Volunteers Provide a Break in the Battle for Vets Fighting the War of Homelessness

Roy Woodby says being homeless is a lot like being in a song. Sometimes, late at night, shivering in a corner, he is prone to feel like a refugee from “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” by Hank Williams.

During the darkest moments, and there have been many, Woodby, 45, thinks of Williams and happy times growing up in South Carolina, when he would listen to Hank’s music. He would like nothing better right now than a hot-rod Ford and a $2 bill.

Instead, he’s just trying to keep his feet warm.

Woodby was one of about 500 homeless veterans who packed a baseball field at San Diego High School on Friday morning for the start of a three-day “stand-down.” Stand-down is a military term used when a unit is shifted from intense combat or readiness to rest and recuperation.

A More Recent Combat

Many of these men have waged combat, even more recently than Vietnam, where Woodby served 19 months as a member of the 3rd Armored Division. Then he was fighting for his country. But now, he says, he’s fighting for his life.

“And I got news for you,” he said. “The streets of L.A. are a hell of a lot worse than Vietnam ever was.”

His scariest moment in seven years of homelessness?

He laughed, exposing a row of decayed teeth.

“It would take all day to write that down,” he said.

Woodby was at the stand-down in the hope of finding work.

“J-O-B,” he said emphatically. “Job. I just want a job.”

The primary sponsor of the stand-down, which was aimed solely at helping homeless veterans, was Vietnam Veterans of San Diego. Others included the county of San Diego, the State Employment Development Department, the Veterans Administration and the Non-Commissioned Officers Assn. The last group also handled security and enforcement of three rules: “No booze, no drugs, no violence.”

At midday Friday, everything was proceeding smoothly. Food, clothing, medical attention, legal advice and at least the promise of employment--albeit temporary--were plentiful. The only item in short supply, Woodby said, was hope.

“Stay homeless a few months,” he said, “and you learn not to think of hope.”

Robert Van Keuren, a decorated Vietnam vet who acts as executive director of Vietnam Veterans of San Diego, oversaw the event with a smile. He gave credit to a construction battalion of Navy Seabees that earlier this week erected 25 tents that will house 20 men each.

The baseball field on which former New York Yankee and San Diego Padre Graig Nettles first dreamed of being a major-leaguer looked like a miniature tent city. Van Keuren said he hopes a few more dreams get started on the same field.

“We’ve got a city here,” he said with a laugh. “And a bureaucracy. Our only major problem is money. The whole thing is costing maybe $6,000. We’ve got maybe half of that covered. Just don’t tell the phone company.”

Van Keuren headed 203 combat missions as a machine gunner on a river patrol boat that snaked through the waters of South Vietnam in 1969 and 1970. He won the Purple Heart and learned to manage stressful events.

A portly, bearded man with rapid-fire speech and a sense of humor that brings to mind early George Carlin, Van Keuren stalked the high school diamond Friday afternoon, his lips apparently fastened to the front of a walkie-talkie.

A voice on the other end told him there were plenty of cans but no can openers.

He heard that 345 community volunteers had “logged in” but that only about 80 had bothered to show up.

“More comin’ later in the day,” he said hopefully.

A colleague at the front gate radioed in the news that “quite a few” homeless folks--who had never donned a uniform--were arriving in want of food, shelter, anything anyone could give. The colleague told Van Keuren he was going to let them in and assign them to their own special tent.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea!” he roared. “You bring those people in, you’re opening up a real Pandora’s box, man. Turn ‘em away! Tell ‘em to go to the Department of Social Services. If you’ve let any in already, make ‘em volunteers. Immediately. At least put ‘em to work.”

Van Keuren said a homeless veteran and wife would both be admitted, “but no couple sleeps together. I don’t care if they’ve been married 50 years, they ain’t going to do it. We want the kids and women out of the men’s tents. Kids and women can have their own tents.”

‘The Other MIAs’

Van Keuren calls these homeless veterans “the other MIAs--missing in America.”

Roy Woodby knows what he means. When he hears “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” he doesn’t just understand the lyrics, he feels them down deep “ ‘cause I’ve lived them.”

No one knows the meaning of loneliness, he said, until they’ve slept as a homeless person.

Larry Hutchison, 35, from Madison, La., can also relate. He got out of the Marines and developed a drug problem. He gave up a wife and four children in exchange “for marijuana, cocaine, whatever else you can name.” He’s trying to find work--and freedom from drugs.

George Lewis, 35, from St. Louis served the Navy in Vietnam but now spends time in cheap hotels. He, too, wants a job.

