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By STEVE BROOKS
At 57, Michael Cruse looks somewhat like a mountain man. Seated in a wheelchair thanks to a broken ankle he suffered the previous summer, his broad frame hints that if he were to stand up, he’d be well over 6 feet tall. The top of his grayish mane is cropped tight, but his beard, maybe a week short of bushy, extends from ear to ear and down his neck. Exchange his tie-dyed shirt and blue jeans for buffalo skins and longer hair, and he would be Grizzly Adams. Eight years ago, he was living such a life.
Holed up in the mountains of Alma, Ark., Cruse rarely ventured out of his home. Appointments at the Fayetteville VA Medical Center were the only times he braved the outside world. He entered the Navy in 1965 and came out two years later with post-traumatic stress disorder, a seizure disorder, nerve deterioration related to Agent Orange exposure, and major leg, back and neck impairments that put him on the operating table. Day-to-day activities like talking to strangers became a battle for Cruse, who broke out in cold sweats, trembled and heard ringing in his ears at times of external stress. Avoiding the outside world seemed easier.
In 1998, at the urging of Leta, his wife of 31 years, Cruse began participating in VA’s crafts program, painting porcelain china. Two years later, Leta entered a piece of her husband’s work in a contest at the Fayetteville VA Medical Center. Michael didn’t find out until VA called to notify him that he’d won the competition and invited him to the 2000 National Veterans Creative Arts Festival in Washington.
Six years later, in Rapid City, S.D., Cruse made his seventh appearance at the event. The biggest difference between his first festival and the 2006 gathering is that during the 2000 festival he hid in his room the first three days to avoid contact with strangers. But as the years passed, he began attending the festival’s mandatory events. He began to warm to the idea of being around strangers – and to the fact that as a veteran he is not alone in his battle with PTSD.
“At first, it was terrible to come to these and be around other people, but I saw other veterans who were just like me,” he says. “It’s probably a terrible thing to say, but it makes me feel good that I’m not the only one like this.”
Success at the festival has come often for Cruse in the past few years. His 2005 winning entry appeared on the festival’s 2006 flyer. He won a gold medal in glazed ceramics for his vase “Hummingbird Hollow,” a piece whose detail and color would stand up to review in any professional gallery.
Even so, for Cruse the festival is not about winning titles or glory. “This is magic medicine right here,” he says, motioning to the other artists in the room. “I’ve been very fortunate here. I’ve won six times, but it’s not about winning. It’s about meeting these people. It’s about sharing with them. I used to not be able to be around anybody. Now these people are my friends.”
Cruse is a member of American Legion Post 31 in Fort Smith, Ark., and Leta belongs to the American Legion Auxiliary. The Auxiliary teams up with VA and the group Help Hospitalized Veterans to put on the National Veterans Creative Arts Festival. This year’s event opens later this month in St. Louis.
“Now we look for people we’ve met at previous festivals,” Leta says. “You become a family. This has changed (Michael). It’s helped him heal.”
Therapeutic Arts. The National Veterans Creative Arts Festival has been going on since 1989 and has five artistic divisions: music, drama, dance, creative writing and visual arts. Participants are VA patients who take part in the creative arts through the system’s recreation therapy programs. More than 2,800 veterans at 104 VA medical facilities entered the competition last year, and 130 medal-winning veterans made their way to Rapid City for a week of camaraderie, classes, rehearsals, and a final art exhibition and stage show at the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center Theater.
The annual competition recognizes the progress and recovery made possible through VA’s recreation therapy programs, and raises the visibility of the creative achievements of U.S. veterans after disease, disability or life crisis.
“All of this gives rise to veterans suffering physical and mental disabilities and helps them realize they still have so much to contribute,” explained VA Secretary R. James Nicholson, who attended last year’s event. “It starts a new spark of interest and endeavors in their lives and is a wonderful therapeutic exercise for veterans in this country.”
Still Able. A deteriorating optic nerve took 61 year-old Robert Jackson’s eyesight, and for a period of time, it took some of his drive, too. A former Air Force police officer who spent 22 years in the service, Jackson’s life suddenly changed.
“When I lost my sight in 1987, I kind of started feeling sorry for myself,” Jackson says. A lot of the things I used to do – I used to love playing sports – I couldn’t do them anymore. That’s hard to deal with.”
