Blue Mass Group

Meet Ron: Iowa veteran

By Sarah Ramey – Nov 13th, 2007 at 4:26 pm EST

Ron is a Vietnam-era veteran and his son, Jesse, is an Iraq War veteran.

“When I was a kid and I enlisted,” Ron says, “I had no idea what I was going to put my family through.  But I know now.  The hell me and my wife have been through — I know now.”

Jesse served two tours of duty in Iraq.  

“When he came back the second time, he was very quiet,” Ron says.  ”It was very familiar.  We have a name for it now, PTSD, but it’s all the same.   He needed help, but when we went to the VA hospital, there wasn’t any.  The place felt like it was straight out of the 50′s and 60′s…if they didn’t have volunteers from another nearby hospital, they wouldn’t have anything.”

“I just get so upset that there are people getting rich off this war, but what about these young men and women?  The government doesn’t care about them.”

Ron, who’s been a teacher in Iowa for the last 31 years, is a big Barack Obama supporter.  After weighing all the candidates very carefully, he was extremely impressed by Barack because he saw in him a person who was willing to listen.  ”The government has stopped listening to the people,” Ron says.  ”They say they’re going to listen, they say they’re going to help veterans, but then they never do.  That’s why I’m supporting the guy who actually has the track record of helping people — of sacrificing the big bucks to actually go out and make sure regular people are getting the help they need.”

Barack’s background as a community organizer and civil rights lawyer — when he could have easily gone to work for a high-paying legal firm — was proof to Ron that, “an Obama Administration is going to be an administration we can trust.”  

When Jesse got back, with almost no help from the government, Ron did everything he could to help his son get his feet back on the ground.  For work, Jesse started doing heavy construction, but quickly realized it wasn’t working for him.  After spending so much time with his dad, Jesse decided he wanted to be the kind of dad his own father had been for him, to have time to go to all the football games and t-ball practices.  Now, a couple years out of the army, Jesse is married, he’s going to college full-time, and his goal is to be a industrial technology teacher.  

Being Iowans living in the small town of Huxley, both Jesse’s parents were sure to make it to the Jefferson-Jackson dinner this past weekend, and were blown away.

“He’s so strong,” says Sue, Jesse’s mother.  ”It was a beautiful speech, and we really appreciate that Barack is making it a priority to end the war. We trust his judgment and he’s proven throughout his career that he knows how to listen — which will make for a much better foreign policy than we have now.  Do we even have a foreign policy right now?”

Ron and Sue are glad to have their family put back together again, but the war continues to loom large.  They also have a younger son in high school, and recently he too expressed an interest in joining the military, to serve his country as his father and his brother did before him.  

“I told him,” says Sue quietly, “Before you do anything like that, before you even think of doing anything like that, you wait for an Obama Administration.”

This week, as we honor our veterans, be sure to visit Veterans.BarackObama.com.  

You’ll see videos like this: New Hampshire at War