John E. Lee is quietly going around the state to remind people of his job looking after those who did theirs.
Lee is the director of the state's Department of Veterans Affairs, an organization that oversees three homes for veterans and, lately, has been counselor and advocate to those men and women coming home from ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Iraq, Afghanistan and all the other places the military carries out its missions. For a former command sergeant major, Lee is soft-spoken and quietly intense. More than 22 years in the Army and a master's degree in health-care administration have placed him in Olympia at a moment when a war is supplying another generation of veterans who bring home the baggage of stress and double deployments. Those in active-duty uniforms and those with discharge papers across Puget Sound communities number in the multiple thousands.
Metropolitan Seattle is a curious place to find such a large military presence. Feelings against the war, the White House, the sack of the Middle East, are more than palpable in Seattle, where military recruiters are not always welcome in urban life or at the high schools.
Yet, the role of the Washington National Guard and Reserves continues to play out in the great arc of Iraq to Asia, and the troops go when and where they are told. Coming home is Lee's territory.
"Most veterans are not unemployed," Lee said, "but too many are underemployed." That leads to the Helmets to Hardhats program, placing veterans in construction work in cooperation with the unions and companies. The national program is sponsored by all 15 building and construction trade unions and more than 80,000 construction companies. Vets can make career choices and get training. They also can train through the Veterans Conservation Corps for work in nature restoration.
"In previous wars, veterans were coming home with post-traumatic stress disorder at a rate of about 17 percent. We think the current figure will be about 25 percent. And it could go higher."
Lee sees his job and the job of the department as the safety net for the complications that war and uniformed service present.
"If I am awake at night," he said, "it's thinking about the young people who put their lives on hold to serve their country. Those are the middle-range enlisted ranks — corporals and young sergeants — who entered the military for the benefits and the service. They come home and their lives have changed. Maybe a marriage and a mortgage delays their entry into college and they find they're not making it. We offer counseling and everything we can imagine to help them."
Director Lee is on the road about 60 to 70 percent of the time, he told me. He is the apostle of veterans affairs. He spouts Web sites and toll-free numbers. He cites the statistics of recuperation.
"Out of a cohort of 800 men and women returning from the current war, 57 percent are family members," Lee said. "That means they are spouses, uncles, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters. They belong to families and how they return impacts the whole family."
Lee is there waiting for them.
James F. Vesely's column appears Sunday on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is: jvesely@seattletimes.com for a podcast Q&A with the author, see Editorial/Opinion on seattletimes.com
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