Caregiver lobbies VA Hospital to get war vet rolling again

HAMPTON

Bethany Rafferty didn't want to spend Thursday morning outside the Hampton VA Medical Center protesting. But there she stood, across from the facility, next to an I-64 on-ramp, wearing a homemade sign, with her 4-year-old son holding a U.S. flag and her 2-year-old daughter holding a sign.

"I've never protested anything in my life," Rafferty said, "but what else am I supposed to do?"

Rafferty has become the caretaker of John Peters, a 78-year-old Korean War veteran and former Army sniper who has had his legs amputated and who desperately needs a new wheelchair.

Spokeswoman Sheila Bailey said the medical center is working on getting Peters mobile again. The Department of Veterans Affairs had a loaner wheelchair delivered Thursday afternoon, but Rafferty said it was inadequate for an amputee. The VA will try to repair his old one.

"We work really hard to try to resolve these situations when they come up," Bailey said. "Please understand that we have been trying for two days to work with the veteran."

For Rafferty, the fix was taking too long, she said.

She and Peters had been at the VA to see his doctor three weeks ago, she said, and when the doctor saw his stitched-together wheelchair, he signed off on a new one.

"It was stuck together with electric tape and Gorilla Glue," Rafferty said. "I've been splicing wires on it and trying to charge it with car batteries."

Known as "Capt. John" from his days of piloting a tugboat in New York, Peters had sat at a desk inside the Greenbrier YMCA for years, making paintings of the Great Bridge Locks, New England churches, a tug on the Manhattan River. Rafferty, a yoga instructor there, befriended Peters, then became his caretaker.

For the past few weeks, that's been a 24-hour-a-day job. Rafferty moved Peters in with her family after his wheelchair stopped working. Without it, he needs her to take a bath, get in and out of bed, use the bathroom, take insulin, even get a drink of water to wash down his medications.

Maybe the VA would have provided a wheelchair without the protest, but Rafferty said making her point had more than one purpose.

"We're not trying to cause any trouble or say anyone at the VA is horrible. It's a big, big bureaucracy," she said. "I also wanted to teach my children about standing up for veterans."

Lon Wagner, (757) 446-2341, Lon.Wagner@pilotonline.com