Just off Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester, a 12-foot-high monument on the University of Massachusetts Boston campus lists the names of 79 Dorchester servicemen who were killed during the Vietnam War.
On a cold, cloudy and gray day March 29, the weather matched the mood at the monument during a ceremony on National Vietnam Veterans Day, a day that marks the anniversary of the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Vietnam in 1973.
As each man’s name was read loudly and a bell was rung, Vietnam veterans in attendance and faculty and staff had another sobering thought weighing on their minds.
In 1981, as hundreds of Vietnam veterans were trying to restart their lives after losing some of their best years to Uncle Sam, the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and its Social Consequences was created on the UMass Boston campus. And now it’s on the verge of collapse.
The center, a leading institute on the study of the Vietnam War, faces, along with 16 other centers at UMass Boston, near elimination as the result of state budget cuts.
As part of a long-term trend, state support for the center has dwindled over the years, and Thomas Kane, its director, said it’s getting increasingly harder to do his mission. He started the academic year with 5½ university-funded positions, but is being forced down to three part-time positions after two people took state buyouts, another person left and another retired.
“We’re effectively being pressured out of existence,” says Kane.
Over the years, the center has helped thousands of veterans, from the Vietnam era to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The center has contributed research and studies on important topics such as post-traumatic stress, the consequences of war on veteran reintegration and the impact of war on the families of veterans.
The center is named for William Joiner Jr., a Vietnam-era veteran who was the first director of Veterans Affairs at UMass Boston until his death from cancer in 1981. Joiner was stationed in Guam during the war and loaded 55-gallon drums of Agent Orange onto cargo planes.
The institute over the years also has taken the lead on advocacy for veterans suffering the deadly health effects from Agent Orange, as well as other toxic chemicals during wartime service.
A writers’ workshop at the center brings in veteran writers from around the world to forums with Vietnamese war veterans who have discussed their common experiences with their American counterparts. Now the center is focusing on the conflicts in Southwest Asia, to include trips to Iraq and forums on the current wars.
The center also offers resources such as free counseling and financial aid workshops for the more than 600 veterans who attend UMass Boston. A popular program provides instruction for high school teachers on how to teach the lessons of war and military culture and what it’s like to be a veteran.
I asked Kane if he was given a reason why the university was cutting the center’s funding. He says memos and other official information state that centers like his that do not bring in major research dollars and big government grant funding, and that require the largest subsidies, were now seeing their budgets slashed.
“But you can’t put a price tag on what we provide,” says Kane. “It’s been so devastating and demoralizing to see this happen.”
To use a military phrase coined by Joseph Heller, Kane is facing a “Catch-22” situation because the university is pressuring centers like his to bring in more grant money and funding at the same time staff is being cut.
The irony of all this is not lost on Kane, himself a veteran and the son of a Vietnam War veteran. Kane can’t stomach the possibility that the very institution that made sure veterans returning home from the Vietnam War had a place to call home is now on the verge of extinction.
Kane says he has spoken to a number of state officials, including state Sen. Michael Rush, D-Boston, chairman of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Veterans and Federal Affairs. But Kane hasn’t received any firm assurances yet of getting some last-minute budget earmarks, and he is growing more and more frustrated with the lack of support.
To make matters worse, campus veterans are livid with the recent news that UMass Amherst is looking to purchase the campus of Mount Ida College in Newton, just 10 miles to the west.
Several veterans who now live in western Massachusetts were graduates of the center and have returned to the UMass campus over the years to participate in programs.
One of them, Preston Hood, a frequent visitor to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Leeds where he participates as a veteran mentor at the center’s post-traumatic stress inpatient unit, met recently with Rep. John Velis, D-Westfield. Velis, who is vice chairman of the Joint Committee on Veterans and Federal Affairs, gave him advice on who to call.
For now, unless something happens — and soon — the Joiner Center will die an untimely death at a time when our nation can ill afford to not study the consequences of war.
“What’s happening with Joiner is sadly an example of how youth are sent off to war, and then it’s like over time we forget about them and their well-being,” says Hood.
When I hear elected officials and the governor brag during public ceremonies that the commonwealth is number one in the nation for its support to veterans, I ask: “Is this what being number one looks like?”
John Paradis, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, lives in Florence and writes a column published the second Friday of the month. He is a veterans’ outreach coordinator for VA New England Health Care System, and can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.