This has been a summer of homecomings. In marking the end of the American combat mission in Iraq, we have now welcomed home nearly 100,000 of our troops from that war. Across the country, family and friends have honored these returning heroes. Spouses have been reunited, and military moms and dads have held their children once again.

But while America’s combat mission in Iraq has ended, America’s commitment to our troops and their families goes on. All of us are called to an ongoing mission: to support our troops, veterans and their families, whether they are here at home, serving in Afghanistan, or supporting the Iraqi people as they forge their own future.

Stepping up

As a country, we have come a long way in how we support our veterans and military families. In our travels to base communities from Fort Bragg to Camp Pendleton, we have seen employers creating innovative programs to support military families, classrooms adopting deployed units, faith communities providing prayers and support, and countless other acts of kindness.

Yet there is still more work to be done.

Our military families are strong, resilient and proud to serve their country.

Nonetheless, they don’t always feel that the rest of the country is part of the war effort. We’ve met National Guard families who feel isolated because they are the only members of their communities experiencing the deployment of a loved one. We’ve heard from military kids who struggle in school while their parents are deployed.

Remarkably, these same families still find time to serve their communities every day. They are troops who come home from a long deployment and coach Little League or mentor a child. They are children who tutor their younger siblings, and spouses who balance their families with jobs, school, community service — or all of the above. They are wounded warriors, survivors and veterans who continue to give so much to our country.

Guided by their stories, the Obama administration has made one of the largest investments in a generation in our veterans and military families. This includes building a 21st century Department of Veterans Affairs, improving care for traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder, strengthening military family readiness programs, helping hundreds of thousands of veterans get a college education, and combating the tragedy of homelessness among veterans.

But government can only do so much.

That’s why we’re challenging every sector of American society to support and engage our military families. You don’t have to come from a military family, have a base in your community, or be an expert in military issues to make a difference. Every American can do something.

‘We can do this’

Businesses and organizations of all kinds can expand job opportunities and connect the work they’re already doing with the needs of military families. There are so many ways to help, and you can get started by visiting www.serve.gov to see how other Americans are helping in their communities.

One percent of our population is doing 100% of the fighting, but we need 100% of Americans working to support our troops and their families. We can do this. In every community, every day, we can find concrete ways to show our military families the respect and gratitude that each of us holds for them in our hearts. They deserve our support long after the welcome home ceremonies are over.

That’s the spirit that defines us as Americans, and it’s who we need to continue to be in the months and years ahead.

Source Article

Many Americans, like you, me and all our friends, simply want to recognize that the vast majority of America supports our troops. Our idea of showing solidarity and support for our troops with dignity and respect starts this Friday — and continues each and every Friday until the troops all come home, sending a deafening message that every red-blooded American who supports our men and women afar, will wear something blue. By word of mouth, press, TV — let’s make the United States on every Friday a sea of blue much like a homecoming football game in the bleachers. If every one of us who loves this country will share this with acquaintances, coworkers, friends, and family, it will not be long before the USA is covered in BLUE and it will let our troops know the once ‘silent’ majority is on their side more than ever, certainly more than the media lets on. The first thing a soldier says when asked ‘What can we do to make things better for you?’ is .’We need your support and your prayers.’ Let’s get the word out and lead with class and dignity, by example, and wear something blue every Friday.

First Place

Todd Heisler The Rocky Mountain News

When 2nd Lt. James Cathey’s body arrived at the Reno Airport , Marines climbed into the cargo hold of the plane and draped the flag over his casket as passengers watched the family gather on the tarmac.

During the arrival of another Marine’s casket last year at Denver International Airport , Major Steve Beck described the scene as so powerful: ‘See the people in the windows? They sat right there in the plane, watching those Marines. You gotta wonder what’s going through their minds, knowing that they’re on the plane that brought him home,’ he said ‘They will remember being on that plane for the rest of their lives. They’re going to remember bringing that Marine home. And they should.’

Second Place

Todd Heisler The Rocky Mountain News

The night before the burial of her husband’s body, Katherine Cathey refused to leave the casket, asking to sleep next to his body for the last time The Marines made a bed for her, tucking in the sheets below the flag. Before she fell asleep, she opened her laptop computer and played songs that reminded her of ‘Cat,’ and one of the Marines asked if she wanted them to continue standing watch as she slept. ‘I think it would be kind of nice if you kept doing it,’ she said. ‘I think that’s what he would have wanted’

Operation American Heroes (OAH) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit public charity that was created to serve America’s heroes. Its mission is to provide immediate and long term funding to vetted service non-profits that are effectively treating injuries and disorders that are afflicting the men and women who are dedicated to protecting the lives of their fellow Americans.

OAH was founded in 2009 by a Houston businessman and Vietnam War veteran determined to fill the documented gaps in government support programs that many of our injured military service members were falling into as they returned home. Rising suicide, domestic violence and divorce rates combined with the frustration of families unable to obtain adequate physical, emotional and psychological treatment for their loved ones after completing multiple overseas combat deployments led Mr.Carloss to seek a better solution on behalf of our heroes.

