Victims of Agent Orange Call for Help : Veterans: From his Burbank house, James Donaghe listens to others who, like him, blame their sickness on a herbicide used in Vietnam.

The telephone rings at all hours.

Leslie, from Kentucky, calls to say that he has sores and rashes all over his body. He suffers headaches and fatigue. His eyes are sensitive to light.

* Robert, from North Carolina, complains of blisters that burst and bleed. He suffers headaches and joint pain and a funny taste in the mouth. He says that doctors have told him his spine is deteriorating.

* David, from Missouri, recently had surgery for a neck tumor. He says his skin is rotting and he has trouble keeping his balance. His eyes are also sensitive to light and his hands are so weak that he continually drops things.

These people aren’t calling for medical advice, merely sympathy. They are Vietnam veterans who have endured chronic and mystifying illnesses for 20 years since the war. They believe they are sick because of Agent Orange--a powerful herbicide that the Armed Forces sprayed over Southeast Asian jungles to kill trees and bushes that hid enemy troops.

During the war, the U.S. government maintained that Agent Orange was harmless to humans, and subsequent research has failed to provide a clear consensus on whether the herbicide is behind all the illnesses it is suspected of causing. So the government has refused to compensate a vast majority of the 36,000 veterans who have filed Agent Orange claims. And because such toxic poisoning isn’t officially recognized, much of the medical establishment has failed to develop treatment for the dizzying array of maladies plaguing veterans.

These men and women, therefore, are left in a void.

So they pick up the telephone and call James Donaghe.

In his house in Burbank, in a back room, Donaghe sits and listens. He served in Vietnam in 1968 and he knows what these people are talking about. His joints ache, too, from what doctors say is a liver dysfunction. His face is scarred from constant skin cancers. Donaghe is convinced that Agent Orange is to blame.

“There was a time when I was so bitter that I would spit fire,” the 43-year-old recalls. “I had to do something to channel that anger into something positive.”

Two-and-a-half years ago, Donaghe and his wife formed the Agent Orange Community Support Group. Their home-based, nonprofit organization has no members or dues. It does not lobby politicians or stage protests. Instead, the husband-wife team simply talk over the telephone--consoling ill veterans and referring them to doctors across the country who have succeeded in treating veterans exposed to Agent Orange.

Donaghe is also trying to raise money for a center with its own staff of doctors, a hospice where veterans could receive treatment and support. For now, he can only commiserate.

“I sit here and talk to these people all day long,” he says. “Nobody else will listen.”

From 1961 to 1971, 18 million gallons of herbicides were sprayed over Vietnam. Several different solutions were used, including some that contained arsenic or dioxin, highly toxic agents. Agent Orange is the most widely publicized of the herbicides and has come to be used as a generic term when discussing the chemicals sprayed in Southeast Asia. Veterans groups have blamed these herbicides for 19 cancers and numerous other health problems, including birth defects in soldiers’ offspring.

But for nearly a decade after the war, the U.S. government insisted that Agent Orange posed no significant health hazards. Congress authorized a 1982 study of herbicides used in Vietnam. The project was later scuttled. It wasn’t until last August that a House committee concluded in a report that Ronald Reagan’s administration had obstructed the study for fear of having to pay compensation to a whole new category of disabled veterans.

The congressional panel’s finding was the latest in a spate of victories for groups such as the Vietnam Veterans of America and the American Legion, which have been fighting for recognition of Agent Orange-related disabilities. In May, the Veterans Affairs Department announced that it would soon pay $8 million a year to 1,110 of the Vietnam veterans afflicted with types of cancers suspected to be caused by herbicide exposure. And back in 1984, seven chemical companies--without admitting guilt--agreed to pay $180 million to settle a class-action suit brought by veterans and their families.

“The time for political excuses is over,” Sen. Thomas Daschle (D-South Dakota), a supporter of Agent Orange legislation, said in a recent statement. “It is time to stop the delays and grant Vietnam veterans the compensation they deserve.”

But compensation for most veterans claiming herbicide-related disabilities could be years away.

Donaghe, like many veterans, has given up on the government. “As the battle goes on in Washington, people are dropping like flies,” he said.

Thus, the Agent Orange Community Support Group has turned its back on the politics of the herbicide controversy, focusing instead on “neglected, misdiagnosed, mistreated and ignored” veterans. Donaghe has set up a toll-free number. Calls are fielded by him and his wife, Chris, and the wives of two other veterans who volunteer part time.

“At least you can call the number and these people know what you’re talking about,” said Lily Adams, who served as a nurse in Vietnam and was exposed to Agent Orange. She now publishes “So Proudly We Hail,” a national newsletter for veteran nurses. “It’s great that there’s a private group with people who care and can do things in an organized way.”

