Mobile vet center to make stop here

When Dr. Harry Jackson headed to Fort Hood, Texas, one day after the shootings in November, he didn’t know where he would counsel victims.

For the next week, he worked 200 feet from the site of the shootings in an RV converted into a mobile veterans center by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

The vehicle had cordoned off areas for individual counseling and a videoconferencing system for doctors and patients to talk via satellite.

On Friday, a similar mobile vet center — one of two in Tennessee — will be in Chattanooga.

This is the first visit for one of the units to Chattanooga, said Michael Bearden, team leader at the Chattanooga Vet Center. The vehicle is stationed in Johnson City, Tenn.

Mr. Bearden said he asked that the vehicle come to the local vet center and hopes it can come monthly to help area veterans receive VA services, especially rural residents outside of the city.

“I could just see in their eyes they were really dealing with some issues,” he said.

Dr. Jackson said the mobile center in Texas put soldiers at ease since few who talked with him felt comfortable seeking help at base facilities. But they would open up to counselors at the mobile centers, he said.

The RV at Fort Hood helped draw soldiers’ attention, Dr. Jackson said, and he would stand outside the vehicle near a table of information and talk with soldiers as they passed.

Along with the Killeen Vet Center outside Fort Hood, there were four mobile vet centers in the area following the shooting. The center Dr. Jackson used was one of two on the fort and there were two others off-base in the city.