“What our Board of Directors found, once we looked into the issues, was not a shortage of effective service providers,” said Carloss. “There are hundreds of great organizations that are treating homelessness, alcohol and drug abuse, paralysis, traumatic brain injuries, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and more. What we identified was a lack of funding that prevented the improvement and expansion of these missions and the financial inability to deliver their care to the heroes in need. Being a businessman, I enlisted the support of other patriotic Houston businessmen to help solve this problem.”

Fundraising for charities can be very inefficient. In some cases, the costs of raising funds can exceed 70 percent of what is raised, leaving only a small percentage to do the work for which it was donated. OAH has set out to remedy this problem with a unique business model that directly funds the most effective and needed service organizations. With an unpaid Board of Directors, over 50 percent of whom are former members of the Armed Forces and the others are concerned American citizens, coupled with a dedicated corps of volunteers and the annual underwriting participation of American business, OAH will be able to cover the operational and marketing expenses connected with fundraising and donate 100 percent of funds raised toward the immediate aid of our heroes or to the Foundation’s endowment which will support America’s heroes for generations to come.

Each year, businesses are encouraged to participate in “American Heroes Week.” During this Monday-Sunday period that includes Veterans Day, November 11th, businesses are asked to donate a small percentage of their total sales for the week or make a patriotic contribution to Operation American Heroes. Last year Carloss’ flooring and design center in the Houston area sold $217,000 during that week and was able to donate 2 percent, $4,340, to the Paralyzed Veterans of America. This year, OAH is looking to bring businesses from across America aboard. One can only imagine the funding possibilities when a majority of businesses participate. “These brave men and women are the reason that we have the freedom to start, grow and prosper our businesses,” said Carloss, “and it is only right that every business gives a small portion of their success in thanks.” We all can give a little for the few who have given so much.

Individuals can show their support by joining as a “ 21 Gun Saluter.” A tax-deductible annual donation of just $21 will be deposited into the “Forever Fund”, the Foundation’s permanent endowment. Interest raised on this money will provide assistance to our heroes for generations to come. Because the injuries suffered by our heroes linger long after the conflicts have ended and faded from the public consciousness, OAH is determined to create a long-term funding vehicle that will care for our heroes as long as they and their families need help. The “Forever Fund” is a way for individuals to take part in creating a permanent solution.

“As America’s heroes go forward daily in the defense of our safety and liberty, they can do so in the knowledge that concerned patriotic businesses and citizens ‘have their backs’ and have created a financial safety net to ensure that they and their families will receive all the present and long term support that is needed,” said Carloss.

Donations can be made online or mailed to OAH, P.O.Box 540246, Houston, Texas 77254-0246. Businesses interested in participating in “American Heroes Week” in November or serving as an underwriter, please contact John Carloss at jcarloss@operationamericanheroes.org or call him personally at 713-562-6142.

WASHINGTON — Faced with a rise in suicides among Marines, the service is ordering training for all immediate supervisors — sergeants and corporals — to become more involved and knowledgeable about the intimate details of the lives of their young charges.

“We as Marines always try to do the hard thing,” Master Sgt. James Dinwoodie says in a training video aimed at promoting sensitivity to emotional problems Marines may be suffering. “Well, sometimes you need to do the soft thing.”

Through July 16, there have been 30 confirmed or suspected Marine suicides this year. There were 42 during 2008, the highest since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There have also been 89 attempted suicides this year, compared with 146 attempts in all of 2008.

The rate of Marine Corps suicides in 2008 reached 19.5 per 100,000, approaching the civilian rate of 19.9.

“We are very concerned (in the Marine Corps) because we are running ahead of last year’s pace,” says Navy Cmdr. Aaron Werbel, a clinical psychologist and suicide-prevention program manager for the Marine Corps.

Confirmed or suspected Army suicides have reached 88 this year, which is on pace to set another annual record, Army statistics show. The Army suicide rate is 20.2 per 100,000.

In a video introducing the Marines’ training program, Gen. James Conway, the Marine Corps commandant, says: “Marines are known for taking care of each other. … This is about leadership. Our corporals and sergeants are our first line of defense. I expect each of you to step up and engage your Marines.”

The training program, provided to USA TODAY, weaves a dramatic film about a suicidal Marine with a video featuring interviews with relatives of Marines who committed suicide and troops, talking about how to help other troops seek counseling. The mandatory training, which includes discussions and lectures, lasts three hours for trainers, who then spend half a day teaching other non-commissioned officers (NCOs).

The video includes footage of Staff Sgt. Jeremiah Workman, who received the service’s second-highest award for valor, the Navy Cross, for heroism in Iraq, discussing his post-traumatic stress disorder and his own suicide attempt in 2006.

“Guys that come back from Iraq or Afghanistan and take their lives, it’s like an 8,000-mile sniper shot. And it’s another victory for the enemy,” he says, urging Marines to seek help.

Non-commissioned officers handle the training exclusively, as sergeants teach other sergeants and corporals, who will then conduct 20- or 30-minute sessions with individual squad or team members, Werbel says.

