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llic lilue Banner — Sening the University of North Carolina at Asheville since 1982
November 17, 2OO51
Vietnam veteran shares stories about life after war
By Lisa Gillespie
Writer
He hobbles out onto the porch
with only one leg remaining, his
beard speckled white with age. He
served the United States govern
ment for two tours in Vietnam,
almost 20 years in the army, has
worked as a head chef and has 12
children all over the world.
Today, Earl Gray pushes himself
for two hours to the streets of
downtown Asheville in his wheel
chair and asks for money, the only
way he will be able to put food on
the table.
One-third of the adult homeless
population has served their coun
try in the Armed Services, and
about 250,000 veterans live in
shelters or on the street. Many vet
erans are considered at-risk
because of living conditions in
motels, poverty and lack of sup
port from family, according to the
Florida Department of Veteran
Affairs.
“I get up and get cleaned. I get
in my wheelchair and try to get
money for food. Sometimes I get
money, sometimes I do not. When
I do, I go buy f(X)d and go home,”
Gray said. “You find out where
kindness is. They tell you to get a
job, and you just look at them and
laugh. If they only knew.”
Veterans of the Vietnam-era con
tain more disabled members than
of any other war, about 24.8 per
cent, according to the North
Carolina Division of Aging and
Adult Services. One of the con
tributing factors to this is Agent
Orange, one of the herbicides
sprayed from giant C-123 cargo
planes to destroy the forests and
fields that gave cover to the Viet
Cong fighters.
“Agent Orange has caused a lot
of problems,” Gray said. “They
are not saying it is from that. I
have a tumor in the back of my
head that they say cannot be
removed. I have two knots in my
stomach as well. I have not gone
back to the doctor to find out what
they are becau.se 1 don’t want to
know. 1 just do not want to know.”
In 2(K)2 and 2(X)3, an estimated
eight percent (two million) of male
veterans aged 18 or older were
dependent on or abusing alcohol
or illicit drugs, according to the
Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration.
There is sufficient evidence of
an association between Agent
Orange and the ailments of chron
ic leukemia, Hodgkin’s disease
and suggestive evidence for
prostate cancer, type two diabetes,
neuropathy, brain tumors, stomach
cancer and rectal cancer, accord
ing to the National Academies.
Eleven million gallons were
poured over South "Vietnam from
1961 to 1971, over 10 percent of the
country, according to BBC News.
“Pain is something I live with,”
Gray said. “After a while, you
block it out. It is not going any
where. I wake up, 1 hurt. I go to
bed, 1 hurt. 1 am suffering from
Agent Orange. They never ana
lyzed what it would do to the
human body. I have had 17 opera
tions, three on my stomach, five
on my left leg and six on the right,
the leg that I lost.
“After I came home, 1 was pro
moted to Private First Class,” Gray
said. “1 started to work on detail
ing cars and then 1 worked in
Charlotte at IBM. Then I went to
work at Carolina’s Medical Center
and the UNC-Charlotte as head
chef. Then 1 became disabled. I
had two heart attacks and a stroke.
I used to be on drugs because of
the pain of everything. By the
time 1 realized where 1 was at with
it, I was stuck. 1 messed my life up
and I’m trying to get it back
together.”
The largest category of veterans
on the compensation scale is at 10
percent disability ($108 per
month), and depending upon the
disability rating of the veteran,
monthly allowances for a spouse
range from $39 to $94, according
to the Office of VA Affairs.
“1 am trying to go through the
VA Hospital to get her (Gray’s
wife) to take care of me and be
compensated for it,” Gray said. “I
am fighting the VA Board because
I have not been compensated for
losing my leg. I have to go to
Winston-Salem to meet with the
VA Board. But I don’t have the
funds to get the bus fare and stay
in a motel. If I reschedule, it will
be another six to eight months
before they can see me.”
Currently, the number of home
less male and female Vietnam vet
erans is greater than the number of
service persons who died during
that war, according to the Florida
Department of VA Affairs.
“I simply asked him if he could
spare some change. He said, ‘Boy,
I will never feed a n*****. I’m
sending my money overseas.’ I
will never forget it, it hurt. He did
n’t have to do that,” Gray said.
“When I came back from Vietnam,
we were called baby killers and
n*****s. What people did not
understand was that we were just
following orders. We thought we
were doing the right thing, serving
our country.”
Gray’s family of sharecroppers
moved from Spartanbuig to Asheville
in 1956 for better job opportunities.
He served in Texas, twice in Vietnam,
Germany and Alaska.
“I clear about $1,5(X) a month,”
he said. “When we lost our home,
we lived in motels and that is
where most of our money went. I
got caught up in the system. We
lost our place and our money.
