Homeless vets need more, better services

by Bob Wojda

Bums, hobos, and winos. These are the names for homeless people in Chicago … or used to be in the late 1940s, all of the 1950s and early 1960s. They did ok — managing to stay alive — until President Eisenhower started building freeways. Eisenhower was so impressed with Hitler’s autobahn in Germany that he wanted interstate highways in the United States.
The first interstate built in Chicago was called the Dan Ryan, and ran through an area called Skid Row. This area was home to 90 percent of the bums, hobos, and winos who were able to find enough shelter to survive. The Dan Ryan took all this away.
As the road was being developed in the 1950s, the homeless began dying in the alleys and on sidewalks, as Chicago had very severe winters in ’57, ’58, and ’59, with temperatures going below -20 degrees Fahrenheit. Skid Row was gone; the sheltered area in alleys and abandoned buildings disappeared so the homeless slept in the open — in parking lots, parks and under the Dan Ryan overpasses. Thousands of the homeless froze to death those three winters.
Early in 1960, a few Chicago colleges had students survey this area, finding out who these bums, hobos and winos were. When the results were published in two years later, they found that more than 80 percent were World War II vets!
This really troubled me. Back in 1946, my father’s hunting and fishing club went to the major VA hospital, Hines, in a southwest suburb. They took the vets fishing, to club dances and picnics. In ’46 and ’47 I took vets in my rowboat for fishing tournaments. In ’48 I got my driver’s license and asked my dad if I could drive to Hines and take some vets had been released from Hines. Yes, they were released to become homeless in Chicago and die.
Things haven’t changed much in the United States. The VA funds shelters for 15,000 vets across the country, but there are at least 200,000 homeless vets nationwide. My brother-in-law, Roy Dolas, was head of the Illinois VA from 2004-06. The Chicago area at that time had 18,000 “bums, hobos and winos.” The Illinois VA had rehabbed several old hospital barracks at Hines that gave shelter to only about 300 vets. Roy had served in Vietnam. He was replaced as director of the Illinois VA by a woman who had served in the National Guard and lost both her legs in Iraq.

Portland Thanksgiving discovery
I moved to Oregon in 2002 with my wife to be near our three children. On our first Thanksgiving, our daughter and son-in-law volunteered with us to serve dinner at the Portland Rescue Mission. One of their staff members told me that just over one-third of the homeless they served were veterans. This revelation brought me back to some very troubling memories, not just of Chicago, but also of Mississippi where we had lived from 2000 to 2002. I had worked in maintenance at Kessler Air Force Base in Biloi where I registered at the VA hospital (I was drafted in the Korean War). I learned that many vets were committing suicide by lying on the train tracks that ran alongside the base.
In Portland in 2003, I surveyed places that offered shelter to the homeless. I asked that these shelters post a Homeless Veteran Survey. Only one shelter returned a survey, with 13 names. I tried this for about a year before deciding that it wasn’t working. In 2005 I joined the Veterans for Peace, Chapter 72.
They inspired me to join Stand for Peace every Saturday at the Lloyd Center and to protest in front of the Recruiting Center on Broadway. In 2007, I asked homeless people to stand with me and then took them to lunch. Six men stood at times with me, four became “regulars” for six months or so. Two vets, Ray and Tim, became friends. Tim was rescued by his family in Idaho but Ray developed serious health problems. In April, I found Ray living under a roof just east of the I-5 and north of Broadway. I asked him why he didn’t go to the VA Hospital. He told me that he spent several months at White City in southern Oregon, but was kicked out. He spent one month at the VA Hospital in Vancouver, WA.
When I told our VFP president about Ray, he asked me to find out what is being done for homeless vets.
In May I visited White City where I found that there was very little being done. On my way home, I stopped in Salem to talk to the Oregon State VA. An employee suggested I visit Central City Concern in Portland. I again found very little being done for vets.
The latest project I tried was to write to Oregon political leaders asking what they are doing for vets. Only Earl Blumenauer has answered me. I have not heard from Mayor Potter, our Governor or our U.S. Senators. I have also distributed more than 240 copies of War is a Racket by Major General Smedley Butler to high school libraries, universities and concerned citizens across the country.
Writing this is very troubling, but I’m sitting here listening to good music by my high school buddy, Ron Omland, a musician in Chicago, trying to quell the frustration of finding help for men and women who serve their nation and are left to die so ignobly in the “land of plenty.”

Bob Wojda is a retired high school teacher who has lived in Portland since 2003. He has been actively involved in Vets for Peace, Stand for Peace and many other Portland efforts to end war. When not protesting outside the Broadway Recruiting Center with his familiar signs and buttons, he spends time with his wife June, of Radical Women, three children, and his new grandchild, Jake Dillon Wojda.