Guard medics treat seniors in Gulfport
By Spc. Thomas Day
September 7, 2005
GULFPORT, Miss. (Army News Service, Sept. 5, 2005) – Forty-two aircraft, making six or more trips a day, are flying out of the Gulfport/Beloxi Air Guard base. They bring food, water, ice and medical supplies to those affected by the hurricane. They take needed prescriptions, fill them, and fly back into the neighborhoods with a white paper bag.
Each flight has a medic on board.
Spc. Terrance Jones 20, is a full-time college student and Soldier in the Mississippi National Guard activated in response to Hurricane Katrina. He thought his day was over, and then he got assigned to one last flight into the town of Saucier, Miss.
After landing alongside Palmer Creek, he met Dan Miller, the local coordinator of the neighborhood watch program, who identified a half-dozen locals he is particularly worried about.
Miller, himself 66, is a Vietnam veteran who receives 100 percent disability benefits from the Veterans Administration and takes 18 different prescriptions a day. But he had the foresight to stock up on his prescriptions before Hurricane Katrina.
Several seniors in the area desperately needed their prescriptions filled, another gentleman was scheduled to go into surgery before the hurricane shut down the Veterans Affairs hospital. One man suffered several “mini-strokes” since August 29.
“Who’s the worst off?” Jones asks.
“Who’s the worst off? I’ll take you to him right now.”
His name is Larry Jacobs, a retired Air Force veteran and a deeply religious man who identified one of his previous strokes as having happened on “Martin Luther’s birthday.”
Jacobs and his wife, Juanita, took shelter at a local elementary school during the hurricane. Their house managed to survive the storm without significant damage, but with no air-conditioning, the Mississippi heat tortured the Jacobs since the power cut off. When Jones and Miller emerged from the front door to the Jacobs house, Larry was perched on a chair, looking tired and addled.
Back at the airfield, the Mississippi Guardsmen – many of whom just returned from Iraq in December of 2004 – lift off on similar aid missions an estimated 300 times a day.
“This is an emergency situation, a sprint to the finish line,” said Col. Brad Macnealy, the Mississippi National Guard’s chief aviations officer.
This week will mark a reunion of sorts for Macnealy. Guard units from the states of New York, Georgia, Alabama, Ohio, Arkansas, and Indiana – all of whom worked with Macnealy and his Mississippi guardsmen in Iraq – have volunteered to work with them again in Mississippi. The New York contingent was the first to arrive, landing on Monday evening.
“All of these states are calling us with whatever they can do to help,” Macnealy said. “They’re energized and all of them realize the seriousness of the situation.”
The influx of added Guard soldiers may help ease the burden on the Macnealy’s Mississippi troops, who have been working furiously to unload supplies from one end of the Mississippi Gulf Coast to the other.
“They realize the harder they work, the more they’re saving lives and helping the people of the Gulf Coast get over this crisis,” Macnealy said. “I’ve never seen morale higher in my 26 years (in the military).” Sixteen-hour days are common among the troops, slowed down only by the logistics of fueling and launching the 42 aircrafts.
UH-60 Blackhawk number 448 was Spc. Jones’ aircraft, loaded with a three-foot-tall stack of ice and a box of diapers. With Jones’ going door-to-door, the crew unloads the cargo and shuts off the engine. He is going to be a while and gas isn’t cheap these days.
“How are you feeling now?”
“Oh, not too bad…”
Jones, unsatisfied with Larry Jacobs’ answer, presses. “What’s not too bad?” He had taken Jacobs’ pulse and interviewed him extensively about the week since the hurricane. “Not too bad” was not good enough.
Jacobs begrudgingly admitted earlier that he had kidney surgery earlier this year. He also complained about pressure behind his eyes earlier in the day, a sure sign of a recent stroke. “You just had one yesterday, didn’t you?” Miller asks his friend, somewhat rhetorically.
Juanita, brooding over her husband, confirms that he did. “When this happened,” Juanita remembered, “he couldn’t close his hands.” Their son, Tom, nods in agreement.
Jones, recognizing Juanita and Tom’s role in the house, turn to them with his assessment. “There may be something going on with his kidneys. I’m not a doctor…”
“But you’re smart enough to know when something’s wrong,” Miller interrupts. “Larry, listen to the man.”
Jones wants Jacobs to get help, immediately. Knowing that Jacobs doesn’t want to hear the news, he pulls his family into another room. “What I want you to do is take him up there (to the hospital) as soon as possible – like, within the next hour.” He wasn’t asking – Jacobs needed to be evacuated immediately.
The Jacobs agreed.
It would be more than four hours before Jones loaded back onto the Blackhawk for a late dinner. He carried two oxygen tanks to a senior. He ordered the man who needed surgery to reschedule his operation at another hospital able to accommodate him in the near term. He took down a needed prescription from a Normandy veteran.
Miller was on a first-name basis with every last one of Jones’ patients.
As the Blackhawk took off with Jones seated in the back, the man his friends refer to as “the mayor” was left with quite a chore ahead of him, rebuilding his neighborhood.
One-third of the homes are totaled, the other 100 have sustained some damage. Miller’s own home was not spared.
“I told my wife, if the roof goes, part of the house is going to go with it,” Jones said. “Well, it did.”
(Editor’s note: Spc. Thomas Day serves with the 40th Public Affairs Detachment.)
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