Following the Long Walk Home (Part 2)

He realized then that he had what he calls “a hollow memorial; a meaningless penance.” Zaleski finally decided to do something tangible to help with the legacy of his fallen friends. So he kept doing what he did – walking shoeless – but he started doing it with a purpose.

Some of the results were unexpected. In Zaleski’s pursuit of getting mandatory PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) and grief counseling for all returning veterans by collecting a one million signature petition (20,000 names in each state), he helped finally cure some of his father’s demons. Initially Zaleski walked the Appalachian in bare feet to meet his goals. His father asked him “What’re you punishing yourself for?” and Zaleski shared the reasons for his personal crusade.    

His father started crying then, an emotion so rarely seen by Zaleski that he only initially recognized it as a “strange noise.” Zaleski’s father it turned out, had been wearing a tremendous guilt from his time in the European theater of combat for 60 years: the guilt of watching men serving 5 years being killed on the final days of the war when he had only served five months; the trauma of watching 12-year-old boy soldiers, “Hitler’s Wolfpack,” being shot down by his comrades; using soap made from dead Jews. His father’s revelations underscored the sense of urgency in Zaleski’s “Long Walk Home. 

“If you can get a guy (the appropriate counseling) right when he gets out he has a much better chance,” Zaleski says. Speaking of the estimated 175,000 homeless veterans in the U.S. he adds, “For a guy who put his life on the line to be under a bridge drinking his memories, that doesn’t make it for me.”

So far his progress has been minimal. Maybe 4 or 5 thousand signatures he guesses. And Zaleski doesn’t want to simply create awareness. He wants real change. “If I tell somebody their house is on fire but I don’t help them, what good is that?” Zaleski wonders. Of the politicians he’s encountered, most have written off his cause because they aren’t his representative. “They (the politicians) say nice things to my face,” Zaleski says brashly, but they eventually just ask him “are you my constituent?” and when he answers incorrectly they decline to latch on to his cause. “A soldier didn’t fight for the North or South or New Jersey or Kentucky,” Zaleski screams, “they fought for America.”

On a positive note though, Phil Roe, a Tennessee Congressman and former soldier himself, has decided that he wants to help champion Zaleski’s cause. So there is some hope. They plan on meeting up in October when Roe can concentrate solely on Zaleski’s cause and not on the upcoming election.

But even if Roe turns out like almost all the other elected leaders he’s met, Zaleski’s not going to quit. “I question my sanity I really do. I realize if I do nothing, that’s crazier than doing something. I don’t want to pass this along to the next generation. I don’t want another mom to tell me about her lost son.”

You can follow Mr. Zaleski and sign his petition at www.thelongwalkhome.org 

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