Help for veterans only other veterans can provide

Robert Johnson joined the Marines to keep from being killed. He watched his best friend get shot to death in their Baton Rouge, La., neighborhood, and Johnson’s family asked him to leave for his own safety. Eight years later, the Marines were his family. They took care of each other.

When Johnson came home, he found a new fight: becoming a productive civilian.

In a hearing on Thursday, the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business discussed plans to extend more business loans to veterans like Johnson. Some of the witnesses praised U.S. business initiatives but said the government must acknowledge most veterans get better help from each other.

“We feel like we don’t belong out here,” witness and veteran Albert Tansey said. “Veterans helping each other, helped boost the morale.”

The Small Business Administration (SBA), a federal agency launched in 1953, offers micro-loans to soldiers coming out of the service hoping to rebuild their lives.

Tansey said military-trained businessmen make good entrepreneurs: “Veterans already have the package. They just need to open it up.”

Katrina Nowosielski left the Marines in 2006 and decided to start a business with her husband, also an ex-Marine, building hurricane shutters. But banks denied her loan requests multiple times. The SBA provided her with a line of credit, schooling, and a business strategy.

Help is there, she said, when a veteran is ready to take it. But it could take a while for a soldier to come to the point where they “want it and want to go for it,” she added.

And micro-loans are only part of the transition process. “You deal with people three ways: emotionally, spiritually and bodily,” Johnson said.

Peer-mentoring can help veterans with some of the emotional issues they might bring out of service, said Tansey, who is president of an independent group that helps veterans establish and run small businesses. He credits much of their success to groups in which they discuss and teach each other how to run their businesses.

When a veteran comes out of the service, it’s like a “green-horn coming out of high-school,” Tansey said.

When Johnson left the Marines, he came back to a world he struggled to understand. He missed the sense of belonging and the camaraderie that came with being in the Marines.

“When you get out, you still want that,” he said. “If you have a hard time or stuff, what’s going to keep you from getting weeds and drugs?”

But, the year Johnson came back to Baton Rouge, he found what he needed for a successful transition: three fellow veterans who befriended him. Taking care of him was part of their training. “You never leave a brother or sister behind,” he said. They took him home to play games, and to church for potlucks and programs.

“Not every veteran is going to go to a government agency and ask for a help,” Johnson said, but, “Every veteran wants to live better.”