“NCOs can get out there and use some four-letter words, and they’re going to get their (Marines) attention,” Marine Corps Command Sgt. Maj. Carlton Kent says.

“We’re not going to give each other a big group hug,” says Master Gunnery Sgt. Peter Proietto, a four-tour war veteran who is leading the training program. “But we’re going to address it like Marines. We’re going to say, ‘What’s going on there Devil Dog? If you got a problem, let’s get it fixed.’ ”

“They’re my kids and my best friends,” says Sgt. Anthony Kondziella, 25, newly trained in the program. “I know this will work.”

Source Article

Robert W. Briggs, a former Army sergeant, was severely injured in Iraq and needs constant monitoring because of traumatic brain injury, blindness in one eye and paralysis on one side. He walks with the help of a service dog. Briggs gave up her job as a veterinarian technician to care for him and their two kids.

On Tuesday, Michelle Briggs and fourteen other caregivers started more than 50 planned visits to congressional offices on Capitol Hill this week armed with a simple message: We need help.

“Mentally, it takes a very big toll on you,” said Briggs, 34, of Hillsboro, Iowa, whose husband was injured in a rocket grenade attack in 2005 while serving with the Iowa National Guard. “You have to be a very strong person to get through a lot of it. It’s a choice whether you stay or not. It’s very much a choice.”

Briggs said she’s met other spouses of injured veterans who sought a divorce.

“It doesn’t make them a bad person at all, but they just couldn’t handle the situation because it’s very, very stressful and you have to fight for the things that you’re entitled to,” Briggs said.

The caregivers say parents, spouses and siblings of the disabled have given up jobs, health insurance and college to care for a loved one. Yet they get no compensation to ease the burden.

“We’re providing them with such a better quality of life and we need support in order to provide that,” said Tracy Keil, 31, of Parker, Colo., whose husband, Matthew Keil, was paralyzed from the chest down from a sniper’s bullet in 2007 and now needs around-the-clock care.

The two married six weeks before he was injured. She said she gave up the job she had as an accountant for 11 years and makes $60,000 less working from home part-time for a nonprofit organization.

The caregivers seek passage of legislation that would require the Veterans Affairs Department to offer more training to primary caregivers of severely injured veterans from the recent wars. Those certified would be eligible for benefits such as health care and a stipend of a few hundred dollars a week.

The alternative, they say, would be life in an institution for some veterans now mostly in their 20s or 30s.

Sen. Daniel Akaka, chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, who authored legislation in the Senate to address the issue with Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., said there are more than just an isolated few families asking for help.

“This has been growing, growing to the point now where we can not ignore it,” Akaka said.

Akaka, D-Hawaii, said he’s waiting for a final analysis about how much the legislation would cost, although he’s confident keeping a veteran in the home is cheaper than a nursing home.

The VA has expressed concerns about the cost of the legislation. It has also said it would divert from the agency’s mission of providing care to veterans and training clinicians, and said some of the same services are provided in other programs.

Phil Budahn, a VA spokesman, said in a statement the agency would continue to look for ways to “appropriately support these compassionate providers.”

Steven Nardizzi, executive director of the Jacksonville, Fla.-based Wounded Warrior Project, which organized the caregivers’ effort this week, said what the VA provides simply isn’t adequate. He said the VA needs to adapt its primary mission to include helping families of the wounded, and providing health benefits and a stipend would go a long way.

“If the VA thinks they’re already providing or the administration thinks they’re already providing support, it’s because they’re simply not paying attention and not listening to the families right now,” Nardizzi said.

His group estimates that under legislation it’s seeking, about 750 caregivers would be eligible long-term, whereas several thousand would participate for about one to three years.

Briggs said she’s thrown out her back at different times lifting her husband. She said she went through a period of depression as she adjusted to their new life but has learned to find comfort talking to other caregivers. She said she’s dedicated to making their arrangement work but could use more resources.

“I love him and we’ve been married — it will be 15 years in November. It’s like your marriage vows for better or worse,” Briggs said. “This wasn’t his fault, and there would be no one else to take care of him properly. He would be in a nursing home.”

Source Article

Army recruiter Nils Aron Andersson sat behind the wheel of his brand-new Ford F-150, firing round after round into the truck’s CD player and radio with a .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol. Spent cartridges littered the seats and floorboards, along with a paper pharmacy bag holding a prescription for the antidepressant Lexapro.

Andersson’s wife, Cassy Walton, had been trying to reach the 25-year-old sergeant on his cell phone for hours. He finally picked up about 2 a.m. and told her he wanted to kill himself.

Walton begged him to keep talking to her. Andersson told her he was on the top floor of a downtown Houston parking garage and ended the call. Then he put the pistol to his head, just above his right ear.

Minutes later, Walton raced up the stairs of the garage to find her husband of less than 24 hours slumped on the driver’s side of his truck, bleeding from a single bullet wound to his right temple.

Sobbing, she unlocked the truck with her own key, climbed onto his lap, and started CPR.

“Why did you do this?” she screamed.

