Wounds to Wisdom
Stories of resilience, grit, and triumph over trauma from Veterans and First responders.
Hosted by Sara Correl from "The Power of your Story."
A limited series from Security Halt Media.
Wounds to Wisdom
#27 Transforming Service to Healing: Zeke Vanderpool's Journey from Combat to Community Support
Zeke Vanderpool, a retired United States Army combat veteran and co-founder of Operation Angel Wing, shares his journey of healing and the importance of connection and camaraderie in the military. He emphasizes the challenges of transitioning back to civilian life and the need for support and understanding. Zeke encourages veterans and first responders who are struggling to reach out for help and find a safe space to open up. He also highlights the mission of Operation Angel Wing in providing healing and support for those affected by trauma.
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Chapters
00:00Introduction and Background of Zeke Vanderpool
02:08Enlisting in the Military: Family History and Motivation
03:53The Highlights of Zeke's Military Career
06:19The Power of Camaraderie and Connection in the Military
09:18The Grief of Transition and the Importance of Seeking Support
11:24Transitioning to Law Enforcement and Federal Agent Career
14:45Operation Angel Wing: Healing the Hidden Wounds
20:28Advice for Veterans and First Responders Struggling in Silence
24:49The Importance of Reaching Out for Help
27:18Closing Remarks and Appreciation
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Wounds to Wisdom: Healing Through Veteran and First Responder Narratives
"Wounds to Wisdom" is produced by Security Halt Media.
Welcome back to the Wounds, to Wisdom Healing Through Veteran First Responder Narratives, and I am your host, sarah Carell, today.
Speaker 2:I'm so excited to have Zeke Vanderpool with me today. He is one of the 29 authors that I'll be talking to, and this is a way, on this mini series, to get to know the authors that have really hit a tough time and trauma and have been able to navigate their way to healing and to thriving and have the courage to share their stories with others so that our protectors don't have to suffer in silence. And so, zeke, I'm so thrilled to have you. You know I'm such a fan of you and of Mary Millsaps and Operation Angel Wing and, just to let you know too, zeke is a retired United States Army combat veteran, a federal agent, and he is co-founder of Operation Angel Wing and he is an amazing, soulful musician that really bridges just a connection with our military, our veterans, really tells the story of what it's like to be. You know, just whatever's on his heart as a veteran, as a protector, just comes out so soulfully in his music. And so, zeke, I'm so thrilled to have you here, so welcome.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much and it's mutual. We're such big fans of yours and what you're doing with this project and after that, that intro there I'm afraid to say anything. I don't want to mess it up, because that was awesome. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Oh no, no, no worries on that end for sure. Well, I'll tell you what. Let's go back to finding out where you're from and what made you want to enlist in the military.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, okay, so I grew up as a young boy in East Kentucky in a coal mining town, hazard Kentucky. It was a pretty challenging place to grow up at times and it was full of well. There were some challenges, like I said. Well, we moved out of East Kentucky when I was 13, moved down to East Tennessee and I was exposed to a lot of just really amazing people at that time, many of those in the military and then my grandfather was a World War II veteran, had several uncles that fought and great uncles that were in Vietnam, north Korea and even World War II at one point. So I had a strong military history. But as a teenager it was just time for me to go and I wound up just heading for the Army and going to see the world and stand up for my country. I felt very strongly about that and then that road, as you know, took me down all kinds of paths. So that's what got me started. If that covers it, yeah that's great.
Speaker 2:So you had family history, and so you already had it on your radar, and so that seemed like the natural progression of your life as you got a little older, and so I would love to hear too, like when you look back on your military career, what is the part that you loved about it.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow. So there were so many things and I considered my military career a true blessing in my life for many reasons for the perspective, you know, and I have my three sons two of them are in the military now and I'm seeing the same thing happen with them the perspective, the stability and just the mindset that in today's day and time it's so hard to find. But even back then I needed the mentoring and had some amazing mentors. I was lucky enough to come in at a time where there were a lot of Vietnam vets still in the military and I was able to just learn from them. But still in the military, and I was able to just learn from them. But to your question, I look back.
Speaker 1:So I had an uncle that served in World War II, korea and Vietnam, all three. He was a sergeant major and the guy was unbelievable, right. He told me one time he said, of all the time I have been in danger which was considerable, he said I look at it, he goes and truly it was only a small percentage of it that I was truly, truly in danger, he goes, but it was all the other time and the relationships and the experience. He said that's the richest thing in my life and I can look back and almost echo those words.
Speaker 1:My time downrange with my brothers was challenging. It was brutal at times and it left me with some scars emotionally and physically ours emotionally and physically but it was also the most powerful, the most focused and some of the most meaningful time in my life. So you know, of all of it, my time downrange with my brothers would probably be the most, and the thing I miss about it now that I'm retired is that connection and that camaraderie and that sense of the tribe that you operated with and I'm just so blessed to have had that and to have walked alongside some of the most amazing people and warriors. It's incredible to me, the people I was blessed to be able to walk alongside.
