The New York Times-20080127-A Fallen Marine-s Father Waging a Righteous Battle

Return to: The_New_York_Times-20080127

A Fallen Marine's Father Waging a Righteous Battle

Full Text (947  words)[Author Affiliation] E-mail: [email protected]

THE young marine's last letter to his father arrived two days before his own funeral, full of hopes for an early return and plans for a future that the war had already ended.

'If they give up, I could be home by late May, early June,' Bill McGinnis said, holding a scrapbook and reading from the letter as a cold breeze fluttered the flags flying high here over Veterans Haven, the latest cause in his own battle, which has proved much longer than his son's.

Sgt. Brian D. McGinnis was killed with two other marines when their helicopter crashed at a base in southern Iraq on March 30, 2003, the 11th day of the war. He was 23, married to his high school sweetheart, eager to get home to start a family. His five-year hitch had ended five days earlier, but had been extended because of the war. Everybody was paying attention back then, and nobody could do enough for the family who mourned his loss, as his father's scrapbook attested: condolence letters from President Bush on down the ranks, commendations, memorial services, monuments.

You need to do for guys today what people did for us at the beginning, because they're still dying, said Mr. McGinnis, 54, of West Deptford.

The longer the fighting continues in Iraq and Afghanistan, the clearer it becomes that the widest divide in America may not be the one between those who support the wars and those who don't, but the one between those who have borne the cost personally -- those who have served overseas themselves, or have waited anxiously as a loved one has -- and those who have not. Mr. McGinnis drives a tractor-trailer across southern New Jersey each working day, but for almost five years now, just about as long as his son was a marine, he has made it his other job to try to narrow that gap.

After my son was killed, rather than keep this in I wanted to make a difference, and I wanted my son's life to make a difference, he said. I lost a son who gave his life along with all these other guys who are stuck there. Who's talking for them?

His first campaign was to make it easier for those deployed overseas to call home. I never had a chance to talk to my son when he was over there, he said. I would've loved to hear his voice and maybe give him some assurance.

In 2003 Mr. McGinnis started Operation Call Home, which has provided 150,000 calling cards to service members. In the fall of 2006, he had another idea -- to add a checkoff box on tax returns for donations, of any amount, that would somehow help veterans. He was stalled in his attempt to make it a federal program, but it gained some traction after he mentioned it to his state senator, Stephen M. Sweeney.

Starting a new program seemed impractical, so instead they found an existing program that was always looking for more help: Veterans Haven, a home for homeless veterans tucked among the pines in a yellow-brick, dormlike building taken over from Ancora Psychiatric Hospital in Camden County.

There's going to be a lot of kids coming back, ending up on drugs and alcohol; they're going to be losing their families and ending up on the street, Mr. McGinnis said as he visited for the first time since Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed the bill that turned his idea into a law on Jan. 3. Next year's state tax forms will include a checkoff box for the Veterans Haven Support Fund.

Veterans Haven was the nation's first state-funded facility for homeless veterans when it opened in 1995. State officials estimate that New Jersey has between 7,000 and 8,000 homeless veterans, out of a national total of more than 200,000.

We haven't seen the worst of this war yet, said Bob Sauselein, superintendent of Veterans Haven, which has 55 beds and plans a 44-bed addition. No veterans from Iraq or Afghanistan have yet been among the 720 veterans who have passed through the two-year program that provides counseling, job training and help in finding a home. About three years or so after they're out, we're going to start seeing them.

Mr. Sauselein was walking Mr. McGinnis along the corridors, past a poster that declared, We Don't Leave Our Wounded Behind, sharing his hopes for what the tax-form donations might bring. If everybody just gave a dollar, he said.

You just have to keep asking, Mr. McGinnis has learned. You just have to keep reminding the people who haven't paid of just how much some others have. If you ask people to write a check, they won't, but if I put my hand out on a street corner and say, 'It's to help veterans,' somebody'll put money in it, he said.

He held out his own hands, the skin cracked and cut and flecked by sores. See that? he asked. They were never like that before. Stress, the doctor told him. Grief, his wife, Theresa, calls it. A steroid shot helps sometimes, but then they come back, stigmata of the sorrow that doesn't go away.

He had seen those same hands on someone else just the day before -- on a mother whose son had recently committed suicide after returning from Iraq. He showed her his, and told her about his son, as she told him about hers.

[Illustration]PHOTO: A HOME FOR THE HOMELESS: Bill McGinnis and his wife, Theresa, at Veterans Haven in Winslow with a photo of his son, Brian. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID HUNSINGER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)(pg. 2)