“They call this America’s Finest City,” he said. “Personally, I don’t believe it. There’s some mean streets out there. Mean as anywhere. They cleaned ‘em up when they had the Super Bowl, but now the bums are all over the streets again.”

Woodby says the streets in Charlotte, N.C., are the meanest, but that Boston, Los Angeles and Chicago have their share of “nasties” as well. He has four brothers and four sisters spread out all over the United States. He refuses the help that’s been extended countless times, “ ‘cause, you see, I’ve got my pride.”

Cycle of Hopelessness

Woodby said he has worked construction but has a tough time finding jobs. He describes homelessness as a cycle of work that doesn’t last, followed by aid that doesn’t last. If you’ve been on aid and don’t have an address, he said, your chances of getting hired are about as likely as his being launched into orbit on the space shuttle.

Woodby was dressed in tattered jeans, worn shoes and beige socks. On a warm day, his red flannel shirt looked oppressively inappropriate. He said he makes most of his money selling his blood for plasma.

“They pay $8 a pint in L.A.,” he said, sounding as though it might be the best deal this side of Las Vegas. “The problem is, I’ve donated more than 400 pints in the past year, and I just don’t have much energy. Without energy, you just don’t feel like working.”

Woodby refuses to blame his woes on Vietnam, which he insisted didn’t scar him, or on drugs and booze, neither of which, in his words, ever appealed to him.

He blames divorce, losing his wife and kids. His son is now 27, his daughter 25. He says he never sees them, and no longer knows where they are.

“I started off bad after the breakup,” he said, “and just never got right.”

He had a job as a barber but lost his license. Now separated from a second wife, he says he’s pretty much lost the dream of love as well.

Van Keuren said that at least 1,500 of the estimated 5,000 homeless people in San Diego are veterans. He said 35% to 45% of the nation’s homeless are veterans, and that three-quarters of those served during the Vietnam War.

Woodby and others can vouch for such figures, not from the vantage point of a Gallup or Harris poll but from the purview of the streets.

Woodby says it’s true that America is “a land of haves and have-nots, and it’s never been truer than it is right now. Some people are just more gifted than others. And some just get better breaks.”

John Lester, 26, would agree. He “never got a break” from his mother, who, in his words, hated him, or from his father, “too weak a man to stand up to Mom.” As soon as he turned 18, Lester said, his parents “evicted” him from the family home in Eau Claire, Wis.

In remembering his hometown, Lester got a faraway look and said: “It’s French for clear water. Some of the purest water in the world there.”

A veteran of the Navy, Lester has eyes about as clear as that water, but they never look too happy. He’s been homeless since early last year, when a series of epileptic seizures left him jobless and penniless, he said. He’s working again, as a fry cook in a hamburger joint, and living in a downtown hotel that rents for $75 a week.

“I want to make it in life,” he said. “That’s why I’m here today. I want a start . I want to get a big break, a great job, make a lot of money and then go shove it in my parents’ faces.

“I wanted to pursue the California dream, but I’ve found it’s mostly a nightmare. All I’ve learned in being homeless is that the streets of San Diego are cold, not gold.”

Samuel Ray Jones, 26, said he read about the stand-down while browsing through the newspaper section in the Dallas Public Library. A veteran of the Army, he said he’s been homeless for years.

“Drinking,” he said. “That’s why I’m homeless. Drinking, drinking, drinking. I want to get sober now--that’s why I came here--’cause drink is destroying my life.”

Jones said he hopped a freight train in Ft. Worth and rode it to California. He has “two beautiful baby brothers, one beautiful sister, a beautiful mother and a beautiful father,” but they won’t let him live with them, “ ‘cause I’m a demon when I drink.”

He said he’s been sober for three days, having “detoxed” at the Inebriate Reception Center through the Volunteers of America office downtown. He was sent to the stand-down, which he said was “just beautiful.”

He called it “a festival of deja vu . It takes me back to basic in Ft. Dix, N.J. I just wish I could stand night guard. I wish they would bring us fake guns. I love it here, man.”

A “ghetto blaster” nearby was playing “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman. The irony was hard to miss. Chapman’s is a song about a couple who live in a shelter for the homeless, hoping to flee their dreary lives in a fast car, bound for the future and the promise of a second chance:

You got a fast car

But is it fast enough so you can fly away

You gotta make a decision

You leave tonight or live and die this way

“Bein’ homeless is horrible,” Jones said. “You have to stay drunk just to deal with the pain. Panhandlin’, beggin’. It ain’t no good life, man. It’s hell. But, hey, it’s America.”