He occasionally holds onto a companion’s arm – usually his wife, Rebecca – when he walks. He wears dark glasses indoors. But those are the only obvious indications of the man’s lost eyesight. When he’s singing and dancing onstage, as he and fellow members of The Blind Beat Dancers have done for nearly a decade, it’s all forgotten.
Jackson’s deep voice belts out a freestyle rap – a tribute to Rapid City, in this instance – while he and fellow Blind Beat members George Hicks and Walter Pasciak dance, in step, to the background music. Jackson has no problem hamming it up, turning his back to the audience and giving a shake or two of his posterior. The crowd eats it up.
“I just love this – we’re like a family,” he says, motioning to other entertainers in the hallway. “I’ve got my immediate family, and then I’ve got my Creative Arts (Festival) family. You look forward to coming back every year and meeting back up with them.”
A visual impairment services team at the Baltimore VA Medical Center connected Jackson with Blind Beat Dancers. Rapid City was his seventh festival.
“I try to tell other veterans that they might be disabled, but they’re not unable,” he says. “You can still do things. I’m proof of that.”
Piano Man. John Bigham is at home on a stage, though not necessarily while singing. The 36-year-old U.S. Army veteran prefers to be sitting, his hands working their magic on the keys of a piano. But he also joins dozens of other veterans as part of a chorus, rehearsing for the festival’s final show.
“I’m just not really big on the chorus part of this,” says Bigham, a Rosemont, Pa., resident and patient at the Perry Point VA Medical Center in Maryland. “Everything else about this is really great, but I’m just not sure about the singing.”
Piano playing, as well as military service, runs in the Bigham family blood. John’s father, Eddie Bigham, is a World War II Army veteran who toured Africa as entertainer Martha Raye’s keyboard player in 1942 and toured with Tommy Dorsey after the war ended. Music always was always part of John’s life, and he’s been performing seriously for 16 years. The 2006 festival was his first appearance, after a Perry Point VA music therapist suggested he enter the local competition.
During the festival’s final show, Bigham delivered a smoking John Coltrane version of “My Favorite Things.”
“I’ve gotten a chance to meet some great people, seen some great art and heard some great music,” Bigham says. “I’ve also gotten an understanding of how much the Creative Arts Festival has to offer veterans. I think everyone here has a real understanding of what it feels like to be a veteran who’s dealing with something, either physically or emotionally. It’s a great place to heal.”
The Sioux Valley. Darkness fills the auditorium in the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center. As eyes adjust, a mist moves across the stage. A figure in a wheelchair is silhouetted against a screen. Children appear at the figure’s feet.
The music of a flute can be heard coming from the left side of the stage – an eerie, even haunting tune. Entering, stage left, is Albert Gray Eagle, decked out in a feather headdress, a dramatic opening to the stage performance of the festival. After the flute solo – played on an instrument carved by Gray Eagle himself – Paul Boruff joins in on guitar, complementing Gray Eagle’s gentle tones. Boruff begins to softly sing the words of Frank Scout, another festival participant who can no longer sing.
A Korean War Marine Corps veteran and Purple Heart recipient, Scout wrote the song “Sioux Valley” as a tribute to his Lakota heritage. Boruff and Gray Eagle agreed to sing Scout’s song to open the final stage show. As for Scout, a stroke has made it difficult for him to convey his emotions through words, but his eyes have no such trouble when asked what it feels like to hear a song he wrote performed by others at the festival.
“Participating in the arts makes me feel and think better,” Scout says. “It is a way for me to express my feelings and leave something I’ve made for others. I’m thankful they were able to express my words for me.”
Gray Eagle didn’t hesitate to volunteer. “When I learned who (Scout) was, I felt it was a great honor to help him express himself,” he says. “I knew Paul, and I knew the type of entertainer he was, and we were both very enticed to do this. And it’s something I’m really glad I decided to do.”
Gray Eagle suffered through spinal injuries resulting from his service in Vietnam from 1973 to 1976. He’s also developed diabetes. The Creative Arts Festival, which he’s attended four times, is one of the ways Gray Eagle deals with his conditions.
“Being here is like being invigorated,” the veteran says. “I know I’ll eventually be in a wheelchair. I am going to enjoy life as much as I can before that happens, and this is one way I do that.
“The brotherhood is what brings me back. It’s good to see familiar faces every year, and it’s good to get to know the new faces. And to see the talent is really awesome. We’re all connected by being veterans, by being human beings and Americans.”
Steve Brooks is senior editor of The American Legion Magazine.