When Andersson killed himself on March 6, 2007, he became one of at least 16 Army recruiters to commit suicide nationwide since 2000. Five of those suicides occurred in Texas, including three at the Houston Recruiting Battalion, where Andersson worked after serving two tours of duty in Iraq.

Roughly one in five U.S. troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan reports symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression, but only slightly more than half have sought treatment, according to a recently published Rand Corp. study. Of those who did seek care, only about half received minimally adequate treatment, the study found.

Amid increasing concerns about failure to screen, diagnose and treat soldiers with mental health problems adequately, Andersson’s story raises questions about the pressures faced by the growing number of veterans who return from multiple combat deployments to high-stress recruiting assignments back home.

Leaving for Iraq

A quiet, skinny kid who loved to fish, hunt and ride ATVs along the Oregon coast, where he was born, Andersson — who preferred his middle name Aron — joined the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division in 2002, three years after graduating high school.

In 2003, he left to fight in the initial U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. It was the first time he’d been abroad in his life.

“I probably prayed more in the first six months than I had in a long while,” said his father, Bob Andersson, 53, who works for the city parks department in Eugene, Ore. “Every time the phone rings, you panic. I’m not kidding you there; for months, I’d come home and I’d stop at the end of the street and go, ‘God, I hope there’s not a car with military plates in front of my house.’ ”

Andersson earned a Bronze Star with valor for saving the lives of two other soldiers during a firefight. But when he came home, the soldier avoided his family’s questions about the war. Relieved to have him back, they didn’t press him.

“When I asked him how he’d earned his Bronze Star, he just said, ‘Doing my job, Dad,’ ” Bob Andersson said.

The father remembers looking at photographs taken during his son’s service in Iraq and feeling helpless to understand what the young man had been through.

“You can’t imagine what was going on,” he said. “You can see the pictures, but you still weren’t there to smell it, or feel the heat, or see the cars burning or what was left of someone after a bomb went off.”

The only thing the father knew for sure was that his son had changed. He was more frustrated, less patient and harder to talk to.

“Did he come back different? Yeah,” Bob Andersson said. “I don’t think there’s anybody who goes over there and fights on the front lines who ever comes back the same.”

The soldier once told his father about working a barricade in Iraq when a white van barreled toward U.S. troops, ignoring warning shots and orders to stop.

“It was definitely a suicide mission, and he said this van full of people came in and they had to, quote, ‘light it up,’ ” Bob Andersson said. “And he said there were children in there and everything. I could tell that really, really, bothered him.”

Life as a recruiter

When Andersson transferred to the Houston Recruiting Battalion, his father hoped that he would be able to put the past behind him. Instead, he became more depressed.

“He had a heart of gold and that, I think, is what killed him. Because he got into something so outrageously different than his basic makeup, and he just couldn’t get over it.”

As a recruiter stationed in River Oaks and Rosenberg, Andersson often worked six days a week, routinely got home after 11 p.m., and would sometimes weep from despair and exhaustion, said his ex-girlfriend Marsha Maxey, a mortgage banker who dated the soldier before he met Cassy Walton.

Maxey met Andersson in August 2005 at an Irish pub in Columbia, S.C., where he was attending recruiter school at Fort Jackson.

“He was a good-looking man — tall, blue eyes, blond hair, smart, funny and kind. A sensitive guy and a man in uniform, that whole thing,” Maxey said. “He swept me off my feet.”

Their 14-year age difference was never a problem, said Maxey, who is 40. “It worked out very well because he was an old soul,” she said. “He’d seen a lot of things for his young age.”

Two months into a whirlwind romance, she moved to Texas to be with him when Andersson began his new job with the Houston Recruiting Battalion.

“It was instantly an incredibly stressful job,” Maxey said. “From the beginning since I met him, he cried very easily and I thought, ‘Oh, he’s just sensitive,’ but then it got worse.”

Occasionally, Andersson talked to Maxey about his time in Iraq. The details slipped out in bits and pieces — like a story about surviving a deadly helicopter crash, or carrying a wounded buddy to safety after his unit was ambushed.

“He told me he kicked down over 1,000 doors,” Maxey said. “He was the lead guy, the first one to go in, and most of the time it was the wrong place. There would be terrified old people and little kids sitting there.”

Andersson suffered from dramatic mood swings. He got nervous in big crowds and would wake up in the middle of the night “just screaming,” Maxey said.

Andersson also developed a low self-esteem and an extreme fear of abandonment, she said. A few months before he committed suicide, he sent Maxey a text message saying he was “going to get rid of himself because he was a monster like Saddam,” she recalled.

“He would just get so distraught over his job and the things he’d seen,” Maxey said. “It was more than he could take.”

Mounting pressure

Making matters worse, Andersson felt uncomfortable in the role of salesman for the Army. He was painfully honest with prospective recruits, even if his candor turned them off, she said.

“He was morally opposed to putting more young men into that situation, where they could be injured or killed or see the things he’d seen,” Maxey said.

His superiors repeatedly criticized him for failing to meet his goal of signing two new recruits a month and assigned him five-page essays or extra duty as punishment, she said. In February 2006, he was passed up for promotion to staff sergeant.

