among the organizations to receive funding from the MA Office of the Attorney General to help reduce the stigma associated with seeking help for mental illness and substance abuse. Attorney General Martha Coakley awarded nearly $8 million to a total of 22 organizations across the Commonwealth in order to increase access to behavioral health services. The grant will enable Home Base to provide training to First Responders, patient care and Rehabilitation Professionals to recognize and respond to the mental health needs of Post 9/11 veterans and military families.

“Police, Fire and Emergency First Responders as well as patient care and rehabilitation health professionals are critical partners in identifying and responding to the ‘invisible wounds’ of war among our returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and their families. Home Base is eager to provide education and training to this community, and extremely grateful to the Office of the Attorney General for this extraordinary commitment to improving the health of Post 9/11 veterans and their families who have served and sacrificed for our nation,” said Brigadier General (ret) Jack Hammond, Executive Director of Home Base.

The Training Institute at Home Base is funded by a two year, national grant from the Robert R. McCormick Foundation and Major League Baseball. It will offer free on-line and in-person training for clinicians throughout New England through the War Zone to the Home Front series presented in collaboration with the VA’s National Center for PTSD; provide in-depth, multi-week courses on-line; and offer targeted consultation training and clinical supervision, considered the “gold standard” in clinical training.
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(1) From ABC News, Six Degrees of Separation: Fact or Fiction? (here)
(2) From the Home Base Program, Summer 2014 Newsletter

Lost to a War, But Not Unknown

An article about Adam Dickmyer's funeral appeared in the Boston Globe newspaper on November 23. In the article the writer, Kevin Cullen, mentioned the connection of Adam to the funeral of Senator Ted Kennedy, and how the the Senator's doctor's nephew - an Army Captain, along with Mrs. Kennedy, attended the funeral. I appreciated what Cullen wrote, so sent him an email last night thanking him. He wrote back today. Below is my note, and his reply - followed by the article - Lost to a war unknown. There are always stories behind the stories - these are no exceptions. (1)
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November 29, 2010

Dear Mr. Cullen,

Thank you for your follow-up article to the funeral of SSG Adam Dickmyer at Arlington National Cemetery. Our son served with Adam for three years at the Tomb of the Unknowns - his loss was close to home for us. I appreciate you mentioning the Army connection to the Kennedy's family through the Senator's physician, as well as Mrs. Kennedy's attendance. You may not know, but another attendee of the funeral was SSG Salvatore Giunta, who the day before was presented the Medal of Honor. My understanding is that the Tomb Guards had helped him shape up his uniform for the presentation at the White House, and later the day of the funeral, his induction into the DoD Hall of Honor at the Pentagon - he walked unnoticed with the mourners from the chapel to the Section 60.

There are many ways that those in the military support one another. Thank you for your support of our troops through good articles such as you wrote about Adam.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey Steiner
Annapolis, MD
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November 30, 2010

Thanks.
Dr. Ronan called me when his nephew told him about Adam being KIA.
He asked me to write something to recognize Adam, and I'm glad I did
because it reached a lot of people, and Adam was, like so many of our
people in the military, the best of us.

Cheers
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Lost to a war unknown
By Kevin Cullen
Globe Columnist / November 23, 2010

For six years, Army Staff Sergeant Adam Dickmyer was a “sentinel,’’ one of the guards at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery.

He was one of the elite Old Guard, the select soldiers who, in rotation, bear silent witness every minute of every day, in all kinds of weather, honoring the unknown soldiers who died on foreign battlefields.

It was something he took seriously.
 

Dickmyer spoke to Robert Poole for Poole’s book, “On Hallowed Ground: The Story of Arlington National Cemetery,’’ which was published last year. He explained the Old Guard’s mission with a poignant simplicity.
 

“We want the guys who sacrificed everything to know that they are still remembered, that someone still cares,’’ he said.
 

Sometimes, his duties took him away from Arlington. Dickmyer was lead pallbearer for Senator Ted Kennedy last year. He was with the casket every step of the way, from Hyannis Port to the Kennedy library to the Mission Church. Tens of thousands of people from Massachusetts and beyond would have seen Dickmyer or passed close to him, but they wouldn’t have known who he was.

Hundreds of thousands would have watched him over the years at the Tomb of the Unknowns as he faced the tomb for 21 seconds then marched 21 steps, a ceremony of remembrance practiced over and over again. But none of those tourists would have known his name.
 

Dickmyer was part of one of the most distinguished units in the Army. Less than 20 percent who try out make the Old Guard. Still, he volunteered for combat duty, leaving the Old Guard for the Second Battalion of the 502d Infantry Regiment, Second Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division. In June, his unit arrived in Afghanistan for a yearlong deployment. On Oct. 28, Dickmyer dismounted from his armored vehicle and was on foot patrol in Kandahar when a hidden bomb exploded, killing him. He was 26.
 

He was just the third sentinel killed in action. Two others, Staff Sergeant William Spates Jr. and Sergeant Marvin Franklin, were killed in Vietnam.
 

Dickmyer was the first of five soldiers out of Fort Campbell in Kentucky to be killed in Afghanistan in five days. The day after he died, Specialist Pedro Maldonado, 20, was killed by grenades and gunfire. A day later, Specialist Brett Land, 24, was killed, like Dickmyer, by an IED.
 

Four days after Dickmyer was killed, a guy on a motorcycle drove up to the Second Brigade’s base. Specialist Jonathan Curtis, 24, a great kid who grew up in Belmont, and Private First Class Andrew Meari, 21, were on guard duty and stopped the motorcycle, preventing it from entering the base. In doing so, they saved many lives, but lost their own when the guy on the motorcycle detonated the explosives he was wearing.
 

The war in Afghanistan is the ultimate war of the unknown soldier. So few Americans have their own flesh and blood in harm’s way. So few think of the war on a daily basis. The war trundles on, unknown to so many.
 

They remembered Jonathan Curtis in Belmont Sunday, and last week they remembered Adam Dickmyer, the face of the unknowns, who had been seen by so many and known by so few, at the cemetery where he stood in silent witness before he went off to war. Dickmyer’s cortège was escorted by Army Captain Mark Boyle, whose uncle, Larry Ronan, was Ted Kennedy’s doctor. Ted Kennedy’s widow, Vicki, was there, too, as Dickmyer’s widow, Melinda, accepted a tightly folded flag.
 

“It is he who commands the respect I protect, his bravery that made us so proud,’’ the sentinel’s creed reads. “Surrounded by well-meaning crowds by day, alone in the thoughtful peace of night, this soldier will in honored glory rest under my eternal vigilance.’’
 

Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com.
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(1) Rex Looney has posted photographs from the day of the funeral on his Flicker site, as a part of the memorial portfolio to Adam. No doubt there are more stories behind these photographs - beyond the captions that Rex provides. A personal photographic narrative account of the impressions from participating in a funeral procession can be found by clicking here.