The support group was formed out of desperation. Three years ago, Donaghe--who has been on disability since 1984--was so ill that he weighed no more than 100 pounds and was bedridden. “You can’t imagine what it’s like to be dying and the medical community won’t even acknowledge what is making you sick. It’s like AIDS was,” he said.

Chris Donaghe began calling veterans centers around the country in hopes of finding help.

“Most of the veterans centers didn’t know that much about Agent Orange,” she recalled. “I got the names of some groups, but a lot of them had closed down. It was terrible to be all alone.”

That’s when the Donaghes decided to start their own group. They met with several other veterans around a kitchen table.

“We thought that what we were doing wouldn’t help us at all. We thought we’d die first,” Donaghe recalled. “But we wanted to get the ball rolling.”

The Agent Orange Community Support Group began work in the back room of a house where the Donaghes live rent-free because his parents are the owners. The couple compiled government and medical documents on the subject. Donaghe spent his days calling veterans’ organizations around the nation, speaking with veterans who had been exposed to herbicides. He also gave speeches at hospitals and schools and any other place where people would listen.

The support group labored in relative anonymity its first two years, but such work literally saved Donaghe’s life. One day a veteran called and said he’d found a homeopathic doctor in Los Angeles who made him well. Donaghe had never put much stock in non-traditional medicine, but he was ready to try anything.

The treatment--a combination of homeopathy, Oriental medicine and acupuncture--began to work. Soon, Donaghe gained weight and could get around on his own.

The support group also grew stronger. Money began pouring in from various veterans’ organizations, government agencies and private donors including, Donaghe said, rock star Don Henley.

“They’ve shown a great amount of tenacity in confronting the Agent Orange problem,” said Maureen Lisi, director of events for the Vietnam Veterans Aid Foundation, which has given more than $60,000 to Donaghe’s support group in recent years. “Everybody we’ve ever referred to them has found it immensely helpful.”

Perhaps the group’s biggest break came in April when a producer for the CBS series “Tour of Duty” agreed to write an Agent Orange-related episode.

“I talked with Jim and his wife. They told me about what’s going on with Agent Orange,” said Carol Mendelsohn, who now produces “Gabriel’s Fire” on ABC. “They were the reason I did the show.”

Writing the episode proved troublesome. The show depicts a combat patrol being sprayed by Agent Orange. One soldier develops a rash and another worries that the herbicide might be dangerous. But during the war few people believed that Agent Orange was harmful, so the “Tour of Duty” episode couldn’t climax with, for instance, a doctor telling the sick man that he’d been poisoned.

To give the show a strong ending, CBS agreed to let “Tour of Duty” run a 15-second public service announcement. Terence Knox, the program’s lead actor, encouraged viewers to contact the Agent Orange Community Support Group.

During the next two weeks, more than 2,000 veterans called.

Now, as many as eight veterans dial the number each day. In addition to dispensing compassion and physician referals, the support group takes a brief medical history of each caller. These reports, litanies of suffering, fill a file cabinet.

“The stories are unimaginable. You hear it over and over again,” Donaghe said. “You also hear from the widows and you get the children who were born hyperactive or anemic or with learning disabilities.”

At times, this slight man lapses into the rhetoric of an extremist. He insists that the chemical companies should be criminally prosecuted. He wants former Reagan Administration officials tried for treason. He wants the Veterans Administration dismantled.

Yet his extremism soon receeds as he returns to the plight of people who, like him, are sick.

“Thousands of us and our children are dying,” he said.

Rick, a Los Angeles veteran, recently sent a letter to the Agent Orange Community Support Group.

“I feel, most of the time, alone in my pain; feeling like I’m the only one this thing has happened to,” he wrote. “I need to know that there are people who care and sympathize; other veterans out there who also hurt. It somehow helps to know I’m not the only one.”

There are perhaps a handful of organizations around the country doing the same work as the Agent Orange Community Support Group. As far as Lily Adams is concerned, there can never be enough.

“My attitude is, it’s about time,” she said. “When you have a medical problem that no one can diagnose or a child with a birth defect, you need to talk to someone who can give you some information.”

Donaghe just returned from Washington where he spoke with congressmen and leaders from the American Legion and the Agent Orange Class Assistance program, which distributes some of the money won in the 1984 civil case against chemical companies. He is anxious to open his proposed treatment center.

The mailing list for his support group is now in the thousands, and he continues to search for doctors to add to the referral list. Meanwhile, the group is producing a public service announcement for television to reach more veterans, especially women, who rarely call the toll-free number.

“We’re begging for attention,” Donaghe said.

He is a confident man these days, buoyed by the success of his group and minor legislative victories that appear to be mounting in favor of veterans exposed to Agent Orange.

“Things are getting better,” he said. “The tide is changing.”

For more information about the Agent Orange Community Support Group, call (800) 776-7476 or write: AOCSG, 150 S. Glenoaks Blvd., Box 9242, Burbank, Calif. 91510.