“It wasn’t that he was lazy or not working. It’s just that he was not getting recruits and being punished for it, constantly,” she said. “It was just not the job for him.”

Andersson was proud to be a soldier, but he wasn’t cut out for recruiting, said his friend Chris Rodriguez.

Long hours, few days off and mounting pressure to deliver fresh volunteers made life “truly awful,” Rodriguez said in a series of e-mails and a telephone interview with the Houston Chronicle from Anbar Province in Iraq, where he was serving a tour of duty at the time of Andersson’s death.

”In the recruiting station I was at, a good third of the people went on antidepressants while working there,” said Rodriguez, who met Andersson in Texas while assigned to the Houston Recruiting Battalion. “You could come to work as motivated as you wanted, but as soon as you passed the threshold of the doorway, it’d suck the life away from you. Looking around, you’d see miserable people.”

If recruiters failed to sign up enough prospects, their commanders told them they were failures, Rodriguez said. “They tell you, ‘That’s why your buddy in Iraq doesn’t have a full battalion, because you’re letting him down,’ “he said.

The stress took its toll. Back in Iraq, Rodriguez had nightmares about his time recruiting in Houston.

“The pressure recruiting puts on you wears you down so badly,” he said. “We often said that we’d rather be in Iraq than recruiting. It’s true.”

Threats of suicide

By October 2006, Andersson’s problems had become too serious to ignore.

When he put a gun in his mouth during an argument with Maxey, she called Andersson’s father, who contacted the Army.

When he heard what his father had done, Andersson was furious.

“He said, ‘Thanks for ruining my career, Dad,’ ” his father said. “And I said, ‘Well, I’m sorry about that, Aron.’ And he goes, ‘Why did you do it?’ I just told him, ‘You know, if something happened to you and I could’ve done anything at all to prevent it and I didn’t, I could never live with myself. Because the only thing I’m sure of in this world is the father’s supposed to die before the children.’ ”

The next day, an officer took Andersson to Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, where he underwent three days of tests and counseling. A psychiatrist determined he was “clinically depressed but no immediate danger to himself,” Army records show.

“The psychiatrist told him he had depression and PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and said he would send him a referral for a psychiatrist and therapist in Houston, but he never did,” Maxey said. “Aron never received any follow-up.”

Medical records from Brooke Army Medical Center show that Andersson was prescribed medication for depression and anxiety after doctors evaluated him for potential self-harm on Oct. 23, 2006. Records also show at least two subsequent appointments were canceled by the facility and one by Andersson.

Meanwhile, Andersson’s commanders at the Houston Recruiting Battalion directed his station in Rosenberg to keep an eye on him and ordered his weapons to be taken away.

But Andersson managed to keep the .22-caliber pistol he’d used to threaten suicide.

His parents say their son’s commanders and doctors should have monitored him more closely to ensure he was getting the help he needed.

“Obviously, they did not take it seriously enough,” said Andersson’s mother, Charlotte Porter. “He needed to have a break period. He needed to be removed from his position and get treatment.”

As a soldier who served his country honorably, Andersson deserved the best possible care, regardless of whether his wounds were physical or mental, his father said.
“I don’t think Aron let the Army down, I think the Army let him down,” he said. “I think that the care wasn’t there that he really needed.”

A new relationship

By December 2006, Andersson still hadn’t started regular therapy.

As his relationship with Maxey fell apart, he met Cassy Walton, a vivacious investment banker who also struggled with severe depression. He eventually would leave the Texas Avenue apartment he shared with Maxey at Lofts at the Ballpark to move into Walton’s loft in the old Rice Hotel building, a dozen blocks away.

The day before New Year’s Eve, Andersson threatened suicide again, this time in front of Walton.

In January, Walton sent an e-mail addressed to Andersson and a handful of other people, announcing she planned to kill herself.

Neither went through with their threats, but their deadly brinksmanship worried those around them.

“It’s amazing that two people so volatile could get together like that,” Maxey said. “I don’t know if they were trying to rescue each other, to keep each other from committing suicide, but it turned out to be the worst combination. They both needed help so badly.”

Walton had bipolar disorder, commonly known as manic depression, said her sister, Cindy Walton.

It was a condition she shared with their mother, who killed herself in October 2003 by setting her car on fire.

“Cassy was never the same after that,” her sister said. “She was a real mama’s girl.”

A short, tragic marriage

It wasn’t until the day the couple married, March 5, 2007, that Andersson finally had an appointment with a psychiatrist in Houston.

Afterward, Andersson sent his friend Chris Rodriguez an online message: “I went to the wizard today, she told me that I need to get out of the army and my job sucks. I could have told her that … but anyhow. I will be alright.”

He told Rodriguez he’d replaced his old Jeep Wrangler with a Ford F-150, but he never mentioned he’d married Cassy Walton in a brief civil ceremony at 8:30 that morning. Andersson didn’t tell his parents or younger brother, John, either.

