Richard MacDonald enjoys a retirement party Thursday morning after 17 years of serving veterans as a vocational rehabilitation counselor at the U.S. Veterans Affairs Maui Community-Based Outpatient Clinic in Kahului. The Maui News / CHRIS SUGIDONO photo

KAHULUI — Richard MacDonald is regarded as the county’s first veterans counselor in Maui County, but few know how he helped bring the first clinics to the Neighbor Islands some 30 years ago.

The former Marine has spent the past four decades as a vocational rehabilitation counselor and helped thousands of veterans suffering from severe physical and psychological disabilities obtain schooling, start businesses and receive other necessary resources.

His greatest service, however, may have been in a letter he wrote to President Ronald Reagan and Congress that resulted in the U.S. Veterans Affairs establishing clinics on the Neighbor Islands. The only issue was he could not put his name on it.

“I didn’t want to lose my job,” MacDonald said Thursday from his office.

The letter was not the first time his job was threatened, and certainly was not the last as he spent his entire career fighting for veterans and for what he believed they deserved due to their service to their country.

MacDonald, 67, of Pukalani retired Friday from the U.S. Veterans Affairs Maui Community-Based Outpatient Clinic in Kahului.

His retirement capped 17 years with the VA, which followed 20 years for Crawford Rehabilitation Services. The services company existed before the VA opened clinics on Maui and acquired the first contract to provide readjustment counseling to Vietnam veterans in 1981.

“I was just one guy, and I soon found out that one guy is not enough to serve all these veterans,” MacDonald said of the veterans, many of whom were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. “The other thing I was finding out was that so many veterans were not being served.”

MacDonald recalled working with one veteran who had his leg blown off in the war and had a prosthetic device that was “all busted up.” The VA declined to pay for his trip to Honolulu to fix the device, so he wrote a letter to the then-director.

“He calls my boss in Honolulu and says shut this guy up or you lose the contract,” MacDonald recalled. “I didn’t want to lose the contract so I helped form the Vietnam Veterans of Maui and became a ghost writer.”

In the late 1980s, MacDonald submitted the letter, “Needs and Recommendations for Veterans Services and Support to Hawaii State Neighbor Island Vietnam Veterans,” on behalf of the Vietnam Veterans of Maui. The letter argued that services for Neighbor Island veterans were far below those of the rest of the state. It backed its claims with quotes from the VA’s chief of psychology and other experts.

“You won’t find my name on it except a CC,” MacDonald said, showing the letter that was sent to then Hawaii U.S. Sens. Daniel Inouye and Spark Matsunaga.

A congressional hearing was subsequently held in Hawaii, and Congress mandated the VA to open clinics on Maui, Kauai and the Big Island.

Mitch Skaggerberg, current president of the Vietnam veterans group, said only a few people knew that MacDonald wrote the letter, which shocked Sens. Daniel Inouye and Spark Matsunaga.

Then state-Rep. Daniel “Akaka was very disturbed that the Hawaii disabled veterans were pushed aside,” Skaggerberg said. “It was a horror story. When they finally had the congressional hearing, they went ‘Oh my God, you mean our VA would do that and lie to us?’ ”

Akaka succeeded Matsunaga, becoming a U.S. senator in 1990.

Many times MacDonald would give veterans talking points to cover in their testimony to lawmakers so he would remain behind the scenes. He said he had to be clever in how he sent out information so he could continue serving veterans.

“This just shows what you can do in spite of the odds,” MacDonald said. “Even if people are telling you don’t do this or you’ll lose your job, when you stand up for what is right you just got to find the right people to verify what you’re saying and the truth will ultimately prevail.”

Fighting another battle

In 2001, MacDonald began his next battle working directly for the VA and helping veterans secure work or a career through training and job placement. While some veterans dealt with physical disabilities, he found many more could not work due to severe PTSD and were being left untreated.

“That has always been the largest portion of my case load, and that’s because I worked closely with psychologists,” he said. “You see someone isolated at home, hypervigilant, intrusive thoughts and not doing much with their time. They’ve basically given up on life.”

MacDonald, who has a doctorate degree in counseling psychology, began developing Independent Living Plans for veterans and helped give them a sense of purpose and excitement for life. He said at one point 80 percent of his caseload was veterans dealing with severe PTSD, and he sought to put all of them in the new plan he created.

“Mental health professionals realized that medication and seeing them once a month doesn’t lead to much change,” he said. “What needs to happen is they need to do something with their time, that they like to do and feel good about themselves so they can be productive and help others.

“Ever since they’ve been feeding me their most difficult vets.”

Retired VA Chief Psychologist Kathleen McNamara referred veterans to MacDonald for about 10 years and said the plan “really changed their quality of life.” She said the plan decreased domestic violence and drug abuse as well as improved veterans’ relationships with their families.

“Just sitting in my office was fine, but not sufficient,” McNamara said. “The plan gave them the opportunity to put into play the changes in their self-worth and feelings of productivity and belonging in society, particularly for our Vietnam veterans who were so ostracized. It was to actually do something to say we valued them.”

MacDonald helped about 400 veterans go through the program, helping them get computers, musical instruments, even cooking utensils.

“He’s probably helped more veterans than anybody on Maui over the years,” longtime veterans advocate Fred Ruge said Friday. “He’s helped veterans with severe problems. He’s really dedicated, and the VA really gave him a hard time. They called him to Washington, D.C., two or three times threatening to fire him, but he wouldn’t back down so he kept his job.”

