Fifty workers in the Mercer County Division of Public Health will take the training as part of a bigger program being led by Post 109 in Rutherford, N.J.
After retiring as a sergeant in the New York Police Department, New Jersey Legionnaire Keith Whiteside took a job as a Federal Coordination Center Coordinator for New Jersey for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. In that role, he’s tasked with helping relocate VA patients to a new medical facility during a natural disaster or other emergency.
In that role, Whiteside came up with the concept of getting Legionnaires to volunteer to assist with those efforts. He shared the idea with Past New Jersey Department Vice Commander Jack Dunn and then Department Commander Dan Channel, who gave the plan his blessing.
That turned into Team 250, named in part to celebrate the upcoming 250th birthday of the United States. But when Whiteside took the idea to his community, he got an unexpected bonus: 50 local health-care workers now will take The American Legion’s Be the One suicide prevention training.
“Part of my job is to coordinate federal patient movement. You take stable patients from a disaster area and move them to a non-disaster area and bring them to hospitals,” said Whiteside, commander of American Legion Post 109 in Rutherford. “In order to do that, I need a team of volunteers that help run some of the incident command. What I want to do through The American Legion of New Jersey is to recruit veterans to help with that mission. It hits just about every pillar that we have.
“And in addition to the training that we’re doing for those positions that are volunteer-filled, I wanted to make sure that everyone had Be the One training. They’re going to be dealing with people that come off a plane from a disaster area, so they need to be able to have that recognition and those tools to recognize someone who might be in crisis. Coming from a disaster area, they’re all going to be traumatized in some way or another, whether they’re veterans, whether they’re civilians, whatever the case may be. That’s why Be the One is so important to go along with their other training.”
Whiteside, who serves as the Bergen County American Legion Membership chairman, said veterans are a perfect fit to assist with the effort. “Our veterans not only have military experience,” he said. “A lot of them did their next careers in first response and first receivers. A lot of the knowledge is already there. It’s not a heavy lift. It just seemed like a good idea.”
Whiteside also sought volunteers from community agencies and presented the concept during a meeting that included a representative from the Mercer County Division of Public Health's Local Information Network Communication System Agency, which prepares for public health emergencies such as natural disasters, acts of terrorism, and disease outbreaks.
That’s when Mercer County Health Officer Kristin Reed told Whiteside her agency wanted to be a part of Be the One. “She said, ‘I think this is fantastic, and I’m very happy about,’” Whiteside said. “I’m just trying to push that everybody that goes through this gets that training, so we’re all on the same page. It makes a better whole community concept of giving the care.”
Whiteside himself has struggled with his mental health, having been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. “Being a veteran and coming back and trying to get help for PTSD in 2008, 2009, was kind of difficult. I got the help I needed from the VA, but I got a lot of pushback from (the Compensation and Pension exam),” he said. “It made me feel trivialized, and it made me feel unimportant. But that eventually got worked out.”
That’s why he now promotes Be the One training.
“Not having another veteran have to go through that is the main thing,” he said. “So many times as veterans, our personality does not allow us to go out and seek help or seek help from our friends and family. So sometimes, we’ll seek help from a stranger. It could be the barkeep. It could be a priest. It could just be the person sitting next to you at an airport, which did happen to me.
“You may have done this training for a veteran you know, but it’s a veteran you didn’t know that you might need it for. It could be a veteran. It could be someone who’s not a veteran but is close to a veteran. Everyone should be knowledgeable with what that training is: recognizing those signs and being able to help that person get the help that they need without fear of stigma or reprisal or anything like that. You never know when you’re going to need it.”
As post commander, Whiteside regularly references both Be the One and Buddy Checks on most of his social media posts. Post 109 also made between 50 and 100 dog tags with the post name on one side and Be the One with a link to its webpage on the other side. They hand the tags out at local events in attempts to reach both veterans and active-duty military.
““My thing since I’ve been with the Legion and been (post) commander is that everybody that gets Be the One Training is just a greater part of the network,” he said. “We can reach more people, and outreach is so important with that.
“It’s great training. I’ve done it. I’ve asked my command staff at the post to do it. I’m trying to push it out as much as I can to other posts as well. It’s a passion of mine.”
Four virtual Be the One training sessions are scheduled for February. Sign up for a session here.
- Be the One