By Marty Cheek

Photo by Marty Cheek Sgt. First Class Eddie Colis, left, and Sgt. Carl Schultz, center, stand at attention as Vietnam veteran Eddie Bowers raises the American flag during Monday’s Veterans Day celebration.

Photo by Marty Cheek
Sgt. First Class Eddie Colis, left, and Sgt. Carl Schultz, center, stand at attention as Vietnam veteran Eddie Bowers raises the American flag during Monday’s Veterans Day celebration.

There were few dry eyes in Morgan Hill’s downtown Granada Theater Sunday afternoon during the Poppy Jasper Film Festival’s screening of “Honor Flight,” a documentary movie about World War II veterans. My own eyes started to tear up listening to one Marine veteran describing the horrors of American combat to take control of the Pacific island of Iwo Jima from the Japanese.

Following the showing of the 2012 film, Army veteran Mary Cortani, the founder of the Gilroy-based nonprofit organization Operation Freedom Paws, spoke to the audience about the struggles that many veterans face as a result of their service to our country. The wounds are both physical and psychological.

As weapons technology and modern medicine have advanced, Cortani said, we no longer have the high number of service people killed in combat and the low injured numbers of battle survivors. We have lower rates of those killed in action (compared to the two world wars, Korean and Vietnam), but an increasingly higher number of service people injured or psychologically impaired. And that means America is seeing ever more veterans who struggle with everyday life.

Operation Freedom Paws’ mission is to help our local veterans by matching them with service dogs that have been rescued from animal shelters. The dogs and veterans go through a 40-week training program to help the vets with difficulties ranging from mobility impairment due to injuries to psychiatric challenges such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

About 900,000 American veterans are coming home from wars with physical and mental injuries, Cortani said. And a lot of the psychological traumas formany returning from combat zones abroad won’t appear until years from now. These traumas not only impact the quality of life for the vets but also their families.

The dog-matching program is free to the 144 veteran clients that Operation Freedom Paws serves. That means this worthy nonprofit organization requires support from the South Valley community. If you want to honor vets beyond putting up a flag on Veterans Day or Memorial Day, consider donating to Operation Freedom Paws and help a veteran who helped our nation.

For more information, visit www.operationfreedompaws.org.