Vietnam vet Bo Mahoe said MacDonald helped him get a computer and printer to assist Molokai veterans with booking a hotel, car and airline reservations for medical trips to Oahu. He said the counselor was well-known for caring about every client and was not a “paper pusher.”

“He was a haole who came from the Mainland, but he commands a lot of respect with the locals here that’s for sure,” Mahoe said. “Richard would go to Molokai a lot, and he would push to make sure had a traveling budget. He’d beg, borrow and steal to come here regularly.”

MacDonald had little success getting the VA to adopt his plan nationwide, despite creating a presentation with the backing of McNamara and other VA experts.

McNamara recalled Akaka visiting her office and seeing pictures of veterans who had gone through MacDonald’s program.

“Akaka was so impressed by the changes in veterans’ lives by what Dr. MacDonald was able to do,” McNamara said. “It changed their lives and many times the lives of their families as well.”

MacDonald said the plans are still underutilized by the VA, and management has told him that it will likely be moved from vocational rehab to mental health services.

“That would be a darn shame,” he said. “I’m doing what they are supposed to do and this program is intended to do. We have to do an evaluation of not just their physical needs, but their psychosocial needs. If they’re way down because of their PTSD, we’re supposed to be doing something for them.

“These cases take a lot more work than just writing up plans for someone to go to school. We owe them a chance to get a good career.”

‘Phenomenal little sidebar’

Looking back over his career from his office Thursday, MacDonald pulled out stacks of newspapers, letters, awards and other documents saved over the years.

MacDonald served as a journalist at the Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station and embarked on several humanitarian missions with the 31st Marine amphibious unit. He recalled one mission that involved rescuing 600 Vietnamese people crowded on a small boat.

“Thai pirates had come onto the ship, raped the women, took their water, took their gold and left them out to die,” he said. “And the Thai government wouldn’t take them in. We negotiated with the government to take them in on the basis they would be relocated to the U.S.”

Thirty-seven years later, MacDonald was having dinner in San Jose, Calif., with his son and daughter, and the waitress serving them was Vietnamese. He recounted the story to the waitress, and she told him she was 7 years old and rescued from that boat.

“I’ve never asked anybody about that or even talked to anybody about that,” he said. “But I just felt something. I just thought that was a phenomenal little sidebar.”

MacDonald’s life is filled with many other sidebars, including the time he won a dance marathon in Seattle after dancing for 61¢ hours. Or the time his leg was in a cast and he helped stop an armed bank robber in Kahului.

The most shocking may have been when he worked as a paramedic assistant for the Hawaii State Mental Hospital in Kaneohe.

MacDonald had spent only a few months at the hospital and documented wrongdoing, including patient abuse. He worked with an Oahu television news station on a report on the hospital, which was given to the Attorney General’s Office. When it came time to testify on the report, nobody showed up except MacDonald.

“I started calling the other five people who also had seen these abuses and had been let go for the same reason and none of them would return my call,” he said. “I finally chased one down at his home, and he said these people that I fingered had come to his house and threatened his life and the life of his family. They told me I better get the hell off of the island.”

In 10 days, MacDonald got married and moved his family to Maui.

A relentless advocate for ‘the least among us’

Veterans gave high praise to MacDonald for not being a “bureaucrat” or afraid to fight against the system.

Clay Park, who sits on the governor’s board for the Office of Veterans Services, said MacDonald “pulls no punches when it comes to what needs to be done.”

“He just found ways to see what he can do to make sure the veterans indeed get what they deserve and that was his bottom line,” Park said. “Sometimes he put his job on the line, but he didn’t care. He’s like, ‘OK, go ahead.’ ”

Former homeless veteran Mark Saxon said he was without housing until got help from the Salvation Army and MacDonald. He said veterans could trust MacDonald, and he “wouldn’t give you the run around.”

“That’s what makes him special,” Saxon said. “He’s just different.”

Skaggerberg said MacDonald was “relentless” and “probably the hardest worker I’ve seen.”

“He never said no to anybody,” he said. “It was everything for the veteran.”

VA public affairs officer Aiko Shibuya said in an email Friday that the VA Honolulu Regional Office is “aggressively recruiting” for MacDonald’s replacement. In the interim, veterans will be served by a “seasoned” vocational rehabilitation counselor in Honolulu.

Veterans with questions or concerns regarding vocational rehabilitation benefits can call the Vocational Rehabilitation & Employment Division at (808) 433-0889.

“Mr. Richard MacDonald was a valued VA employee who serviced countless veterans in the Maui County,” Shibuya wrote. “His hard work and dedication will be missed and our office wishes him well.”

MacDonald credited his persistence and perseverance to God and said he asked Jesus every day for the power to forgive others.

“I’ve outlived at least three or four cats, and they have nine lives a piece,” he said. “I swear to God I’ve had guns to my head, Coke bottles to my throat. I’ve been in ‘X’ number of accidents where I should’ve been decapitated or hurt. I’ve broken practically every bone in my body from head to toe, and I’m still here. I’m still going by the grace of God because he’s got something more for me to do. People ask me what are you going to do when you retire, I said first thing I’m going to do is hike up the mountain and look for a burning bush.”

MacDonald said he plans to focus on helping Maui County’s homeless population — a place where many veterans are living. He will continue to lean on God.

“He’s the underlying thread in all of this,” he said. “He’s the one who I believe is telling me, ‘OK enough with the VA. Let’s get out there and help the least among us.”

* Chris Sugidono can be reached at csugidono@mauinews.com.