St. Joseph High School’s Interact Club held its annual Veterans Day Assembly Nov. 11 in Conway. Interact Club board chairman Lily Vaughn led the event, followed by club members Aimsley Davis, Gabe Washum, Izzie Garrett, Bailey Pope and Leif Westmoreland, who led prayers, detailed the origins of Veterans Day and explained why veterans should be revered.

Three members of St. Joseph’s Girl Scout Troop, Izzy Simon, Amelia Erstine and Brileigh Choate, presented and retired the colors while middle school students, under the direction of Dr. Liana Tyson, sang “The Star Spangled Banner,” “Those Who Served” and “You’re A Grand Old Flag.”

The guest speaker was retired Navy Captain Elizabeth Grasmuck, who spent 21 years in the Navy’s Medical Corps and served as a Marine flight surgeon and as a pathologist for Naval Hospitals in North Carolina and Japan. She spoke about the opportunities her military career gave her and the willingness veterans have had to put their lives on the line in defense of our country and way of life.

U.S. Navy veteran Dave King’s whole world changed when Zack came into his life. The young Catahoula mix plucked from a shelter already has all the love in the world for his new companion. But when Zack is wearing his vest he has a higher purpose: He is a service dog in training to help King cope with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.

Before King got Zack three months ago, he almost became a statistic — about 20 American vets a day commit suicide, according to 2014 data from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“I tried to commit suicide. I stepped out in front of a speeding vehicle and he just happened to stop short and it was a sheriff,” he said, adding he was taken to the hospital for help.

King, who was homeless, found A Veteran’s Best Friend, a volunteer nonprofit organization and Christian ministry that helps veterans by training service dogs for free through community and church donations and sponsorships of veterans. Volunteers keep the cost down to about $6,000 to $7,000 per dog. Individuals or groups can pledge $25 a month to sponsor 12- to 18-months of training for service dog and veteran. For many veterans like King, purchasing a service dog to help him cope with his PTSD and TBI, which can cost $20,000 or more, was out of the question.

“Somehow they found the absolute perfect dog for me,” said King, who has found housing through the VA Homeless Veterans program. “… I have bad nightmares; I’ll talk and make noises. From the first night I had him, he’ll wake me up from a nightmare. He’ll stand there and poke me with his paw.”

How it works

The organization, headquartered in Cabot, was founded in 2012 and has about 25 volunteers who assist with training and serve on the board of directors. There are currently nine veterans enrolled in the classes that meet once or twice a week depending on the stage in training to prepare the dogs with the necessary skills to serve their owners. All veterans accepted into the class must have doctor-diagnosed PTSD and go through an application and orientation process and home check. While most veterans are hands-on in the training sessions, some dogs are trained solely by volunteers.

Instead of buying from breeders, the volunteers search out shelter dogs or rescues from the Paws in Prison program, primarily labrador and retriever mixes, and put them through a series of preliminary tests to see if they have the demeanor and skills to make a good service dog. If a dog is adopted and does not work out as a service dog, the volunteers work to adopt them to a loving family.

At its core, the nonprofit exists to help veterans. But Frances Kirk, a U.S. Army veteran and parishioner at St. Jude Church in Jacksonville, will be the first to say that these dogs, including her lab mix Domino, are more than just working dogs. They are lifesavers and almost every volunteer within the organization has a story to tell about their four-legged companions.

“What the dogs do is give us hope,” Kirk said. “They just give us hope and a chance at life again.”

Giving hope

Before the afternoon training session Oct. 28, veterans Kirk, Tyler Naramore, director of operations, Carrie Riley, director of logistics, and David Grimm, dog trainer and past principal at the former St. Patrick School in North Little Rock, shared their after-war stories about struggles with PTSD, everything from not wanting to leave the house for years to always finding the “PTSD seat” wherever they go — a seat with their back to the wall that has a full view of the exits.

Frances explained PTSD as a traumatic event or a series of events that have happened to a person and “their body and mind is stuck in that trauma … They’re hyper vigilant, scanning rooftops, hands” and are often forgetful, Kirk said.

