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Doctor helped save veterans’ lives once they came home

VA psychologist McNamara assisted servicemembers to face post-combat challenges

Longtime Veterans Affairs psychologist Dr. Kathleen McNamara retired at the end of March after 27 years of helping local veterans and their families cope with post-combat challenges. -- The Maui News / COLLEEN UECHI photo

Vietnam veteran Bo Mahoe likes to say that “it was a McNamara that got me into war, and a McNamara helped me get out.”

Fifty years ago, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara pushed for America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. In its aftermath, Veterans Affairs psychologist Dr. Kathleen McNamara has helped Mahoe and countless other Maui County veterans face the post-combat challenges of coming home.

McNamara, 67, retired at the end of March after 27 years of service to Hawaii’s veterans.

“She’s one who’s given more than anybody I know to help our veterans, and yet she feels she’s the one who’s benefited,” said Dr. Richard MacDonald, rehab counselor with Veterans Affairs on Maui. “I think that’s part of why she’s so effective because she keeps that humility and just focuses in on what the veterans need in every way, shape or form.”

McNamara knew early on in her life the meaning of honoring veterans. Her father was an airplane mechanic in the Army Air Corps during World War II, and when he saw how Vietnam veterans were treated upon their return home, he got upset.

“My dad was one of the most mellow people,” McNamara said. “But I just remember him getting angry about how they were being treated. He would say when he came back, if he was in uniform, people would buy him coffee or a steak dinner. It was just so impactful for me to hear my dad talking about that. It never left me.”

To this day, she makes lunch for veterans on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving in honor of her dad.

McNamara also has a heart for helping people in rural communities, having grown up in the small town of Mount Carbon, Penn., and doing her graduate work in rural West Virginia.

In 1989, she moved to Hawaii from Ohio, where she’d been teaching at the Wright State University School of Professional Psychology and consulting for the local VA office. Shortly after she came to Oahu to do a lecture, the chief psychologist at the Honolulu VA office offered her a job. McNamara wrapped up her courses and moved to the islands.

For 10 years, she was based in Honolulu and traveled to all the Neighbor Island clinics, which didn’t have any psychologists at the time. She then moved to Maui full time and continued visiting Molokai twice a month. The VA can’t require psychologists to visit other islands, but McNamara wanted to go.

“My way of being has always been in rural communities,” she said.

In Hawaii, she worked with many Vietnam veterans who were just starting to come to terms with post-traumatic stress disorder. Back when she was pursuing her doctorate at Ohio University in 1975, “PTSD didn’t exist as a specialty.” It left a lot of Vietnam veterans in limbo, as no one recognized the pain they brought home.

Mahoe’s mother knew he was different as soon as he got back. From 1969 to 1970, Mahoe had the highly dangerous assignment of being point man, navigating the infantry to its next mission. Coming home, few services were available to veterans.

“In island and Asian culture, people are very closeted when it comes to mental health,” Mahoe said.

After moving to Molokai, Mahoe met McNamara in 2000. She taught him to channel his internal struggles into positive energy. In Vietnam, Mahoe used to have to go into pitch-black tunnels with a pistol and a flashlight, never knowing what he was going to find. McNamara “is doing the same thing” when she steps into a person’s mind, he said.

“Most human beings have a very small circle of people they allow into their personal space,” Mahoe said. “All that other stuff is external — your doctor, your dentist, your barber. But Dr. McNamara goes into the mind. . . . I admire her fearlessness.”

Molokai veteran John “Longie” Dudoit has known McNamara for about 20 years. After Vietnam, he didn’t seek any help until the 1990s.

“So when I first saw Dr. Mc, we had to deal with a trust issue,” Dudoit said. “It’s been over 40 years since the Vietnam War, and to go back in time, in war, was not easy.”

Dudoit said McNamara has done so much for Molokai veterans.

“As our Dr. Mc says, ‘All infantry veterans who saw killings and bodies should not have to deal with the bureaucratic red tape,’ “ Dudoit said. “She does the talk and the walk. I will miss Dr. Mc, someone who you can talk to, take the weight off your shoulders and come out of her office feeling good.”

McNamara has worked with men and women who’ve been in Vietnam, Desert Storm, Iraq and Afghanistan. While the conflict changes, the effects of PTSD are the same, and McNamara helped veterans “normalize the stress they’re having, that it really isn’t anything they’re purposely doing.”

“People many times will see (a veteran’s) anger before they’ll ever see their hurt,” she said. “Part of it for me is to help the veteran be as compassionate with themselves as others should be with them.”

She also ran a support group for spouses of veterans and became a de facto family psychologist for many. Veterans she saw 20 years ago have come back, because they don’t want to make the same mistakes with their grandkids that they did with their own children.

“I’ve had this wonderful opportunity with our veterans on Maui and on Molokai to see them over a lifetime,” McNamara said.

MacDonald said McNamara has been instrumental in helping colleagues create effective treatment strategies for veterans. He said many of the projects he proposed to the VA would’ve never happened if not for her, including an independent living program he and McNamara developed for veterans who couldn’t work because of PTSD.

“She made everyone here better,” MacDonald said. “You’re just hearing this from one guy. All the people that have worked with her, they all just love the heck out of her. She’s so right on, so brilliantly intelligent and so magnificent in her therapy skills.”

In retirement, McNamara looks forward to going back to advocating for veterans’ issues and plans to volunteer for Sen. Mazie Hirono and other legislators.

One of the most rewarding parts of her career has been seeing older veterans reach out to younger ones.

“It’s been incredible to watch how the Vietnam veterans reach out to the younger vets and say, ‘Please don’t wait. Please don’t do what we did. Please ask for help,’ “ McNamara said. “Veterans helping veterans. It’s so powerful.”

* Colleen Uechi can be reached at cuechi@mauinews.com.

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