Friday is Veterans Day, a time to honor and remember military veterans that have served within the United States Armed Forces.
In recognition of Veterans Day, two members from the Nevada Veterans Foundation, a nonprofit on a mission to improve quality of life for members of the military, military retirees, veterans and their families here in Southern Nevada, share their stories from the service.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
Richard Moyer is a Vietnam veteran who received a Purple Heart and two Bronze Stars for his service.
On his arrival to Vietnam
I was an old man, I was 20. Most of the men that I served with, and I say men, a lot of them were 18 or 19 year olds. … It was definitely the experience of the unknown. I can remember when we landed in Bentonville airbase in the middle of the night. And a second lieutenant came on a plane and told us to get off the plane as fast as we could. We were under fire. Welcome to Vietnam. And that's where we ran to the bunkers and waited and we got the all clear. When you step off the plane, the smell is actually like you're in the middle of a swamp. … It was quite an unusual new experience for me.
In 1968, there'd been such an upheaval year. I graduated from jump school on Wednesday, and that Friday, Martin Luther King was assassinated. And we just already got over the assassination of President Kennedy in ‘63. And, then when I got to Vietnam, Bobby Kennedy got assassinated. So 1968 was quite a dramatic year. In fact, when I got to Vietnam, I arrived in May of 1968, which was the bloodiest month of the bloody year in Vietnam.
On returning home
Every time you step off the trough or jump off the truck, you already know you're walking on that knife’s edge. You never knew what to expect. And unless you are prepared for most anything, and sometimes before we hit the ground, we're already in a firefight. … It was quite a year for me.
I was 21 when I got home. … My family all met me at the Youngstown, Ohio airport. I probably had over 100 family members waiting at the airport on the upper deck. … For me, that was pretty good. That was a better homecoming than most Vietnam vets got.
On what to know about veterans
[Veterans] for the most part, they're just average Joes or Janes; they're just people who decided they want to do something more for the country and beyond just themselves. … Helping your fellow man, I guess that's it. Even in such trying times as we're going through right now, there's still better days ahead. They have to understand it. We get through all of these crises always, and we always have, and we always will.
Karen Estabrook served in Nevada's National Guard from 1983 to 2007, and is currently the acting chairperson of the Nevada Veterans Foundation:
On joining the National Guard
Back in 1980, I was a college student, 20 years old. … I had to drop out, work for a little while, and save some money. And while I was working, one of my coworkers told me about the Ohio National Guard, and they would pay your tuition if you joined. I was in the Ohio National Guard from 1980 to 1981, and decided to move to Phoenix. I was there from 1981 to ‘83. And then moved here to Nevada, Las Vegas in 1983. I found my home, and there was a unit here and I joined that unit, the 72nd Military Police Company, and actually turned that into a career. …
You didn't have too many women in the Army as a whole, let alone in the Army National Guard, especially in military police units as military police officers; I would say probably like less than 10%. … You always had to prove yourself, you had to be better, you had to be faster, you had to think on your feet, and I'm sort of little, I'm 5’3”, so I really had to be able to do a lot of the things that military police are required to do.
On how veterans are treated
My personal opinion is the country as a whole has now embraced veterans. They appreciate veterans. … I think even our veterans, other veterans, the majority of us, we pay it forward. I worked for the VA, and now I'm with the nonprofit foundation, and I do belong to a couple other nonprofit organizations. I think our community, our state and our country is much more appreciative of veterans nowadays from the early ‘80s, and and even up until the early ‘90s.
I went to a lot of job interviews after I first retired from the Army. There's a real misconception. You know, you have a captive audience and as a supervisor or manager, or even a soldier, it's pretty much dress right, walk between the lines. That's really not true, people are still people, and you have to manage them and deal with them. And the military, you can't fire anybody. There's a process that you have to go through in order to get somebody discharged. It's a real testament to a person's ability to be able to negotiate, to be able to deal with all kinds of different people, because your military is a dichotomy of society. …. You have to take all of your perceptions and conceptions, and throw them out the window, because people are people and you deal with people on an individual basis in order to build a stronger team. Because if you don't have strong teamwork in the military, and your other team members don't have your back, that's not a good thing.
On what to know about veterans
I think the biggest thing that worries me is our veteran suicide rate. In Nevada, we have one of the highest and veterans need to know they're not alone. That's probably the biggest thing people need to understand about veterans. This is because they gave a lot. Many of them feel lost when they leave active duty. Many of them have things that they're dealing with, because of what they saw on active duty. Find it in your heart to try and understand that veterans are people you know, and they had a job to do … embrace them.
Karen Estabrook, acting chairperson, Nevada Veterans Foundation; Richard Moyer, Vietnam veteran
