Apparently, CBS news in running a poll to determine which story to run in a couple of weeks. One of them is a story on fly fishing as part of a therapy program for veterans. Click on the link below and you can cast your vote for the story they decide on. Voting ends soon.
Thanks.
Terry
[url=http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/26/assignment_america/main2730516.shtml:e7b29]Assignment America - CBS News[/url:e7b29]
I think it’s great that these vets are getting fly-fishing as therapy.
I do NOT like the notion of promoting the sport of fly-fishing on the backs of wounded veterans.
This program for wounded vets – “Project Healing Waters” – was featured in a three-day series by National Public Radio last month.
According to the NPR series, the program “began when it occurred to a retired Navy captain that the pastime of fishing could prove a therapeutic activity for wounded war veterans.”
The series interviewed four participants in the program who described how it has affected their recoveries. The young guy interviewed March 21 lost both legs to an IED; he talked about rolling his wheelchair into a trout stream.
SilverMallard, it seems you’re trying to make a point about not promoting fly-fishing on the backs of wounded vets. What’s your point? What is wrong with this program?
I don’t think it’s so much to promote fly fishing as it is to promote something positive being done for wounded vets. In view of the treatment our vets have been getting at Walter Reed and the VA facilities, this program is something good and worthwhile.
If this program airs, maybe other folks, whether they be fly fishers or underwater basket weavers will decide that their hobby might have some therapeutic value to wounded vets and get a program started. Could actually be a benefit.
I am responding not so much to be included in a poll, but to pass along an offer i have made here in the past. There was a post here not much more than a year ago offering to take returning veterans out for a day of fishing.
Any of our valient veterans returning from combat, wounded or not, have a standing invitation with me to either float a river in my driftboat, or go chase salmon in the salt in my saltwater boat. I will provided everything except alcohol and a fishing license. All i need is an email, the times and dates in advance so i can coordinate time off and such. As a country, we have not been asked to share the burden with our troops, so a fun day on the water is the least i can do to help. Remind you that i am no longer a guide, but love to fish none the less.
Whatever we can do to pick up the slack that the VA has left us with, we should be willing to do. I can sacrifice a day of work to help out and support any soldier that put their A** on the line for you and me.
I have no misgivings about the program or the media coverage of it. I think it’s great. And REE is right about the possible spin-offs and such. All good stuff.
I was merely issuing a generic caution about our motives. As Americans, we tend to get caught up in commercialized fervor nowadays and sometimes forget our sense of decorum. My remark wasn’t a challenge. It was more like an aside…or a footnote.
We have been supporters of this program from day 1, and have several articles by John Colburn about it here on FAOL.
It is very worthwhile - please cast a vote for it on the link above.
I was going to vote but there is a message on there now that the voting is closed. Given the three choices I can’t see how the flyfishing would lose to the other two, but then I am biased .
Hey, LF!
You forget that I wrote a column about it way back before we had 30,000 wounded combat vets? Fly-fishing as rehab therapy is NOT a new concept tried only for combat vets. It’s been going on for about a decade in the private sector. Like I said, it’s great they’re using it or vets, too. And God knows they deserve far better than they get.
Well spoken REE. We can’t do too much for returning Vets, that’s for sure. Among our own here at FAOL, I personally know of a fly-fisher that volunteers at the local VA once a week after work teaching a fly tying class for those Vets that are interested. A couple of local businesses have dontated vises and materials and when some of the employees at the VA hospital heard of the program, they too began donating fly tying items. The interest group has grown and they have all the materials and tools they’ll ever need.
More importantly, a Vet that isn’t able to fly-fish, but that can learn to tye flys has something to look forward to each week. I hope the CBS fly fishing show airs and I hope that it generates other programs, fly fishing related or not, that give returning Vets something interesting to do to occupy their time in recovery/re-entry. And thanks again to the FAOL’ers among us that give freely of their time letting Vets know they’re not forgotten.
MontanaMoose
I’m sure many of you don’t know this, but I am gonna go ahead and spill the beans…
I AM a disabled vet who took up fly tying as therapy. I had always purchased my flies before I became totally disabled. But when I became disabled, my medications made my hands tremor just a bit and I suddenly had a LOT of free time on my hands. That’s when I started writing about fly fishing and tying my own flies. I think tying therapy had two major benefits for me:
The benefit to my fine motor skills is real, but FAR outweighed by the two benefits I listed above.
I don’t “advertise” myself as a disabled vet because I do not want “special” attitudes or treatment. I don’t have a license plate or sticker. I don’t want them. I want folks to assume I’m “normal.” So I don’t mention it much. But it does create some interestingly ironic replies to some of my posts from time to time. I have especially enjoyed the ones (not many from this forum) where folks accuse me of being insensitive to disabled vets or the disabled, in general, from folks who are NOT disabled. Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.
I am all for all of it. During WWII, E. Hille, then owner of E. Hille’s Angler’s Supply House, closed his doors to the public. He gave all of his time and resources to the wounded vets. He figured that teaching them to ty flies would be good therapy. Must have been one heck of a great guy!