The newlyweds had agreed to meet up after work, but Andersson came home around 8:45 p.m. to an empty apartment. His bride was celebrating their marriage with friends at Shay McElroy’s Irish Pub downtown on Main.

Walton later told police Andersson “seemed to be upset because she was not paying as much attention to him as he thought she should be.”

The couple argued. Andersson stormed out and drove to Maxey’s apartment, where the recruiter told his ex-girlfriend he feared he’d made a big mistake.

Then Walton arrived.

“She was beating on the door like she was going to knock it down,” Maxey said. “I just thought, ‘This is crazy. I can’t put up with this kind of stuff.’ ” Maxey told Andersson she’d had enough.

“As much as I loved him, I knew I shouldn’t be in that relationship,” she said. He left about 1:30 a.m. but called her again on his cell phone. “He said, ‘I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what I’m going to do.’ ” Andersson finally agreed to go spend the night with a friend.

Instead, he locked himself inside his new Ford pickup on the top floor of Maxey’s parking garage with the same .22-caliber pistol he’d put in his mouth in October.

Less than an hour later, he was dead.

The phone call

A phone ringing at 3 a.m. jarred Bob Andersson from sleep to the news that his son had killed himself.

He wasn’t surprised.

“It was really surreal,” he said. “I’d been hoping and praying, of course, that it would never happen, and then when it did, there wasn’t any shock. I mean, it wasn’t shock, it was just your worst nightmare.”

He called his son’s commanders at the recruiting battalion to tell them Aron had committed suicide. A sergeant answered the phone.

“He said, ‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’ Then he called up a major and said, ‘I’ve got Sgt. Andersson’s dad on the phone, and he says Aron shot himself,’ ” Bob Andersson recalled. “And that’s when I overheard the major ask him, ‘How in the hell could he shoot himself? We confiscated all his guns.’ ”

New threats of suicide

Three hours after Houston police called Andersson’s mother to report her son’s suicide, the phone rang again. On the other end of the line, a woman named Cassy Walton identified herself as Andersson’s wife.

Charlotte Porter, who is divorced from Andersson’s father, knew Walton had been dating her son for about three months. She had no idea the couple had married less than 24 hours before her son’s death.

“I knew about her and that he had moved in with her,” said Porter, 51, a staffing representative with a temp agency in Eugene. “I had never met her. And I’d never talked to her before, either.”

Police had found Walton sobbing and screaming as she tried to perform CPR on Andersson’s body.

Now, on the phone with her mother-in-law, Walton told Porter she wanted to join him.

“I said, ‘Cassy, are you alone? You can’t be alone,’ ” Porter said.

Walton gave her a friend’s phone number to call in Houston.

Porter hung up and immediately dialed the number. “You need to go to Cassy right now,” she said.

Walton’s friends took her to nearby St. Joseph Medical Center for psychiatric care. She still wore clothes drenched in her husband’s blood when she voluntarily committed herself.

Her younger sister, Cindy Walton, was relieved to hear her sibling had been hospitalized. She worried her sister might try to hurt herself now that she’d lost both her mother and her husband to suicide.

“I understood the hospital was going to hold her for 24 hours because she had mentioned suicide,” she said. About 8:30 p.m., however, Cassy Walton checked herself out and asked one of Andersson’s commanders, Maj. Bruce Finklea, to drive her home.

Finklea dropped Walton off at her apartment with a friend, Amanda Powell. Later, Powell called Finklea back and asked him to return Walton to the hospital. But Walton refused to go. Finklea called 911.

When police arrived, Walton told them she was not suicidal, just tired. Police said they saw nothing wrong with her and left.

The next morning, the Houston Recruiting Battalion’s commander, Lt. Col. Troy Reeves, visited Walton at her apartment, where she also met with a casualty assistance officer. At some point, however, Walton was left alone again.

She went to a sporting goods store and bought a 9 mm handgun. Then she started drinking.

A few hours later, Walton called Andersson’s younger brother, John, in Oregon. Walton said she had a gun and did not want to live. The Anderssons alerted Houston police, but as officers tried to talk to her through the door of her apartment at Post Rice Lofts, Walton pulled the trigger.

Police found her sprawled on her bed wearing Andersson’s fatigue jacket and dog tags. She was pronounced dead at 7:45 p.m. March 7, 2007 — one day after Andersson killed himself, and two days after their wedding.

Mourning a soldier

During a yearlong review of the couple’s suicides by the Chronicle, Army officials declined to answer questions about the circumstances of their deaths, instead referring the newspaper to documents obtained by family members and a reporter through the Freedom of Information Act.

In a written statement, Lt. Col. Reeves praised Andersson as “an outstanding fallen comrade.”

Although he said privacy laws prevented him from discussing Andersson’s diagnoses, treatment or death, Reeves stressed that the well-being of the battalion’s soldiers is “a priority.” Whenever commanders become aware of the need for a recruiter or his family to obtain mental health treatment, they “seek recommendations from medical professionals and work diligently to implement these recommendations,” Reeves wrote.

