On Tuesday January 2, my group and I had the pleasure of interviewing Patricia McCormick via Skype, the award winning author of Purple Heart, and other books such as, Cut, Never Fall Down, I am Malala, Sold My Brother’s Keeper and many others. We were able to get in touch with Mrs. McCormick through Jennifer Hubert-Swan, a close friend of hers that set it up for us. Going into it, I personally was unsure. I was slightly nervous of the fact that I felt we hadn’t learned enough about our topic and gone to enough places. However, Mrs. McCormick opened our eyes to a whole other side of our topic.
We had mainly been focusing on the PTSD factor of veteran homelessness, but Mrs. McCormick made us look at the support they were receiving. At some point in our interview, she told us that her husband had been a veteran. We asked what it was like for him adjusting back into society, and she replied the main reason he didn’t have such a hard time adjusting is because he came back to a state that supported their vets greatly. I personally had never thought about how much of a difference it makes if you live in one state or another. Some states are more open and supportive, while others may not. This could be why a huge amount of veteran homelessness happens in New York and California. This is just one thing Mrs. McCormick taught us and made us really think about and open our eyes to.
Another thing she taught us was about Traumatic Head Injury, and how sometimes, PTSD is too general. We had been using PTSD as just a term to describe someone that had been through trauma. However, it gets more specific than that and Mrs. McCormick showed us that. I asked her “How do these veterans, some of which aren’t even on the front line, get these types of traumas and deadly experiences?” Mrs. McCormick told us about IEDs (Improvised Explosion Device), and how they could be left astray and really attack anyone passing over it. In her book Purple Heart, Sergeant Matt Duffy suffered an injury like this that ended up blocking his memory. This showed us how PTSD goes past just trauma, it also goes into the lingering physical affects.
Overall, I am so happy we got to talk to Mrs. McCormick. She is an amazing social justice activist in general and we are so lucky we got to interview her and get a little more perspective on our topic.
