Patrick Curran, an award-winning industrial film maker for the Coca-Cola Company, earned master’s degrees in English literature and Organizational Design. After serving four years in the US Navy as an Explosive Ordnance Diver including one year as a Team Leader in Vietnam, Pat joined The Coca-Cola Company as an internal consultant working in the US and Northern Europe. After ten years with Coca-Cola, he became a partner with Keilty, Goldsmith and Boone (KGB) an organization change consultancy in La Jolla, CA. Ten years later, he launched his own firm, the Curran Consulting Group, and continued working internationally for ten more years.
Pat’s first book based on consulting in twenty-one countries was an organizational change textbook titled: COBRA: The X Factor in Strategy Execution. The COBRA framework has been implemented widely in the International Beverage Industry. After retiring, he wrote a second book, a Cold War novel on the hazards of uranium mining on the Colorado Plateau, titled: Acid Reign and the Rise of Eco-Outlaws. Both books are available on Amazon. His second historical novel entitled: Alta’s Curse, was published in 2016. Pat and his wife Joan purchased a home in Steamboat Spring in 2012. When in town, Pat is a regular at the Steamboat Writing Group.
Pat is currently writing a memoir of his experiences during the Vietnam War.
Disarming Encounters, a Vietnam War Memoir, By Patrick Curran
The book is dedicated to Vietnam Veterans who were ridiculed by peace protests when they returned home.
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“Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is defined as having flashbacks, upsetting memories, and anxiety following a traumatic event. It was first officially recognized as a mental health condition in 1980, five years after the end of the Vietnam War. For hundreds of years, these symptoms have been described under different names by soldiers from many wars.” *1
“Many Vietnam veterans suffered an especially difficult transition back into civilian life due to the widespread protests against the war. Even now, when searching “Why are Vietnam Veterans …” in Google, the first few words that pop up to complete the sentence are “homeless,” “crazy,” and “hated.”*2
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So, how many American servicemen have committed suicide since the Vietnam War ended?
“On the basis of projections of the suicide rates observed in the CDC and Wisconsin studies to the entire Vietnam veteran population, we suggest that 8,000 to 9,000 Vietnam veterans committed suicide between their discharges and the early 1980s.”*3
More U.S. veterans have committed suicide between 2008 and 2017 than the number of U.S. soldiers that died during the entire Vietnam War. According to the defense news site Military.com, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) shared these alarming rates in a September 2019 report…the U.S. suffered around 58,000 fatalities over the course of the Vietnam War, which lasted from 1955 to 1975. This number has now been eclipsed by the more than 60,000 U.S. veteran suicides in a recent span of just 10 years…More than 6,000 veterans committed suicide every year during that timeframe, despite the fact that the total number of veterans declined by 18 percent.”*38
“When soldiers return home from war, they may feel that the worst is over. They made it back alive and are now free from the fear of dying in combat…the reality, however, is much more complicated and alarming: More U.S. veterans have committed suicide between 2008 and 2017 than the number of U.S. soldiers that died during the entire Vietnam War.
Footnotes:
- P.T.S.D.What is Posttraumatic Stress Disorder:https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/ptsd/what-is-ptsd
- https://www.veterans.nd.gov/news/why-are-so-many-older-veterans-committing-suicide
- I.B.I.D. https://www.veterans.nd.gov/news/why-are-so-many-older-veterans-committing-suicide
- I.B.I.D, https://www.veterans.nd.gov/news/why-are-so-many-older-veterans-committing-suicide