Credit where it is due: The Veterans Administration

U.S. Army veteran Jim Purcell

By Rev. J.J. Purcell

When I arrived to the Veterans Administration in New Jersey during July of 2013, I was a wreck.

I had so many physical problems and other illnesses that were untreated before I showed up at the East Orange VA Emergency Room. I could not walk without great pain due to a large mass in my left foot. I have virtually no ligature in my left knee and both knees suffer greatly from arthritis. My left shoulder had been injured for several years, but the injury was extremely aggravated in 2011.

During all of 2012, I was practically a slave working at dive bars in Keansburg and East Keansburg just to keep a small, bed-bug infested room on Keansburg's Maple Avenue. I had no lasting place to live.

Suffering from PTSD, chronic Major Depression and anxiety, to name a few issues going on at the time, there was not a moment of the day where I knew real peace. I still have bed-bug scars on my right hand and elbow where large, infected wounds once were from that time period.

For all intents and purposes, I had been homeless for over a year by that point, and unemployable because of my wounds and moment-to-moment pain.

Well, the VA operated on my foot and shoulder. Doctors also shot my knees with artificial ligature. I became medicated regarding the psychiatric issues -- but what is more important than any of that was that I was back among friends -- fellow veterans. Most of those I encountered in the VA System had run into setbacks in their own lives as well.

It is with care that fellow veterans handle each other here, because all of us have had turnarounds of luck, reversals of fortune. Otherwise, they would not be in veterans emergency housing, or transitional housing, or in VA homeless shelters.

To hear some people say it, the VA System is one of the worst in the world. I have lived within this system, though, for more than a year and a half and my experience is that such a notion could not be further from the truth of my experience.

During years of homelessness, my self-image and confidence had been destroyed. I was practically a beggar and the only future I wanted was in a pinewood box. In fact, when I arrived to East Orange's ER, I needed two canes to walk. During my early stay in the VA, I used a wheelchair every moment of the day. I had a tooth, broken into shards, still within my lower teeth, and it was horrible. The VA pulled that tooth.

In short, the VA dealt with my issues as best they could. Though I will never be 100 percent of myself back in the days when I was a young paratrooper, I certainly have a much more pain-free existence today.

What am I saying? If you know a vet who is suffering from homelessness, major illness or, as it often is, addictive issues, then get them back in touch with the VA. That one single move might well save their lives.

(Rev. J.J. Purcell was licensed to preach by American Baptist Churches -- New Jersey, following his graduation from the NY Theological Seminary. He is also a former U.S. Army Paratrooper who served with various units within the XVIII Airborne Corps during the 1980s.)