Vietnam Vet Finds Solace in Visits to VA Hospital

Vietnam veteran Ted Flaxman is at the VA Hospital in East Orange at least once a week for yoga classes, doctors' appointments, and to visit veterans and give them comfort kits with squeeze balls, toothbrushes, T-shirts and patches representing their military service.

"They're the only people who understand what I'm going through," said Flaxman, 64, a 1963 Columbia High School graduate who's lived in South Orange and Maplewood for most of his life and worked in the film industry in production jobs until his health forced him to retire.

Flaxman—who was drafted in 1965 and enlisted in the Special Forces, where he served until being wounded in 1968—is confined to a wheelchair due to injuries he sustained in the war. He has a lift installed on his porch by the VA that allows him to get in and out of the house and also suffers from post-traumatic stress and recurring nightmares.

He wasn't always wheelchair-bound, though he says he was in pain from the day he left the service. A spinal fusion procedure was performed on him in 1983, and he had titanium screws and plastic inserted into his spine to hold it together in 1998. Gradually, he lost the ability to walk—moving from a cane to a walker to a wheelchair—though he can still stand enough to transfer his weight from one seat to another. He takes morphine twice a day in addition to a plethora of other medications.

Flaxman planned to attend the annual Memorial Day commemoration ceremony by the Duck Pond, where he has often spoken in memory of friends who died in the war. According to his long-time girlfriend, Barbara McKenna, the event has gotten to be better attended over the years.

"It's nice to see these people come up to Ted and say, 'Welcome home, thank you,'" she said.

That experience is in contrast to the reception Flaxman remembers from when he first came home from the war and was shuttling back and forth to Fort Dix, where he was receiving treatment. At the height of the anti-war movement, he remembers being called names and having people spit in his face and describes the growing cultural appreciation of the sacrifices of Vietnam veterans as "a little too late."

"Whether you think Vietnam was right or wrong, I did what my country asked me to do," said Flaxman, who thinks that soldiers returning from Iraq will fare better under the system due to information on benefits and resources imparted by Vietnam veterans associations.