Grimm, who served in Vietnam and Iraq for the U.S. Marines and Air Force, had stopped leaving the house and isolated himself so he wouldn’t have to hear “I understand” from those who couldn’t possibly understand.

“I’ve had people ask, ‘Why don’t you talk about your experiences?’ And my statement to them is I don’t want to put them through what I went through,” he said. “… But since I have had Ringo, I get out. A year ago, you wouldn’t see me in a class like this, the room would be too confining. I’ve gone to some of my grandkids’ games, plays at school. I’m getting out more.”

Ringo, a two-year-old golden doodle who was surrendered by his owner, is crucial to calming his fears out in public.

“I’d get really emotionally upset if somebody was behind me,” something he and other veterans in the program often struggle with, Grimm said. “So he’s trained to, if I’m standing some place, he’s looking behind me. I can be talking to you, but I still see him and he will move or alert and then I can see what is behind me.”

The dogs are trained to detect stress and will nuzzle, paw, cuddle or actually lead a person out of a place or situation if an anxiety attack is happening. Following Assistance Dogs International (ADI) standards, the dogs must pass the Canine Good Citizens test, Public Access Test and specific training for PTSD tasks before certification.

“We emit pheromones when we’re stressed. They pick up on our stress pheromones and are like, ‘Hey, quit stressing,’” said Army veteran Chris Wilson, who does not yet have a dog.

A Godsend

Volunteers like Mardy and Audrey Jones, members of Christ the King Church in Little Rock, help foster and train dogs while they wait to be placed with a veteran. Much of the training revolves around putting the dogs in a variety of situations, locations and with various people and animals to get them accustomed to proper behavior. Although the Joneses are not veterans, they view this volunteer work as a service to God.

“The Bible can be confusing. But I can understand that I am to love. I am to love others and to love is to serve. And to be a service dog trainer, is to serve my fellow man and my dogs too,” Audrey Jones said. “One morning I was on my knees saying my prayer and I had one dog cuddled up over here and one dog cuddled up over here and it’s like, this is God telling me ‘good job.’ And then it’s like these dogs are God’s love with skin on.”

Kirk said the organization always welcomes donations and volunteers who can serve as foster families to keep a dog before a trainer takes them, volunteer trainers, help at fundraisers and administration work. 

While all the volunteers work hard to make sure the dogs are trained, that unbreakable bond comes from God.

“I had a really, really bad night so I took my dog and I went to the chapel, perpetual chapel at IC (Immaculate Conception in North Little Rock), and as I was going in, I was not in good shape emotionally,” Kirk said. “But this strange lady I never met before in my life walked up to me and she said, ‘I want you to know God made this dog for you. This is God’s gift to you, this dog.’ That’s the way I feel. Domino is God’s gift to me. He is what is healing me.”

For more information on the nonprofit and how to get involved, visit servicedog4ptsd.org or contact Tyler Naramore at 1037nara@gmail.com.

Joseph Weishaar had always envisioned himself designing residential homes for families. But never had he imagined that he would design a national monument to be admired and visited by people from every walk of life for generations.

In January, Weishaar was chosen from a pool of hundreds of architects around the globe to design the World War I national memorial to be erected in Washington, D.C., in 2018.

A 2013 magna cum laude graduate of the University of Arkansas Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, the newly minted architect has been working for the past two years as a project architect for Brininstool+Lynch in Chicago.

But for the past eight months, while his days were spent working, his nights were spent dreaming.

Designing and dreaming, of course, of a monument he hoped would reflect the struggles and aspirations of a nation and its people at a turning point in history.

“I would put in eight-to-nine-hour days in at the firm and then come back to my apartment in the evening and work for another three to four hours on my design,” the 26-year-old said.

In the end, that diligence paid off for Weishaar as his design was selected first from a group of 360 other applicants from the U.S. and countries as far away as France, England and Australia. After the first round, the field narrowed to only five submissions and in January, Weishaar’s design was awarded the honor of being the capital’s first national memorial commemorating the First World War.

