Summit hopes to reach veterans

By Jimmy LaRoue

Published: November 6, 2008

FISHERSVILLE — “If this is what I’m coming home to – forget it,” Steven Moore said.

He and his godmother, Angita Szelesta, were in the emergency room at a Veterans Administration Medical Center, where she had taken him to get treated for a drug overdose.

Moore had suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury following his one-year of military service in Iraq.

They waited for more than six hours, and in that time, the medical center lost Moore’s records, Szelesta recalled.

They left.

Moore had earned a Purple Heart at age 18 following a roadside bomb attack, and when he returned home, he wasn’t the same.

“Steven says he wishes this was one medal he never received,” Szelesta said.

Szelesta spoke also about her own son, Stan Crowder, and his combat experiences. His problems were similar to Moore’s, following a helicopter crash in Afghanistan, but was able to return to combat.

Szelesta, along with a number of speakers, are taking part in the Virginia Wounded Warrior Program Summit at the Woodrow Wilson Rehabilitation Center, which continues today. The conference is designed to increase awareness of combat stress-related issues and brain trauma injuries that affect military members – both active duty and retired – as well as their families.

Rick Sizemore, director of the Woodrow Wilson Rehabilitation Center, said the goal is that no matter where a combat veteran goes, that he or she can find the needed help.

“That’s the purpose of the Virginia Wounded Warrior network ... to connect all those various services so that there’s no wrong door for a veteran,” Sizemore said.

The Rev. C. Diane Mosby, of Glen Allen, said her son, Geoffrey Mosby, Jr.,  served for a more than a year in Iraq. Far from the well-adjusted son she knew prior to his joining the Virginia Army National Guard, when he returned in February 2005 as a decorated soldier, her family noticed that he started having increased nightmares and became more reclusive.

“We began to notice a deep dark, darkness in his eyes,” Mosby said. “It was as if he had separated body and spirit.”

Noticing the signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, Mosby said she first reached out to the VA, but got caught up “in a red-tape nuke that became infinite,” in her three-year effort to get help for her son.

No help was forthcoming because her son was in denial and they couldn’t get his medical records from the National Guard, she said. They always got the same answer: “If he does not want any help, we cannot force him to get any help.”

Nine months later, she went to the Veterans Affairs-Outreach Center in Richmond, which helped him understand what he was going through. In Aug. 2006, he was diagnosed with PTSD, given pills and sent home.

Frustrated, she enlisted help from government and other officials and was “fortunate enough” to get the needed help. For most families, she said, the story is much different.

“We realize that there’s something broken in the system,” Mosby said, when people bounce around from doctor to doctor to the point where they get too frustrated to seek help.

Soldiers in the United States “are being marginalized into a stack of papers,” but Mosby vowed to keep fighting for her son, and for all combat veterans.

And though her son received a combat action badge, because there were no medical records showing he was in active combat, he couldn’t get the proper treatment.

Finally, her son gave up.

“He shut down,” Mosby said. “He refused to go [seek help]. He refused to come out. He got tired of telling the same story to 15 different people and never getting the help that he needed.”