‘Soldier’ was the last job they knew
Returning vets struggle to find jobs
November 11, 2009
LINK: http://www.southtownstar.com/news/1877276,111109vets.article
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Returning from war lets soldiers and their families breathe a minute, as Kerry Poplin knows. Her husband, Brian, is due home from Afghanistan on Thursday, bearing only the scars he sustained during a previous tour in Iraq.
But for Poplin, who deployed to escape unemployment, coming home leaves him and his family in a “now what?” situation. In a lousy economy, leaving the battle zone is only the beginning for troops whose only recent job has been “soldier.”
Unemployment was 5.6 percent and rising last year across the United States as the country entered a recession.
For veterans of the war on terror, however, it was 7.3 percent, according to the Labor Department.
Unemployment for vets ages 25 to 34 also measured 7.3 percent. But for young vets aged 18 to 24 years, it was nearly double that, at 14.1 percent.
Veterans Day today honors all who have served the United States in the armed forces.
There is no draft. Each soldier signed up to serve, the bulk of them after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, knowing full well they’d be sent overseas to war.
They’re not afraid to work. Even ones whose physical injuries won’t let them return to their previous jobs are seeking employment. The jobs just aren’t there to be had, according to Southland soldiers looking for work in law enforcement and medical fields. Military experience doesn’t count for much, they say.
President Barack Obama signed an executive order this week seeking to hire more veterans to work in federal agencies. Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn also recently signed legislation aimed at getting more vets on the payroll.
Meanwhile, a lot of area veterans have gone back to school, mostly on the post 9-11 GI Bill that pays for tuition and doles out a $1,742 monthly housing allowance, too, according to Debbie Wills, an admissions recruiter at Moraine Valley Community College.
“They’re here going to school because they couldn’t secure a job,” she said.
Brian Poplin, of Mokena, is unemployed
Brian Poplin went back to war, this time in Afghanistan, last November because his airplane mechanic job disappeared and he couldn’t find another.
Poplin was doing his annual two weeks’ training with the Army National Guard in April 2008 when word that ATA, his employer of 17 years, folded. He turned back to the military as a way to take care of his wife and children.
“It has been almost back-to-back tours for me, but after losing my job I had to do something to support my family,” he wrote from Afghanistan. “Needless to say I am glad this tour is over.”
He has been counting the days until his return — now confirmed as Thursday — on a Facebook page his family can read.
The 41-year-old father of five joined the military in December 2000.
“Enlisting was something that I always wanted to do, so I did it so I would not have any regrets later,” he said. “Of course the terrorist attacks of 2001 were right around the corner.”
His wife, Kerry, gave her blessing, she said with a grim laugh from their Mokena home.
“As a recruiter told me, ‘We never deploy.’ Great. I could be a guard wife. I can’t do full time.”
Since then, she’s held down the home during four deployments over nearly six years, including two tours in war zones.
Along with surviving the rigors of war and a job loss, Poplin underwent treatment for cancer of the jaw.
During his recuperation, he got word his civilian job was closing, so he moved his family from Las Vegas to Mokena to be closer to Kerry’s family in Oak Forest.
“We’ve been through so much as a family,” she said. “It makes us who we are.”
During his current tour in Afghanistan, Poplin has served as an aircraft maintenance technician and a helicopter gunner, with more than 250 combat flying hours.
He’s spent his career working for the military or for ATA. The airline industry remains weak, so he’s thinking about going back to school once he’s back home.
“I suppose in the troubled economy these days that a lot of vets, young and old, are turning to using the GI Bill and returning to school to later return to a competitive work marketplace,” Poplin said. “I plan on being one of these vets myself.”
Deandre Minniefield ‘juggling’
Cpl. Deandre Minniefield is juggling like mad.
He’s been home from Afghanistan for five months and has taken four classes toward a law enforcement degree. Minniefield and his wife have two children, ages 9 and 5. The 27-year-old has a full-time job at OfficeMax, and he’s still attached to a Crestwood-based Illinois Army National Guard unit.
But that’s what it takes right now for him to make ends meet for his wife and kids while planning for a better future, hopefully as a police officer.
“It’s OK,” he said of his situation. “It is what it is.”
Minniefield is taking the Cook County sheriff’s entrance exam on Dec. 1. He’s already tested at other western suburban departments.
“When I first went into the military, I said ‘I found something I think I’ll be real good at,’” he said.
He spent much of his year in Afghanistan with Battery B, 2nd Battalion, 122nd Field Artillery training and mentoring local troops and police. He describes his time there as simply “rough,” declining to elaborate.
