Danville’s Hometown Heroes

When Army Spc. Jacob Brown came home after spending more than a year recovering from serious injuries suffered in a combat training accident overseas, he says he learned just how special this community really was.

Brown was offered a job and moved into an apartment with new furniture, rent-free for a year. He also is receiving help enrolling in a community college.

In an unusual program, lifelong Danville residents Mike and Peggy Conklin founded Sentinels of Freedom Operation Welcome Home earlier this year as a way to honor all Danville veterans when they return to civilian life. City leaders, residents and local businesses in the affluent Contra Costa County community quickly endorsed the program.

Operation Welcome Home helps both injured and uninjured veterans, Mike Conklin said. For those who return unhurt, the Town Council will issue a proclamation honoring each one; at the same time, local residents will offer moral support and help in settling back into the community. Wounded veterans, if they need help, will get such additional support as Brown is receiving.

“I was just blown away by it all,” Brown said as he and his wife moved into the apartment in the neighboring city of San Ramon last week. “People have been really supportive, and there are times when I feel undeserving of all this.”

Brown, 22, was undergoing combat training in Graffenwoer, Germany, in February 2002 when the Humvee he was driving collided head-on with a 75-ton tank. The crash left him in a coma for almost two weeks. His body was mangled, his wrist and leg were shattered and he had a crushed spleen.

This month, Brown began working the graveyard shift in San Ramon for United Parcel Service, a job that the Conklins and city leaders helped arrange. He also plans to enroll at Diablo Valley College. He hopes to work toward a business degree.

His German-born wife, Petra, is getting help finding a job as well, possibly at a local Safeway supermarket.

Brown grew up in Danville, played in Little League and attended San Ramon Valley High School, graduating in 2000. He enlisted in the Army soon afterward, mainly as a way to earn money for college. Slightly built with a ready smile and an optimistic attitude, he has a passion for punk rock and heavy metal.

Danville, with 42,000 residents, sits in the Tri-Valley area of the county, about 25 miles east of San Francisco, and is one of the fastest-growing sections of the Bay Area. Yet Mayor Newell Arnerich says it retains its small-town flavor. Most mornings, he checks in with the regulars at the Danville Coffee Roastery to “chew over the day’s events.”

It’s also the kind of town where yellow ribbons are tied on trees and power poles to show support for the men and women in uniform around the world. Peggy Conklin, a co-organizer of the Bay Area chapter of Blue Star Moms, was among those who helped tie the ribbons. Blue Star Moms provide support for Northern California military personnel.

Jake Brown, as he is known around town, was the first to benefit from Danville’s Operation Welcome Home.

“No matter who is president, or what the political doctrine is of the times, these kids volunteered to serve their country,” said Mike Conklin, 51, a local real estate agent. “They deserve our respect; they deserve our help. They went to fight for our freedom when they were called.”

The program also offers support to families of soldiers killed while on duty, Conklin said. Tri-Valley residents were shaken Tuesday night when they received word that Marine Pfc. Kyle Crowley, 18, of San Ramon had been killed during a fierce firefight in Ramadi earlier that day. It was the first combat fatality among servicemen and women from the area serving in the Middle East.

“It was bound to happen sooner or later,” said a shaken Mike Conklin, who recalled that Crowley had been another former Little Leaguer who once played with his sons, Army Rangers Kris and Curt Conklin. Conklin’s sons, one of whom has served in Afghanistan, are home on leave from their posts at Ft. Benning, Ga.

Tony Carnemolla, a chaplain and former commander of the Danville post of Veterans of Foreign Wars, said he believed about 15 men and women from Danville were serving tours of duty overseas.

He wants to make sure they “don’t suffer the disrespect that our troops in Vietnam did” when they returned from Southeast Asia in the late 1960s and early ‘70s. “That was not right,” said the 68-year-old Carnemolla, who served in the Korean War.

As word of the Danville program spreads, it is striking a responsive chord in other communities. Arnerich, who worked with the Conklins early to build support in Danville, took the idea to the Contra Costa County Mayors’ Conference. Within weeks, elected officials in all 19 cities in the county passed resolutions to create similar programs in their cities.

“I’ve had calls from Denver, from individuals in Washington, from all over, asking about the program,” Arnerich said. “Communities can help, and the reality is that as this conflict expands, our community and others have to be ready to help these young men and women when they return.”

The mayor tells other city leaders that the Danville program was relatively easy to set up.

Conklin and Arnerich said one key to the program’s success was to try to keep programs like Operation Welcome Home out of the divisive political debates that surround the Bush administration’s handling of the war in Iraq.

“We don’t want these kids to get lost in the debate over the war,” Conklin said. “This program is not political, but it can become political if we’re not careful. The troops are all volunteers. I think they deserve the respect, even of people who disagree” with President Bush or the probable Democratic nominee, John F. Kerry.

“These kids were there when they were called,” he said.

Brown, who has undergone 10 surgeries and faces at least two more, agrees: “Even if you don’t support the war, you have to support the people who are fighting.... That’s the least we can do.”