It is a sign of strength to help your friend get
help.
Major General Graham from
Fort Carson talks about suicide prevention in the U.S. Army.
Major General Mark Graham: The commander’s
shared scars
Major General Mark Graham is
photographed in his office next to two photos of his late sons. In
the pictures: Kevin Graham is on the left and Jeffrey Graham is on
the right. (Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post )
FORT CARSON— On the underside of the two stars that rest on each
shoulder of Fort Carson’s top general, the names
"Kevin" and "Jeff" are engraved.
This is one
way Maj. Gen. Mark Graham honors his sons, two young men who did
not live long enough to see their father pin on those stars.
Second Lt.
Jeff Graham, 23, died Feb. 19, 2004, when a roadside bomb exploded
in Kalidiyah, Iraq, while the young leader protected his platoon.
Kevin Graham,
21, a top ROTC cadet at the University of Kentucky, hanged himself
June 21, 2003, from a ceiling fan in his apartment. No one saw the
lethality of his depression.
"They
both fought different enemies," Graham said during a recent
interview.
Carol
Graham, wife of Maj. Gen. Mark Graham, shows the dog tags
memorializing her sons, 2nd Lt. Jeff Graham, left, and Kevin
Graham. Jeff was killed in Iraq, and Kevin committed suicide.
(Helen H. Richardson, Denver Post)
For a man who is not sure why he
joined the military more than 30 years ago, no general in
today’s Army has a more intimate understanding of war’s
hardships and the mental-health issues that follow than Fort
Carson’s commander.
Not a day goes
by that he doesn’t think about his sons. Their loss, he said,
has made him a more compassionate officer.
"The easy
thing would be to curl up in a corner and do nothing and not get
out of bed in the morning," Graham said. "Getting up
some days is real hard, and most people never see it because I put
a smile on my face usually. That’s the way I was.
"Happy is
different now than it ever was before."
Back in June
2003, as he and his wife, Carol, drove away from Kevin’s
funeral, Graham told her: "We can either let this be the
tragic, horrible book of our life, or we can make it one bad
chapter in the book of our life."
When they lost
Jeff, they added a second bad chapter. Now they
are trying to change the story.
Commissioned a
second lieutenant in 1977, Mark Graham served in Desert Storm and
years later led the military’s evacuation effort of New Orleans
following Hurricane Katrina.
In 2006 and
2007, Fort Carson had been under fire for its treatment of wounded
soldiers. Veterans’ advocacy groups claimed too many soldiers
were not receiving good care. They claimed soldiers were being
discharged for infractions such as drug use and going AWOL after
they were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Since Graham
arrived at Fort Carson in September, his mantra has been this:
provide the best care possible for his soldiers. He constantly
encourages troops to seek the help they need.
That
get-down-to-business attitude was evident from his earliest days
at Murray State University in Murray, Ky., said Jeff Hohman. The
two met during their freshman year, when Graham was elected
president of the pledge class for Kappa Alpha.
"Mark,
right from the beginning, he was the fast-talking Yankee from
Florissant, Mo.," Hohman said. "He really took charge
right off the bat. He was just the kind of guy; he was
inspirational in a way that didn’t offend you."
A frame
containing pictures of Kevin and Jeff on Graham’s walnut desk
reminds him of his battles, both past and present.
Kevin, a top
student in his ROTC class, wanted to be an Army doctor. He had
graduated from airborne school. One day he called his mother and
said he thought he had depression.
Kevin saw a
doctor, who prescribed Prozac; he visited a counselor at the
university. When Jeff graduated from UK on May 10, 2003, his
parents noticed how good Kevin looked. He’d been running and
lifting weights.
"He did
not look depressed," said Carol Graham, who has a master’s
degree in counseling.
Exercise can
increase the serotonin level in the brain, which can ease the
symptoms of depression. Kevin was preparing to go to ROTC advanced
camp — his parents said he was embarrassed to admit he was
taking Prozac, even though the Army has no problem with soldiers
taking the drug — when he stopped the medication cold turkey.
"I’m
absolutely convinced that Kevin would be alive today if he had
felt like the military would have accepted that illness as an
illness and not as a weakness," said Hohman, who is best
friends with Mark Graham.
At Fort
Carson, Graham said, he continually encourages soldiers to get
help for mental-health issues.
