(12 point, Times font, right justified) Deborah Staires, Ed. D.
Dr. Know It All
August 27, 1999
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(5 space indentation or double spaced paragraphs, 12 point, Times font, left justified) When I was eighteen years old I joined the United States Navy to see the world. As it turned out, I never left the United States, but I got to see an awful lot of it. I went to boot camp in Bainbridge, Maryland, spent a little time at the Naval Air Station in Beeville, Texas, and finally arrived in San Diego, California for Hospital Corps School at Balboa Hospital. When I arrived, I was told that I was the first female to attend Corps School there in 20 years.
Just to make some sense of the time in which I grew up, it was 1973 and the Viet Nam war had just been declared over. All of the protests were over. The national pride of the war was at an all-time low. Prisoners of war who had been held captive and tortured for months and years were being released to military officials and the process of bringing them all home had begun. There had been a couple of groups of them brought home to the east coast, into Virginia, I think, and we were preparing at Balboa Hospital for the first group to be brought there.
During the war, everyone wore POW bracelets. Mine was a silver bracelet that had the name of a prisoner of war engraved in it. The idea was that everyone together could "will" them home. My POW was from Arizona, he was a Lieutenant Commander, a prisoner for three years and that's all I remember.
Many of the guys that I went to hospital corp school with and I skipped school to watch them come home. There were crowds of people on both sides of the street that led to the hospital entrance. My friends and I skinnied our way to the front of the line. As we waited for the limousine procession to begin, I showed my friends the name on the bracelet and asked them to watch for it. We saw a police motorcade approaching with big, long, black limosines following and everyone started cheering. It was a very emotional time for everyone present. Some were there to see family members return. Some were there to see friends return. Most of us were just there to see the men who had endured and survived all of the horrible things that we had heard the Viet Cong were doing to our men in captivity.
All of the sudden, one of my friends started jumping up and down, screaming "Debbie, there he is, there he is." I looked at the man's name tag sitting in the car, and sure enough it matched the name on my wrist. I stepped out toward the car, extending my arm so he could see his name on the bracelet on my arm. The man grabbed me, pulling me through the window to hug me. The driver of the car told me that I had to walk, that he had to drive forward. I leaned my weight on the side of the car with my behind sticking out through the window and we drove up to the door of the hospital.
Suddenly, I was being pulled away from the car by three or four Marine guards all asking me at the same time what I was doing.As they were dragging me away from the car, my POW was telling me to come up and visit him. By the time I finished explaining to the Marine Guards what I was doing, my POW was gone; escorted into the hospital by military officials and taken to the eighth floor of the hospital for medical and pychological evaluations.
I was told that in order to see him, it would be necesarry for me to obtain a security clearance. I tried really hard to do that, but I just couldn't get the right people's signatures and after several frustrating experiences with clerks and secretaries, a friend suggested that I just get on the hospital elevator, punch "8" and see what happened. That's exactly what I did and when I got to the eighth floor and off the elevator, there was nobody there. A minute or two later three doctors came into the hallway and asked if they could help me. I told them who I was looking for and they asked me if I was that crazy Wave who jumped in the car with that guy. I said yes and they escorted me onto the ward, past the Marine guards, past rows of hospital beds, calling to others as we went that I was that "crazy Wave". They took me right to the man's bed where they surrounded us and I gave him his bracelet. We ALL cried as I hugged him and he hugged me. It was incredible. Everyone there cried.
This was certainly one of the most memorable events ever in my lifetime. I was touched by his struggle. I had imagined the pain and torture that he must have endured. I had developed a strong sense of loyalty to my country due to a trip to Washington, D.C. and my service in the military. I was angry with my country for having put this man through this torture for nothing. At the time, it seemed like we, as a country, had given up in Viet Nam, and as I look back upon it now, if that wasn't the case, we certainly did give up on the men who were prisoners of war there.