Enemy attack turns Vietnam veteran’s life into one of service

As Dave Gorman remembers it, a command-detonated enemy land mine explosion near his patrol killed three of his squad mates and severed the limbs of several others, including his own legs.

He had arrived in Vietnam only a couple of months earlier and had just linked up with his unit, the 173rd Airborne Brigade. An infantry patrol had found unexploded ordnance, and he was part of the combat engineer team sent to neutralize it.

The mine exploded as he stepped through a hedgerow of trees into an opening. That was Oct. 21, 1969. The monthslong process of being drafted into the Army, going through training, waiting for orders, deploying, acclimating, undergoing more training and finally making it to a unit was over as fast as the Dustoff helicopter that medically evacuated Gorman from the battlefield.

He was sent to the military hospital at Cam Ranh Air Base, Vietnam, then transferred to another facility outside of Tokyo before the long flight to one at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, near his family. It was a quick transition; by Thanksgiving, he was home and facing a new beginning.

Gorman spent much of his post-service recovery at the West Roxbury VA Medical Center near Boston. At the time, it was mostly a spinal cord injury hospital filled with paraplegic World War II and Korean War veterans, he said, with one ward for Vietnam vets—mostly amputees like himself.

At the time, the Veterans Administration was struggling to keep up with the rehabilitation needs of all the veterans.

“Back then, if we were able to get [physical therapy] twice a week, it was a lot,” Gorman said. “There was just so many guys with so few VA resources. Even in 1969 and ’70, they still were so unprepared for the number of veterans coming back; they hadn’t geared up for wartime patients.”

Gorman and the other veterans took matters into their own hands, forming a tight-knit group that would help them navigate a world unprepared to accommodate their disabilities.

“It all had to do with one guy helping another guy,” Gorman said. “And it was mostly the patients who had been there a while taking the guy who had just gotten there by the hand and saying, ‘This is how you do it.’”

They shared tips like how to climb steps with no legs and warned each other to stay on sidewalks and avoid grass with their rudimentary prostheses.

That display of veterans helping veterans foreshadowed the rest of Gorman’s life.

When he left the hospital, he was unsure of what was next. College wasn’t for him, his dream of being a high school football coach didn’t seem possible, and the unemployment office in his town had little more than the unappealing offers of shift work in a factory or overnight police dispatch a couple of towns over.

It was only while trying to get a letter from the VA for a disabled veteran license plate that he found his life’s calling in Providence, Rhode Island, thanks to a gruff World War II Marine veteran named Maurice “Frenchie” Pion, a benefits advocate with DAV.

The VA office was crowded the day Gorman went, with nowhere to sit in the waiting room. Looking for help, he saw a sign for veterans service organizations and followed it down the hallway. As he made his way, every service officer he passed was busy helping a veteran, except Pion.

Pion, who lost his arm during the Solomon Islands campaign in 1942, was part of the first class of the DAV National Service Officer program at American University in Washington, D.C., graduating in 1945. He looked up from his desk, briskly asking Gorman what he needed before disappearing.

Ten minutes later, Pion was back with the letter and a job offer.

“And I said, ‘Doing what?’” Gorman recalled. “‘Doing what I do,’ he said. I figured, well, how hard could it be?”

That chance encounter in 1970 led Gorman to become a benefits advocate working in DAV’s Boston office. His supervisor at the time was another Vietnam veteran, Art Wilson, who went on to become DAV’s national adjutant from 1994 to 2013.

Gorman was hooked after his very first case—helping a World War II veteran who had never filed a VA claim for his multiple sclerosis. The statute of limitations for service connection had long passed, but Gorman was able to find medical evidence that supported an appeal and got the veteran his earned benefits.

“It’s a pretty good feeling to have been able to help this one man,” Gorman said. “It became a passion after that one case to see who else we could help.”

From there, Gorman rose through the ranks of DAV, with stints on the DAV national appeals staff, in the service and legislative departments, and ultimately as the DAV Washington Headquarters executive director before retiring in 2011.

Like Frenchie did with him, Gorman used his tenure to raise the next generation of veterans advocate leaders in the organization, including DAV National Adjutant Barry Jesinoski, who was a national service officer apprentice in Seattle when he first met him.

Gorman, who was in town for a department convention, visited the service office so he could get to know each member of the staff. That meeting left a lasting impression on Jesinoski, who went on to work for Gorman in Washington, D.C., from 2001 to 2007 and again in 2011 when he succeeded Gorman as the DAV Washington Headquarters executive director.

“Without an inkling of proprietary nature, without a selfish bone in his body, he not only told me and explained to me things that he knew, but he brought me with him. I was his shadow in D.C.,” Jesinoski said. “He treated me as a professional and as an equal, as he always did.”

Randy Reese, the current executive director in Washington, spent nearly a decade working across from Gorman, learning by his example.

“He calmed my personality down,” Reese said. “He taught me to listen to people and to let them put it all out there. Sometimes they’ll talk themselves into the right answer. But you’ve got to hear them all the way out.”

It’s his calm personality and ability to work with both sides of the aisle that Reese said makes Gorman, to this day, one of the most respected people on Capitol Hill and within the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“He could really guide a lot of policy,” Reese said. “There was a time in Dave’s career when VA wouldn’t do their budget without Dave Gorman at the table. He knew more about the veterans health care budget than they did.”

DAV National Legislative Director Joy Ilem recalled, even when she was new to the organization, Gorman would always take time to talk through specific issues and about how he made decisions on complex issues.

“He always reminded me that it’s really pretty simple,” Ilem said. “If it’s good for veterans, we can support it. And if it’s going to benefit service-disabled veterans, it’s just a no-brainer.”

That simple approach and his ability as a master communicator was steeped in decades of experience, a deep understanding of veterans policy, careful analysis and an ever-present eye on the long game.

“Part of what made him that way was that he was always prepared,” Jesinoski said. “I’ve never seen him unprepared for a meeting. I’ve never seen him unprepared for a question when he walks into a room.”

“He knew what it took to get there, especially on the legislative front,” Ilem said. “You have to work for years sometimes to get something accomplished.”

Reese said examples of that include his roles in getting the Veterans Claims Assistance Act of 2000 signed into law and, perhaps his greatest legislative victory, establishing advanced appropriations for VA health care and VA benefits. He spent nearly eight years working to ensure that even if the government shuts down because of partisan battles, veterans will still be cared for.

“The majority of veterans care and benefits today are safeguarded due to Dave Gorman,” Reese said.

Gorman remains active in volunteer roles within DAV and is someone Jesinoski, Reese and Ilem said they know they can always call on.

“I’ve never heard him take any personal credit for anything,” Jesinoski said. “It’s all about the team. It’s about what DAV has done together.”

“I think Dave is the epitome of a mentor,” Reese said. “Just being around him, you would learn to be better at what we do as DAV, and you would learn to be better as a human.”