His mother, Donna Minniefield, said he’s been treated at a VA hospital since coming home.
“He has his days,” she said. “A problem with his ear from the bombs getting blown up over there.”
Her son spends as much time as he can with his wife and kids, but he gets home from work at 3 p.m. and leaves for school at 5.
After graduating from high school in 2001 and lacking direction, he enlisted in 2005 in the Illinois Guard.
“At that time I wasn’t working or anything. I said ‘I’ll go into the military.’ I could jumpstart myself,” he said. “The military works different for different folks. It helped me out a lot.”
But since his return from war, life is just different.
“Once you do that you’re not the same person when you come back,” he said. “I thought I would be the same, but I’m not. You don’t see it but you know it.”
Jason Heldt, of Crete, a full-time dad
Jason Heldt could patch up your bullet wound, stanch your bleeding or diagnose a skin ailment in the heat of battle.
And for 14 total months in Iraq, the Navy medic treated the injuries of U.S. Marines, while surviving six explosions himself.
But he’s been jobless since August 2008 so Heldt’s current full-time job is single dad to 6-year-old Sophia. The 27-year-old spends afternoons picking her up from the bus stop, walking her through homework and wishing he could contribute a paycheck to his parents’ household in Crete where he and Sophia live.
nd maybe, just maybe, he could move his fiancee and their 2-year-old son from California to Illinois, to live with him and Sophia, his daughter from a previous marriage.
Heldt, in the Navy for five years, will tell you during a job interview how battlefield training makes him a better hire in your private medical practice or hospital emergency room. But he fears employers hear “war” and believe the worst.
During the more than two-dozen interviews he’s had for medical assistant jobs, Heldt said he hasn’t been asked about his qualifications. They hear he’s seen action overseas, and the interview is derailed.
“First thing out of their mouth, when we come to that point of the interview, is, ‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry.’ he said. “I did what I did, I’m OK with it. I don’t want your sympathy, I want a job.”
Heldt also has post-traumatic stress disorder, which he thinks makes prospective employers wary.
The eldest of five boys, Heldt joined the Navy at age 19, after trying college and a couple dead-end jobs. He was sent to Iraq for the first time in 2005.
Unless Heldt is selling his medic experience as a specific qualification, he doesn’t say much about his military record to potential employers, calling it an unfair advantage over others.
“I didn’t play the military card,” he said. “I should. I got bills to pay and kids to feed.”
The obligation to his kids tempts Heldt to return to a job he knows and is good at — combat medic. But it’s those same kids who stop him in his tracks.
“I’m not willing to risk a run of bad luck to have two fatherless children,” he said.
Phil Bell, Orland Park, injured and in school
Phil Bell’s shrapnel-riddled body just couldn’t hack the rigors of the electrician apprenticeship he began before shipping off to Iraq.
He finished a year and a half of rehab. He tried to complete the program’s second year, but the strain was too much on his neck, back and legs — hurt in March 2006 near Fallujah when Bell’s Humvee was hit by an explosive.
Though he’s walking fine now, he still has some 15 to 20 pieces of metal in his back that shift if he moves too much.
“At the end of the day, it was hurting too much,” Bell said. “The metal still cuts the muscles up.”
So Sgt. 1st Class Phil Bell walked away from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in Chicago, and the military, and into an academic setting. When he medically retired on Jan. 1, 2008, he’d been on active duty and in the reserves for about 14 1/2 years.
The 33-year-old is studying accounting at DePaul, at the university’s Loop campus, with the help of the Veterans Administration’s Vocational Rehab program.
“Some day I’ll be able to get an office job where my body will be able to work,” he said.
Bell grew up in Orland Park and graduated from Carl Sandburg High School. Following in the footsteps of his father, a Vietnam vet and an electrician, Bell joined the Army, then signed on for the IBEW’s five-year apprentice program in January 2002.
After 9-11, he deployed to Germany to replace security units with his Joliet-based unit, then spent time in Louisiana training soldiers preparing for deployment to Iraq, then followed them overseas in 2005.
Folks at the VA helped him redraw career plans, and paid for his classes at Moraine Valley Community College. Bell transferred to DePaul this past quarter, where he’s studying accounting.
He lives on his own now in Orland Park, near his parents and other family members, and commutes to school by train.
“My future is intact at this point,” he said. “I think it was a little rough when I first got back. The schools have been very supportive. I think I moved into it very well.”
Despite his strength in mathematics, Bell’s not a natural student. But he can push his brain now more easily than his body.
“School is my future,” he said. “I can’t really rely on my body to go out and work the labor parts of the job community.”
