Ringstrom, McDonough gung-ho for veteran centers

by Dennis Dalman

news@thenewsleaders.com

On May 20, Sartell resident Phil Ringstrom discussed the need for more veteran centers with Denis McDonough, the Secretary for Veterans Affairs in the Joe Biden Administration.

Veteran centers have long been a cause dear to Ringstrom’s heart. He still works as a volunteer veterans’ advocate and was employed for 20 years as a nurse and a peer counselor at several VA medical centers, including the ones in St. Cloud and Duluth. Ringstrom was a U.S. Naval Reserve Nurse Corps officer and retired with the rank of commander. His brother and only sibling, Bob Ringstrom, is a Vietnam veteran who served for years as Sartell’s police chief.

McDonough visited Minnesota May 20, stopping at the St. Cloud Veterans Administration Medical Center and later at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center where he praised its pilot program for veterans’ suicide prevention. At St. Cloud, he also expressed strong approval of the center’s recently completed women veterans’ medical clinic.

McDonough, 51, is a native Minnesotan, born in Stillwater, and a graduate of St. John’s University. In the Barack Obama presidential administration, he served first as deputy national-security advisor, then as White House chief of staff.

At 10:30 a.m., McDonough and Ringstrom, flanked by a nearby security contingent, sat down at a table across from each other in the medical center’s lunch room. Both quickly agreed on the need for more veteran centers, including at least one in the St. Cloud area.

A veteran’s center is a walk-in facility where veterans can go to receive immediate help with peer counseling and other forms of urgent help, including referrals. The centers are usually located in downtown areas and are not connected to the VA hospital system, although the two can work hand-in-hand as a support system depending on individual veterans’ needs. The main focus of the centers is on every aspect of readjustments for those returning from war – that often disorienting, traumatic transition back to home.

There are now only three such centers in Minnesota – two in the Twin Cities, one in Duluth. In the entire United States, there are about 250 of them.

In an interview with the Sartell Newsleader, Ringstrom explained why veteran centers are so important.

“They are not for medical issues,” he said. “VA hospitals take care of them. The centers are for peer counseling, assistance for jobs and education, and for family counseling.”

Veterans can literally just walk in the door at a center. There is, at most, just a quick questionnaire to fill out and no waits. Services are free. One reason the centers were started years ago is because of the long waiting periods (in some cases, months) that some veterans had to endure at some very busy VA medical centers.

Ringstrom, while working at the VA in Duluth, saw the need for such centers long before they were even initiated. Time and again, Ringstrom met veterans who did not benefit from counseling by non-veterans or by veterans from other wars. That, Ringstrom said, is because every war has been so different, generation to generation, including the reasons for fighting them. World War II, for example, was fought to save civilization from the onslaught of fascist tyrannies; Korea was fought to keep the North Koreans/Chinese from invading South Korea; the rationale for fighting in Vietnam was to keep South Asia from collapsing under Communism (the so-called falling-dominoes theory); the wars in the Mid-East were a reaction to the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the United States.

Ringstrom told about a Vietnam veteran who was assigned an older veteran counselor, one from an earlier war.

“Phil, that’s not my war,” the disappointed veteran said, meaning that he and the other man could not relate to each other in counseling sessions. The man was assigned a younger Vietnam Era veteran, and soon progress was made in the man’s readjustment efforts.

There is another major difference between veterans then and now, Ringstrom noted. During most of history, young men were drafted into military service. However, after the Vietnam War ended, the draft was abolished, and men and woman voluntarily joined the military, some serving in the National Guard and many of them being deployed to wars – at times for one, two or more tours of duty. Unlike most of the earlier soldiers, the volunteer ones are often older, many in their 30s, often with education degrees and professional jobs and most of them married with children. Having to leave all of that at-home security can cause terrible stress and readjustment issues later on, when they are far from home and when they get back from war, Ringstrom said.

Thus, veterans from a particular war benefit most by counseling with a veteran counselor who served during that same time, that same war. A validation process, with lots of empathy, goes on during peer counseling as each knows where the other is “coming from.”

Veteran centers are paid for with federal dollars, and Ringstrom said in recent years the excuse was always that there wasn’t enough money for them. But he has high hopes that may soon change.

“McDonough was very receptive about getting more centers in the St. Cloud area and maybe a branch in Little Falls,” Ringstrom said. “There are a lot of veterans in central Minnesota, many of them going to college or other schools here. There is also a need for more in the more rural areas so all can have access to them.”

Ringstrom is often troubled by the thought of a loved one or relative telling a depressed, suicidal or homeless veteran something like, “You’re all messed up. You’ve gotta get to the VA.”

It’s so much better, Ringstrom said, if those veterans could have immediate access to veteran centers whose welcoming motto is “Walk on in!”