Dispatchers loved to give me the weird calls, even when they were out of my beat. One such call in the mid-1970s was the report of a guy in a wheelchair popping wheelies in the center of Highway 27 in west Kerrville near the city limits.
I arrived and the guy was doing exactly as reported with speeding traffic giving him a wide berth on the four-lane state highway as he spun around in tight circles, jumping the front wheels of the chair off the pavement on the double yellow stripes down the middle of the highway. I pulled the squad car far off the asphalt onto the gravel shoulder and got out to try and talk to the guy.
He was emotional and agitated and expressed the notion that his life of boredom in the wheelchair was driving him crazy. I managed to coax him over to the shoulder next to my squad car to talk to him.
He was thin and wiry with shriveled legs that were obviously paralyzed. His face was gaunt, his hair disheveled. He was wearing old jeans, a faded shirt, and ratty sneakers with holes in the canvas. He had an intense, taut look on his face while his actions and speech made it clear that he was stressed out by his circumstances.
It turns out he was a Vietnam veteran who had been critically wounded in action during the closing days of the war. He had only recently been released from the VA hospital in Kerrville with his new wheelchair. He had no family or friends in Kerrville and was having a difficult time readjusting from fighting in Vietnam jungles to living in a cheap trailer park confined to a wheelchair.
The veteran told me he had started out to roll himself to the supermarket a half-mile away but decided what the hell. He just wanted a little excitement back in his life.
I asked if I could take him to the store and he eagerly agreed. I helped him into the front seat of the squad car and loaded his wheelchair into the trunk. Off shopping we went. I rolled him through the supermarket and helped him load the items on his list into the shopping cart. Then after loading his groceries into the back seat, I took him back to his trailer park and helped him into his little trailer home.
I did not go to Vietnam. I had a cousin four years older who did go and wrote me weekly letters. His disillusionment with the war led me to keep a student deferment while I was at university. When the lottery was held, my number was high enough to preclude the possibility of being drafted. But while I never went, I had nothing but the utmost respect for those who either volunteered, as my cousin had, or had been drafted, as was the poor veteran I helped that day.
I don’t know whatever became of him after that. But I do know there are thousands of disabled veterans whose lives were ruined by their military service fighting for our country and they receive poor compensation for their troubles. Many of those have turned to drugs and because of addiction, have lost their military benefits. It is a disgrace our government doesn’t take better care of those who sacrificed so much for America. God bless them all.