On Wednesday 11/19/14 we were luckily enough to interview Dan Lohaus the director, producer, and cinematographer of the movie “When I Came Home” The movie won the Tribeca Film award Best New York Documentary.
In his movie it showed a many different homeless veterans and what happened to them. You realized from the movie and what he told us in his interview that most of these people were good people, but struggled because of their traumatic experience during war. You see many Vietnam Veterans who were strongly disliked by people who were against the war. You realize how tough it was for them and how they wanted help, but now they want better treatment for the new veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. We also learned about Herold one of the first Iraq veterans coming home. He lived in his car with one his child and he was struggling with his wife and was a good guy, but he couldn’t work because of an extreme case of PTSD.
His life showed the struggling of many veterans coming home. Many of them didn’t want to go into certain shelters because the bad living conditions in the ones near where they live. In Herold’s case he didn’t want his son to go through the shelter, but because they live on the streets or in a car not the shelter he can’t get the benefits and he can’t even get a job because of his PTSD. For many Veterans small tasks become really aggravating for them and they got some of these problems from the war. For example, when Herold was running out of money and pills for his anger issues he got really mad and had a tough time talking with people and getting help. Herold was a good person. He spoke for veterans and trying to get them better rights, but because he had anger issue people didn’t really want to help him. The director, Dan Lohaus talked about getting a house for a struggling veteran is important, but they still need other help. That won’t make the problems go away, but he or she needs a good community to help them.
We also learned from the director that no one person or group has the same issue and it is not just one person’s fault or a group’s. For many people entered the military to get out of their financial issues or fight for our country, but when the Veterans come home they are almost forgotten about until a news story about them or Veterans and Memorial Day. Also, the veterans coming back from the war who had financial issues usually come back in worst situations and now they have also gone through a traumatic experience. For example, when the women fighting for our country are coming back from Iraq there was not a lot of help for them because the military was predominately male and there were not a lot of other women in the United States who had a similar experience.
Dan Lohaus helped us in many ways. For example, he has given us ideas for our Teach In, and we learned a lot about how tough veterans lives are is after war and he gave us many different connection to use in the future.
