About a month ago, Army veteran Patrick Welsh got a tattoo on his arm: 22 periods and a semicolon.
The message isn’t a grammatical one.
An estimated 22 military vets kill themselves each day and as much as he wanted to, he didn’t. Welsh’s symbol is a semicolon because, as The Semicolon Movement says, the punctuation is used when a sentence could’ve ended, but didn’t.
In a show of empathy for struggling vets, Welsh on Monday volunteered with Veterans Helping Hand at the future home of an emergency shelter for homeless vets at 412 W. King St. in York City.
Help wanted: The group is working with York’s Helping Hand for the Homeless to turn the latter’s former building into a center where vets can sleep, get mail, eat, shower and do laundry, said Sandie Walker, spokeswoman for Veterans Helping Hand.
The center will also connect vets with resources and services that are available to them, she said.
On Monday and Tuesday, about 40 volunteers are helping to clean and gut the building and treat it for mold caused by water damage from a roof beyond repair, Walker said. About half of the volunteers are veterans, she said.
But the project needs more manpower, including volunteer plumbers and electricians, as well as donations, she said. The goal amount to replace the roof is $30,000, and the group has raised $16,000, Walker said.
She said she believes the project can be complete by late spring or early summer.
Coming home: When Welsh transitioned from fighting in Iraq to living in York County, it was “horrible,” he said. The Army trains you for combat, he said, but it doesn’t prepare you for life after war.
Welsh, 31, of New Salem has struggled with thoughts of suicide and said it’s been hard to hold a job. Now he has a service dog that helps him with his post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, he said.
“It’s been really, really rough. … Ten years later, I’m starting to get the help I need,” Welsh said.
Bill Kohler, 46, isolated himself for a year after he was wounded and returned to York from Iraq in 2006, he said.
Kohler, who owns Never Forgotten BBQ in Springettsbury Township, said the restaurant is a place where the community can gather and create change. As a country, “we’ve lost something about who we are to each other,” the Springettsbury Township man said.
“And to see this right here?” he said, referring to the new shelter for vets. “This is what it’s supposed to be.”
Big need: Pennsylvania has the fourth-largest concentration of vets in the U.S., with about 940,000, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
That means there are likely tens of thousands of them in York County, said Gordon Weith, a volunteer who served in the Army for 25 years.
Although many of them might need help, some don’t like to ask for it, he said.
“People are doing a good job,” said Weith, 65. “It’s just a big need.”