The entire battalion was hit hard by Andersson’s death, he added. Fellow recruiters held a memorial in Houston, and some traveled to Oregon for his funeral. “We still feel and grieve the loss of Sgt. Andersson, a brother in arms, whose tragic death still causes us … to ask questions to which we may never know or fully understand the answers.”

Two families in grief

For Bob Andersson and others left to mourn the young couple, grief is sharpened by regret.

Months after his son’s suicide, the father found himself sorting through photographs at his dining room table in Springfield, Ore., peering at the features of his older child as though he might read some message in his face — a warning, a plea for help, an explanation.

“This is the first thing I think of every morning when I wake up,” he said recently. “I’ve cried more since Aron died than I have the 52 years behind me.”

It took Walton’s sister months to get over her anger toward Andersson. She had met him only once or twice before her sister suddenly announced they were getting married. She thought the soldier seemed “cold” and emotionally disconnected.

“I blamed him for a long time. I actually told his dad I wanted to burn his stuff because I thought my sister just didn’t need to meet somebody with such mental problems,” said Cindy Walton, who lives with her 7-year-old son, Randy, in Humble. “Now, learning about his sickness, I don’t blame him. I feel bad for his family because his family’s in pain.”

Two months ago, the 28-year-old Realtor received a surprise care package from Andersson’s mother, Charlotte Porter. The box held a snow globe inscribed in memory of her sister.

A few days later, the two women spoke on the phone for the first time and wept, Porter said. “I suffer, too, every day, and there’s a bond there,” she said.

Porter recently joined a support group for parents with soldiers in Iraq.

Sometimes a parent worried about a son or daughter suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or depression will ask Porter what they should do. She’s not sure what to tell them.

Whenever she had asked her son how he was doing, he’d told her he was fine, that she worried too much, that he was trying to get help. She’d wanted to believe him. He was proud, and she didn’t want to pry. Now she wishes she had.

“I feel bad I didn’t get to know sooner what was going on,” Porter said. “I just wish I had walked right into that recruiting office, grabbed him by the collar and said, ‘You’re not getting him back until he’s straightened out.’ ”

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WASHINGTON — Army commanders are failing at the day-to-day task of monitoring troubled young soldiers in their barracks back home, which is helping push suicides to record numbers, the head of the Army’s suicide task force says.

The Army has built a fighting force second to none, says Brig. Gen. Colleen McGuire, but “we have young leaders who have not been trained in the art of … just taking care of soldiers,” particularly after they return home from combat.

McGuire’s findings come after three months spent reviewing records of Army suicides, talking to soldiers and commanders and visiting installations throughout the country, she said.

The Army reported a record 143 suicides among active-duty soldiers last year, the highest since statistics were first kept in 1980. Suicides this year are on track to break last year’s record, Army statistics show.

Most suspected suicides are later confirmed as suicides, records show.

Risk-taking is common among soldiers who are suicidal. Such behaviors include sleep deprivation, erratic conduct, excessive alcohol use and abuse, violations of Army regulations, high-risk driving, mishandling finances and infidelity, McGuire says.

These behaviors can further aggravate existing mental health problems, creating a downward spiral that can end in suicide, McGuire says.

Along with soldiers who engage in risky behaviors, McGuire says, the Army has a greater number of troops who entered the service with pre-existing anxiety or depression or who have stopped taking their behavioral medication in order to meet entrance requirements.

Managing soldiers at home is different than in combat, McGuire says. Often, commanders can lead troops in battle but lack the skills to monitor troops closely at home.

The Army’s failure to police risky behaviors has made it harder to identify and seek help for the smaller numbers of soldiers who may be suicidal, she says. “(It’s) talking to soldiers. ‘Who’s the loner? Who’s isolated? What are you guys doing this weekend?’ ” McGuire says.

About two-thirds of suicides occurred in or around installations, Army statistics show. Half are among combat veterans. The other half are soldiers who never deployed. About one-third of suicides occurred in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

Army officials acknowledge that classes in how to manage troops at home get pushed back to accommodate combat training.

In the past year, 7,600 staff sergeants promoted to sergeant 1st class were allowed to postpone such classes for up to 270 days, says Lt. Col. Mike Moose, an Army spokesman.

Improved garrison supervision may go only so far, says David Rudd, dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Science at the University of Utah, a leading authority on civilian and military suicides.

The longer the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue, Rudd says, the more likely it is that soldiers who have seen combat will kill themselves. Also, young men, in the military and civilian life, are often reluctant to seek help, he says.

“There’s only so many things you can do and then it becomes the responsibility of the individual” (to receive counseling), he says.

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John Carloss, founder of Operation American Heroes Foundation and owner of Venetian Blind & Floor & Carpet One, is determined to forge a financial safety net to help existing veteran support organizations.

John Carloss, founder of Operation American Heroes Foundation and owner of Venetian Blind & Floor & Carpet One, is determined to forge a financial safety net to help existing veteran support organizations.

Houston is generous and its people patriotic, which is why a group of business and civic leaders has been laying the groundwork for a new foundation to support those who serve us, whether in the military or emergency services.