Speaker 2:That really is the beautiful side of war, isn't it? Just that camaraderie. It's something that can be so horrible that people are engaged in, yet on this other side, is so human, like what it's about, just those deep connections, and which, moving forward, can cause such devastation when people transition.
Speaker 1:You read my mind. It is the blessing and the curse. I mean, when you step back out of that and you try to reintegrate and assimilate back into just society. You know that crisis with the whole time and all of a sudden they're not in your life anymore. I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1:When I came back from Afghanistan in 2003, I'd been there a year and it was a pretty sporty year, but I came back and I tried to re-assimilate into my civilian life. I was in a National Guard Special Forces application, so I came back and I tried to re-assimilate into being a police officer and a husband and a father and just a friend and it did not go well. I mean, I, I, I sucked at it for a while. I was really, really struggling and I couldn't even articulate why, knowing what I know now. Um, yeah, it was a transition that was kicking my butt and, um, that, the disconnection from the people that I knew and trusted, uh, that had that common experience with me and they understood, like my demons that I brought back.
Speaker 1:But it's not fair to anybody around you because, just because they don't have that perspective, they're looking for the guy that left and it can create just a really chaotic and turbulent existence where you didn't even see that coming. You know, and now you've got I got my wife, who's been back here for a year basically being a single mother, and now she's got to try to figure out how to give some of that ground back. And and it's just, it's really hard, and I think the statistics are something like 95, 96% of people in America don't even know someone in the military. They don't even don't even know someone in the military. They don't even. They have no idea at all what we're talking about right here, and so that just makes it that much more of a foreign land that you're stepping back into and trying to regain your foothold. So it is a double-edged sword in many, many ways, and a lot of people Just don't survive navigating it, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:I'm so glad that you brought that up because I think that's one of the things that absolutely blindsided me when it was actually a Green Beret, a retired Green Beret, who shared a story with me and I was like what? I was so detached from the cost of war and I thought about that. I thought, oh my gosh, these young men and women are going in and they're being trained for war and then they get out with no reboot. So as a mother of four sons, I'm like that doesn't sit well and how come? I don't know about this. And it opened up this whole new world, like I can't not do something. I, you know. And that's why I just got connected more with people who wanted to protect our protectors, like this is the way that we can serve by serving our protectors. And I've just, I've learned so much, and it was by one story.
Speaker 2:One guy shared his story with me and again, that's how I felt connected would be so much different than reading a textbook. You know, it was somebody just sharing their story. And that's what you and I have in common. We have, we believe in the connecting and the healing through storytelling, although you have a lot of training in that with Operation Angel Wing, which is amazing, and then. But and I'm curious too so I hear a lot about the grief that that people so many times don't talk about, the grief of transition, the grief of losing the tribe, the grief that just kind of stays in there and people don't know what to do or how to navigate that along with you know, maybe post traumatic stress or traumatic brain injury in your arena. And then you said that you were going. You went into being a law enforcement officer and federal agent. What was that like for you? What was that career? Did you end up integrating okay in that, or how?
Speaker 1:did that impact you? I did, and so it wasn't easy at first. But the truth is we're talking about servant hearts. We're talking about servant hearts, and whether it is your service members that protect our nation overseas, whether it is your law enforcement officers or your firefighters or your EMTs, it is the servant heart that answers that call. It's our protectors and it's our healers. You know, it's our protectors and it's our. It's our, our healers.
Speaker 1:And so that mindset that what it takes to truly enter that field for the right reasons and do good work in that field and keep your head on straight in that field is is very common across all of those professions, and so it was a natural fit for me, even though I was an ag science major. It's a whole other story. But I was going to farm with my grandfather. I grew up farming with my grandfather and when I was a junior in college he had got dementia really bad and by the time I graduated he didn't even. I was the last person that he recognized. So I finished my degree and then those dreams kind of went by the wayside. But I gravitated towards law enforcement for a couple of different reasons and I found a really good fit initially in law enforcement for me, because I was a rural county out in Union County, tennessee.
Speaker 1:But you're a problem solver and what I mean by that is if someone's struggling in the community for whatever reason, you get to be the first one to respond to that and to solve the problem whatever it is. And it's obviously a full gamut of problems that you come across. But I really, I really dug that. But my, my connection to the military and to the larger piece of protection of our society, my belief in what we stand for as a country and our fundamentals and you know, stand for as a country and our fundamentals, and you know these things that are tossed about today and argued over and misinterpreted, and the truth is it's the most beautiful human project in the history of humankind, right here in this country, and I am, like, deeply dedicated to protecting that in whatever, whether it's the citizens in my own County or going against the enemy on the other side of the planet. I just kind of intrinsically gravitated towards that and it took me. It took me on quite a ride, you know so, but I'm not, I'm thankful for it, I am.
