Anniversary of War’s End : Patronage Surges at Viet Vet Center

Widespread attention given the 10th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War has prompted a surge of veterans at the Valley Vet Center in Northridge who are seeking to come to terms with a war they say has not yet ended for them.

The number of veterans seeking counseling has jumped by 50% in the last week, to 110 people a day, counselor William Rigole said Wednesday.

Most of the first-time visitors report being flooded with unwanted memories of the war, center director Fred Hoskins said, “memories many of them have been suppressing for years.”

‘Place Saves Me’

“This place saves me,” said Jack, a 36-year-old Canoga Park mason who said he was a Marine Corps machine gunner in Vietnam and who spent most of Wednesday “hanging around this place because it’s like a second home.”

Jack, who asked that his last name not be used, said he stopped in at the Veterans Administration-operated facility several months ago while suffering from depression that made him feel “dead inside and from anger that made me think about suicide or something worse.”

The San Fernando Valley facility was the nation’s first such drop-in center when it opened in September, 1979, and it remains one of the busiest of the 136 storefront centers now open around the country.

Informal Operation

Unlike Veterans Administration hospitals, Vietnam veterans centers operate informally, with casually dressed counselors and volunteer office workers. There are four counselors at the Northridge center.

Although no statistics are yet available, VA officials in Washington said this week that counseling centers throughout the nation appear to be experiencing a sharp increase in patronage.

A VA official said preliminary reports indicate the current surge was as large as one that occurred during the dedication last November of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, which also received extensive media coverage.

Similar Symptoms

Hoskins said most patrons report one or more symptoms of what the VA and the American Psychiatric Assn. call post-traumatic stress disorder. Symptoms include rage, flashbacks, nightmares, sleeplessness, emotional numbing, memory loss, depression and survival guilt.

“A lot of these vets are just now discovering that problems they’ve had over the past 15 years in marriages and other relationships all go back to the war,” Rigole said.

Terry Long, 35, who is unemployed and lives in a 1962 panel truck that he parks “at the nicest spot I can find each night,” was at the center Wednesday looking for openings “in the electronics field.”

Long said he served two combat tours in Vietnam as an Army sergeant and “got over my stress in the first three years after the war.”

A frequent visitor at the Northridge center, Long said he offers sympathy and understanding to veterans coming in for help in dealing with delayed stress.

“I remember how awful it was for me to come to terms with the horrors of the war,” he said, “so I know the agony these guys are going through.”