Aiming for a national presence to be based here, the fledgling Operation American Heroes Foundation challenges all citizens and businesses to support its mission, which is to funnel funds to existing organizations helping veterans as well as police, fire and emergency personnel and other first responders.

Founded last fall by John Carloss, a Vietnam veteran who owns Venetian Blind & Floor & Carpet One, the foundation initiative is seeking nonprofit status. Its goal is to be in place by Veterans Day.

Its intent is to support organizations already providing assistance so that they aren’t bogged down in the fundraising side of their operations, he said, sort of like the United Way boosts social service agency efficacy.

“They’re service providers, not fund-raisers,” he said. “We’ll take that off the table for those organizations.” Some of them are spending more than a third of what they receive on raising money, he said.

Another goal is to strengthen the overall sense of patriotism, he said, and to “separate the politics from the soldiers.”

Distressed last fall — angered, actually — by the number of suicides in the military and concerned at the severity of brain trauma and other injuries, Carloss came up with his idea for a financial safety net to make sure these heroes receive care and assistance as they resume civilianian life.

He amassed a board here of like-minded individuals of high integrity from a cross section of backgrounds and they built a business plan to enhance what is already available.

While their effort is an ambitious one, it is also one lead by a very determined chairman — Carloss.

Been there, and back

A resident of Braes Heights, Carloss was a captain in the U.S. Army Special Forces —the Green Berets —and served two tours in Vietnam in the ‘60s. Severely wounded then, he is adamant and passionate that today’s service men and women have proper care and transistion assistance, particulary since they are experiencing and surviving “injuries never see before.”

Just as Carloss’ men did not leave him behind when he was near-mortally wounded, “I am not going to leave anyone behind now,” he said.

Properly structured, the foundation can be more “nimble” than the government’s veteran support services, Carloss said.

Formatted to be fully vetted and transparent, Operation American Heroes Foundation will be run by disabled veterans, he said.

Carloss outlined the fundraising challenge to come. The foundation’s goal is to encourage 50 million citizens to each give $21, a reference to a 21-gun salute.

Meanwhile, private business owners will be asked each year to donate a portion of their their profits from one day.

That day will be Veterans Day, Nov. 11.

Last year, Carloss did just that. He chose to donate 11 percent of sales to honor the hour, the day and the month of the armistice ending World War I in 1918.

He’d also like to get U.S. Congress to expand Veterans Day’s recognition to include all first responders by renaming it “Heroes Day.”

But that’s another idea for another time.

Regardless, he pointedly suggests, “Whenever you meet these people, look them in the eye and thank them for their service.”

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WASHINGTON (CNN) — The suicide rate among U.S. Army soldiers jumped in May — continuing a four-month upward trend and on a record pace for a second straight year, according to Army statistics released Thursday.

During a service-wide stand-down, troops were trained on identifying signs of distress.

Last month the deaths of 17 soldiers were either confirmed or suspected to be suicides, up from 13 in April and 13 in March, the new numbers revealed.

The Army said the total number of potential or confirmed suicides since January stands at 82. Last year the Army recorded 133 suicides, the most ever.

Earlier this year, Army officials saw the suicide numbers moving up, and by February said the service was on track for a record year for suicides.

Only one of the 17 in May has been confirmed as a suicide, while the others remain under investigation and are listed as “potential suicides,” according to the latest statistics.

For April, the Army reported eight potential and five confirmed suicides.

Watch Brig. Gen. Stephen Townsend addresses Fort Campbell soldiers or continue reading below.

The Army initially classifies a death as “potential suicide” or “confirmed suicide” and moves the numbers between categories after an investigation into the death is complete, according to Army officials.

Last month, Fort Campbell, Kentucky, home to the 101st Airborne Division, held a three-day “suicide stand-down training event” — the second one at the base this year — after the base recorded 11 suspected or confirmed suicides between January and May.

Units of the 101st have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan several times since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, and have experienced a good deal of combat and the related stress that comes with those deployments.

Thousands of 101st Airborne troops are currently in Afghanistan.

In January the Army implemented a service-wide effort to combat the problem, including a stand-down for all 1.1 million soldiers in which the troops were trained on identifying signs of distress in the ranks, and were charged with getting help for their comrades.

“We have got to do better,” said Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli in a statement released Thursday.

“It’s clear we have not found full solutions to this yet. But we are trying every remedy and seeking help from outside agencies that are experts in suicide prevention. There isn’t a reasonable suicide prevention tool out there the Army won’t potentially employ,” he said.

Fort Hood, Texas, the largest base in the United States, is home to the 4th Infantry Division, which also has seen multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Base commander Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch identified one major stress problem there: Soldiers were working long hours and not spending time with their families between deployments.

Lynch made “focus on the family” a key part of Fort Hood’s environment. He insists that every soldier on a day schedule leave work in time to be home for dinner by 6 p.m. On Thursday, many are told to leave by 3 p.m. so they can have the afternoon with the family. And no one at Fort Hood works weekends unless Lynch signs off on it.

The steps appear to be working. Although the base has recorded two suicides since the start of the year, that is well below many other major Army bases.

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