Speaker 2:It's kind of amazing. Your, your life journey is amazing, like here. You had this intense career in special forces and then you get into law enforcement, federal agents, so that's intense also. And then you're in Operation Angel Wing with another huge mission of healing the hidden wounds, and I mean it's like this whole protective package.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that there were like pivotal moments in my life that just steered me on to that. So I mean, as a person of faith, I think it was like the path that I was meant to walk, and I don't doubt that for a second. I really don't, even through the hard stuff, so I really didn't think as much about the follow-on piece. While I was in, especially during the deployments, we were just trying to navigate it, survive it and do the best we could with it. So I found myself at Walter Reed Army Hospital in 2011, spring of 2011, beside the hospital bed of one of my dearest friends. His name is James, and James was an 18 Delta medic, special forces. We had just spent a year in Iraq together and he had gone back to Afghanistan because they were short on medics. That's just James. He got right back on the bird after a year in Iraq and went straight back to Afghanistan and within about three months three and a half months he got injured very badly in a blast. And so here we were at Walter Reed. This was 2011.
Speaker 1:I know that I'm coming up on retirement. I mean, I'm busted up emotionally and physically. My family wasn't doing well. We go back to that discussion. You know, I knew they needed me. 23 years was enough, but I wasn't ready to quit the fight. 23 years was enough, but I wasn't ready to quit the fight. And I sent everybody home one night to get some rest and I just stood by his bed all night and he would awaken, like in that chaotic darkness of that emergency ward room in the night, with the beeps and the blips and the darkness. His eyes would open and they would scan the room until he landed on mine and I would nod and he would nod back and then he would slip back into that darkness, that drug-induced darkness, and I would just stand by and wait on the next one. But it was those moments in between. I knew how important those connections were for him and they were for me too, so I would just stand and wait. But I started, my mind started to race back over the years and the deployments and Afghanistan and Iraq, and then it just started really. I started focusing in on the ones that didn't make it back and the collateral damage.
Speaker 1:Now that I was able to kind of look forward to the next thing, I started really assimilating, you know, the families that I had stood beside as they received that flag and the condolences and the sons and the daughters, and just like the wreckage, the wreckage that happens on the other side of the battlefield behind closed doors when the guns are silent. And I started really focusing on that and I bring up that night because it really was like a pivotal moment. I knew in that moment that I had to reconnect to maybe a little different purpose. In that moment I had to reimagine where I was going from here. I knew that I had to figure out how to have an impact for my brothers and sisters and their families in the wake of that kind of damage. I didn't know how I was going to do it, I just knew that, okay, I'm going to put energy in that direction. So I go back to divine intervention.
Speaker 1:And it wasn't long after that that I ran across Mary and learned about her incredible ability to heal, and she happened to had a business in Knoxville and we all got to know each other and we literally had the same mission statement in mind. But I noticed in her this ability to bring people through trauma and so I kind of zeroed in on that and the rest is history. Of course, we took you know my music and we developed a lot of tools and approaches and techniques that are extremely effective. I mean, it amazes me when I look at the success rates, or lack of in other organizations and other attempts, versus where we're at. When somebody comes into our purview and they lean in with us, we get them through it like every time, and it's just. It's a really powerful thing. And so I mean I'm not, it's nothing special about me, sarah. I've been blessed enough to be again in the presence of some pretty amazing people and able to lean in and play a part in something big, and so that's what's good about this for me.
Speaker 2:Well, it is wonderful. Just you know the hearts I mean, obviously you and Mary have attracted such great people. Your heart is just so focused on wanting to help and serve and heal, no matter what capacity. And this Operation Angel Wing, like you said, is just helping our veterans and first responders and their families just heal from trauma in so many great ways and Zeke. If somebody is listening right now and they are a veteran or first responder and they're suffering in silence and they're really struggling, what would you suggest to them?
Speaker 1:You know there's so many canned responses that people can throw at that and I see them all the time. But as someone who was in those shoes at one point, like just really struggling, I mean at one point I know I began to ask myself, you know, do I really want to be here? And it's an incredible hurt. You touched on a while ago a lot of like the grief and the trauma that follows Survivors. Guilt almost sounds like an oxymoron. Why would you feel guilty about surviving? But the thing is it's extremely real and that's one of the things that caused me to kind of get in the hole was really struggling because I was still here and so many people that I love weren't. In fact, I think you've heard my song God's Grace. It was kind of built around that as I emerged from that Love, that song, song God's Grace, it was kind of built around that as I emerged from that Love that song.