They can say whatever they want.
I spend my money trying to sur
vive. Right now we do not have
anything but each other.”
Gray went to Stephens-Lee,
Western North Carolina’s only
secondary school for blacks for
many decades. He dropped out six
weeks before graduation because
of an altercation with a teacher.
“I knew if I went home, my
mother would kill me, we had
already bought my cap and gown
and it was quite expensive,” Gray
said. “So I left and joined the
army. I have 12 kids all over the
world. I have three step-kids and
five godchildren. Racism is a lot
better than it was years ago.
Racism was a real problem. But
like everything it changes, but it
still exists.”
Gray’s wife, Cheleste McCeure
Chalk, has chromes disease, diabetes
and arthritis, and is trying to be
claimed as Gray’s caretaJeer. They
live with Gray’s brother and his 16-
year-old step-son lives with his moth
er because of their cuirent situation.
“I have worked at hospitals, but all
of a sudden these sicknesses started
to happen,” Chalk said. “I have
always worked, that is what my
mother taught me. I am a seeing-aid
by trade. Between getting my medi
cine and medical care, the money
goes by quick each month.”
Adam Hillberry — Staff Photografw|
Earl Gray served two tours in Vietnam during the war. Today he
pushes himself around the streets of downtown Asheville in his wheel ]
chair, asking for money in order to put food on his table.
SOA
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
Diversity
CONTINUED FROM PAGEll
Quitting cold turkey alone can be difficult.
years,” Mashbum said.
Coca-Cola, however, represents
only a small fraction of the prob
lems in Colombia, according to
Mashbum.
“The Colombian military doesn’t
want to be responsible for human
rights abuses, so it releases its
trained people to head up the death
squads and its paramilitary forces,
so officially, those human rights
abuses aren’t on the record for the
mihtary,” Mashbum said.
Those trained people were trained
by the United States, according to
Mashbum.
Since the SOA reopened under the
new name of the WHINSEC, it
claims to include “human rights” in
its curriculum, according to
Mashbum.
“Then you learn what those
trained people are doing in
Colombia, and you reahze that the
curriculum is really the same,”
Mashbum said.
The ongoing “War on Dmgs” in
Colombia is a cover-up for the
United States’ multinational eco
nomic interests, according to senior
Kristin Earhard, who also spoke at
the fomm along with sophomore
Amelia DeFosset.
Earhard attended a workshop on
U.S. policy and the situation in
Colombia at an Amnesty
International conference recently.
Most of the aid to Colombia in the
“War on Dmgs” is going toward the
Colombian military, according to
Earhard.
“We’re just flying over and spray
ing these toxic pesticides,” Earhard
said.
Students from Amnesty
International, including sophomore
Rob Waskom, coordinated the SOA
Fomm as part of a series of discus
sions. They are hosting a fomm on
the death penalty Tuesday.
“It’s a place for people to get
informed about specific issues, but
also to network students and faculty
and people from the community
about a huge variety of things,”
Waskom said.
Still, it is not just the administra
tion that can be blamed for the iacl|
of diversity problem, according to
Luttrell.
“Students play an enormous pail
in this problem by silently com
plying with the lack of diversity,”
Luttrell said. “We as students,
especially white students, have a
responsibility to make noise and
publicly question why this situa
tion continues.”
Much of the problem may deal
with the lack of money distributed
by UNCA to those who are notin
the upper middle-class category-
according to Gibney.
‘This university just does not
seem to raise much money, and if
we do not raise much money then
we do not have much money to
give,” Gibney said. “I do not thin!
this campus is known for its gen
erosity in terms of grants, probably
black or white. But the failure is
that we have an almost all-whiif
campus and sometimes money
talks here.”
The lack of diversity negatively
effects the whole campus, not only
the students, but also the faculty-
according to Gibney.
“Classes are hard to teact
because you only have the wta®
perspective,” Gibney said '
r
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II
gives an artificiality to classes thai
is just not healthy. I think we art
doifig a disservice to all students-
as well as faculty because we lea®
from students.”
The New Student Diversity
Task Force is a group of about f
people who meet regularly ®
order to correct the lack of divet
sity between the students an
teachers.
“Our primary goal is to get ®
policies from ‘The Blue Boo^
implemented,” Gardner sat
“These policies still apply, they a®
not that old and they are good fXJ
cies. It is a serious problem an
hope that the administration "j®
be willing to work with us in he P
ing change this. However, I
it is going to take a whole loj
student instructive to get thiDr-
rolling.” j|
Progress can only happe® ^
people are willing to stand up a®
make a change, and the
ty is a good place to start
social movement, according
Gardner.