"The
stigma is terrible for depression," he said. "You’re
supposed to be tough, tough people. I think the stigma is harder
on men than it is on women. Guys, you raise them up to be tough,
suck it up, come on, get beyond it, get through it."
Kevin’s
sister found his body
Jeff and
Kevin were supposed to play golf on the morning of June 21, 2003.
When Kevin didn’t show, Jeff called his sister, Melanie, who
lived with Kevin in an apartment off campus. She found him in his
bedroom.
The Grahams
flew to Kentucky from Korea. At the funeral home, Jeff stood
alongside his brother’s casket.
"Jeffrey
looked at me and said, ‘I just want to crawl in there with
him,’ " Hohman remembered.
Jeff was
always the cool one, an athlete who always had a smile and an
attitude that the glass was always more than full.
After he
graduated, he went to Fort Knox. The Army told him he didn’t
have to deploy to Iraq, that he could stay stateside and train
other soldiers.
"Jeff
. . . told his fiancée that the only thing worse than
being at war was being a soldier and not being at war,"
Graham said.
Second Lt.
Jeff Graham was on foot patrol in Kalidiyah, outside of Fallujah,
when he ordered his platoon to split, a group on either side of
the road. He noticed something odd, with a wire protruding from
it, resting on a guardrail. He stopped his platoon. As he turned
to grab his radio to alert his troops, the bomb blew.
At their home
in Fort Sill, Okla., Carol Graham woke at 5:30 a.m. She read on
the Internet that two soldiers were killed in Kalidiyah.
"Mark,
would we know by now if that was Jeffrey or not?" she asked
her husband. He said it was too soon to know.
"I had
this feeling," she said. Later, they found out one of the
dead was Jeff.
"All I
could think of was, when that bomb went off, Kevin was right there
and he caught him. And they’re together."
From his
office overlooking the Mountain Post, Maj. Gen. Graham is
responsible for more than 21,000 Fort Carson employees; only the
governor has more workers under his supervision in Colorado.
He oversees
Division West, which trains 190,000 National Guard and Reserve
soldiers west of the Mississippi. Graham directs more than $1.9
billion in construction projects through 2013 and Fort Carson’s
effort to expand Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site near Trinidad. He’s
also preparing for the move of 10,000 troops from the 4th Infantry
Division in Fort Hood, Texas, to Fort Carson.
Yet each week,
regardless of the demands of the day, Graham, 53, visits wounded
soldiers assigned to the Warrior Transition Unit, where soldiers
have one mission: to get well.
Some of the
people who were once Fort Carson’s harshest critics say Graham
is approachable, a listener and a doer.
"I see
Gen. Graham as a leader who carries the weight of an awesome
responsibility, both from an operational responsibility and from
the standpoint of being human and maintaining his humanity. I
think he’s doing a great job," said Andrew Pogany, a
special investigator for the National Veterans Legal Services
Program, a nonprofit organization providing pro bono legal
services for veterans and active-duty troops.
Pogany said he
has met with the general several times to talk about individual
soldiers. After listening, Graham ensured that one soldier would
receive a higher quality of care and that others who were injured
did not deploy to Iraq.
In November
2007, after six weeks on the post, Graham announced a new Warrior
and Family Community Partnership program. He asked experts locally
and nationally to offer recommendations to Fort Carson on how to
provide comprehensive care for soldiers and families.
In November
2007, after six weeks on the post, Graham announced a new Warrior
and Family Community Partnership program. He asked experts locally
and nationally to offer recommendations to Fort Carson on how to
provide comprehensive care for soldiers and families.
One of his
more difficult duties is to speak at Welcome Home ceremonies for
soldiers returning from war. They are joyful events. Wives wave
"I love you" signs, and children run exuberantly into
open arms of their fathers.
The Grahams
believe the family was fortunate after Kevin’s death, that no
family member blamed another for not recognizing the depression
— a problem that fractures many families after a suicide.
"What was
so hard, when you have a child die by suicide, you feel like the
worst parents in the world. You feel like such a failure,"
Carol Graham said. "And then you have one that dies trying to
save his platoon, and then everybody’s like: ‘Oh, my God, you
raised this American hero.’ It’s almost like they’re
elevating the parents.
"They
were both really, really great sons. It wasn’t like we had one
bad son or one good son. They were both heroes."