Speaker 1:But in those moments I think about what really worked for me and you know honestly, it was relevant finding a safe space, a psychologically safe space, to be able to open up and feel safe, Right. So what I would say is reach to someone that you know and trust and be honest with it. The worst thing you can do is not do anything at all and just sit there and let this thing snowball on you, because it is a path of destruction. I mean, if you literally descend through like like layers that just take you down, and when you do that, your perspective goes with it and your behavior goes with it and you just build this environment around you that enables all of this bad behavior and all of this descent into darkness. But what I would say is this you can write that shift. You can write that shift. Anybody can do it if they're willing to do the work. So reach to someone you know and trust, whether it is clergy, a best friend, another veteran. Reach to someone and by all means, if you want to reach to us at Operation Angel Wing, that's what you'll find. You're going to find people who have walked the walk through the valley and have literally pulled their self through the trauma that they experienced. My story is bad enough. Mary's story is unbelievable. It's just incredible. But we endured and overcame that and we found a level of that. We found a reality on the other side of it that we now know, we know exists and we can literally walk you to that, through that and to it and beyond.
Speaker 1:But it takes being willing to be honest and to be vulnerable. And I'm going to say this If you are too prideful in this moment to do that and if you're caught up in the stigma that to reach out is weakness, if you're caught up in the, if you're just caught up in the shit that goes along with this, because it's some pretty heavy duty stuff. Right, Think of it this way. Take a stand for your family and the people that love you, because it takes more guts to do that than it does to just hold up and hide away. So that's what courage looks like. Take that stand for the people around you who love you and who are also suffering and want to see you get through that. So if you'll think of it that way, it's easier to make a move, Because the worst thing you can do is nothing at all.
Speaker 1:So I love your question in that. Ok, and that's why I'm going at it from just like this realistic angle. Now there's plenty of canned responses. Call the hotline, Call this, Call that. Get a hold of somebody you trust and talk to them. And if you don't have somebody to trust, call us. But we're going to, we're going to help you figure it out. So I guess that would be my response Kind of long-winded, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:No, no, I love that. I love everything you share and I appreciate that. Thank you very much, and I love what you said too. I just want to reiterate it Be willing, be willing to be vulnerable with somebody you trust. And if you're not even willing to do it for yourself, think about your loved ones around you that love you. They are better off with you, not without you. Right? When people take their lives sadly, it's just transmitting your pain on to everybody else.
Speaker 1:It's brutal. A buddy of mine called me today and he said Zeke, I just need a little help navigating this. One of his friends committed suicide on Saturday and the guy left his wife and four daughters from ages four to 22 behind. And we look at this so often and get angry and really, really, you know, irritated at the person. What I want to say, that something that I have learned and has been a bit of a shift for me in that, is that you know, when somebody gets to that point on that path of destruction that I was just talking about, where they are so dark that all they want is for it not to hurt like this, all they want and they feel like there are no options out there. Maybe they tried a bunch of different things that failed, maybe they went to the VA and came up empty. I don't know. There's plenty of that out there. But when they get to that point, all they want to do is make it stop.
Speaker 1:Somebody asked me to write a song about it, and it took me two years to write the damn song because I just couldn't wrap my brain around this, right? But what I will say is there are answers. I don't care how bad it is. I promise you there is a way through. You just have to reach for help. To not reach is the worst thing that you can do, not just for you, but for the people that you love, and you need to really think about that, because is that what you want to be remembered for A person who just took their own life, and the aftermath in that is damn near unbearable for the people that love you. So let's just stop right there. Let's just stop it and go okay, I'm not going to do that. Period. That's not an option for me, right? Okay, what is well? We just talked about it. That's, and that's when you got to look at this and go into it and go okay, I'm going to reach out.
Speaker 2:I love that. That is just such great information I am. I would even add something else to the person who is suffering in silence right now Listen to Zeke's music.
Speaker 2:Get connected to the soul from that and if you don't have a friend that you can talk to again, reach out to Operation Angel Wing and you know you've got people like Zeke and Mary who have such big hearts and who really understand and who have so many success stories of helping people get through trauma. And Zeke, I just appreciate you so much. I really do Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you, sarah and it's so mutual. I love what you're doing. You know, here's the thing when you were talking a while ago about how you know it was an eye opener for you to have that conversation with that veteran, and then you were like, wait a minute, I got to do something. You did the thing that most people won't do. You did something about it. You created a community around this. You're you're collecting stories and creating a book of these stories. So I want to thank you for this project, for allowing us to be a part of it, and for your heart, the way you lean into this. We need more of that. We really truly do.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, zeke. It's definitely a pleasure to partner with you all, and thank you so much for being here today. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me, sarah. Thank you, thank you.