“I can say that designing a national memorial wasn’t anywhere on my radar even nine months ago,” Weishaar admits. “In this profession we hope and pray for projects of prestige to come along sometime after we’re established. To get something like this at this point in my career boggles the mind.”

His winning bronze and granite design titled “The Weight of Sacrifice” will be in Pershing Park, a small park near the White House named after General John J. Pershing who led U.S. expeditionary forces in the war. A sculpture of Pershing, currently standing in the park, will be joined by a free standing sculpture and a bas relief sculpture to tell the story of all who contributed to the war. Maple trees, standing for every battle the U.S. fought in, will be planted around the perimeter of the park.

The Fayetteville native hopes to move to D.C. to oversee the construction of his team’s design once it begins.

Included on that team is 52-year-old Sabin Howard, an experienced classical sculptor from New York City, whose membership on the team was critical as the design became a finalist.

One might think becoming an architect was always the dream for one achieving such a goal.

“Up until my senior year of high school I wanted to be a mechanical engineer,” Weishaar said. But after taking an entry-level art class as an elective his senior year and discovering he had some natural talent the teacher pushed him to check out architecture as a way to balance out the engineering and the art sides of his brain.

His parents, Tom and Sandy Weishaar, longtime parishioners of St. Joseph Church in Fayetteville, have seen this side of him since he was a young boy.

“Even at 3 years old, Joe was always building and putting things together,” his father said. “He has always been very mechanical in knowing how things come together and come apart.”

Weishaar’s family, including his one sister Sandy, who lives in New Jersey, all attended the finalist’s presentations in Washington Jan. 6.

Tom said he knew after viewing the other presentations that his son’s design was different.

“Joe was the last of the five finalists to present,” said his father. “Afterwards, the commission came up and told us that the other finalists represented large firms and were accompanied by their lawyers. Joseph was the only individual finalist who had just brought his family.”

This quiet sense of being grounded and having an altruistic spirit has been a guiding principle throughout his life.

“I would say my faith has stayed very strong throughout my life,” Weishaar said. “The biggest thing that has changed is the prayers themselves over time. I find myself now more concerned with the lives of others, the lives of veterans, and when the memorial design gets tough there’s an occasional, ‘Oh God, why me?’ ”

Since January, Weishaar has done countless media interviews and been honored with an executive order by Gov. Asa Hutchison to establish a World War I Centennial Commemoration Committee to coordinate events honoring the war’s centennial in 2017 and 2018. He is also on tap to help promote the UA School of Architecture through a series of commercials.

“People ask me if I am proud,” Tom Weishaar said, “but I prefer the word inspired. He has never backed away from a challenge, and I feel just as inspired by him as I am proud.”

Ask 6-year-old Christ the King Girl Scout Ellen Davis what her father does and it’s matter of fact: “He works in St. Louis and helps our country,” she said and then added, “Oh and he flies airplanes.”

She and her Girl Scout troop #6292 with 22 other girls came together Nov. 2 at the Christ the King Ministries Building in Little Rock to fill care packages for veterans like Davis’ father, but particularly those in need.

The 150 blankets and care packages filled with toiletries like razors, soap, a toothbrush, toothpaste and shampoo were going to be donated to the North Little Rock Veterans Administration Hospital for patients that come into the emergency room or hospital and have to stay longer than expected, said Laura Beth York, the troop’s leader and member of Christ the King Church in Little Rock. The packages may also go to those staying for mental health treatment, such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

Each bag included a note from the troop saying, “Thank you for your service to our country.”

York, a workers compensation lawyer for Rainwater, Holt and Sexton in Little Rock, said each month the law firm chooses where to donate money collected from the office vending machines and matches the amount. The firm donated $974, which allowed the troop to buy the supplies for the care packages.

“Our veterans have served our country and what better way to say thank you” than by providing comfort during a hospital stay, York said.

It is not the first time the troop has worked with the VA. York said last year, they began allowing people to buy Girl Scout cookies to donate to veterans. “It’s so important that the Girl Scouts learn about our veterans,” York said.