Heal — David Hales

compiled by Sarah Asp | Photography by John Chiasson

Name: David Hales
Age: 84
Hometown: Clarksville, Tennessee
Family: Wife, Helen, deceased. Daughters, Betty and Ginnie.
Cause: Helping with patient needs at Blanchfield Army Community Hospital and Soldier’s Chapel at Fort Campbell.
Organization: American Red Cross

Q: What specifically do you do?

A: I volunteer at a local military hospital and care for soldiers wounded in Iraq. I spend a lot of time in the emergency room trying to calm them down. I talk to a lot of them when they’re getting treatment. I even get to hold their hands. I make the rounds in the E.R., speaking to patients, and I always have a little cart with candy, suckers, coloring books…stuff to get them to relax. For the kids, I’ve got Mardi Gras necklaces and little toy soldiers and stuffed animals.

When I retired from the military, my wife and I joined the Red Cross for five years with the national disaster workers. We got involved there with kids, and we’d always carry treats for them. I taught CPR, first aid and professional rescuer courses for the Red Cross until I turned 80.

I primarily work with kids—though it depends on what you classify as “kids.” Just today, I was up on the ward visiting patients and I had a 62-year-old woman, and I showed her one of the kids coloring books, and she thought it looked like fun. She was coloring when I left. The kids get older at times!

At the hospital I put in 50 to 60 hours a week, seven days a week. Now, with all the deployments, I’m involved with the families of deployed troops. I take them out to eat.

I’ve had a great experience.

Q: If I want to help, how do I get involved?

A: If you want to volunteer at the hospital, you take a two-day training where you get trained in fire and safety in the hospital and in infectious-disease control. If you wander all over like I do, you get trained in the crash cart, which is a cart loaded with life saving equipment, like respirators, shock paddles and things like that.

Q: How long have you been doing this activity?

A: Here [in Tennessee] for 15 years, and more than 25 years before that.

Q: When you go home at night after a long day of volunteering, how do you feel?

A: I feel good and tired, of course. There are so many rewards, like when I go to the post and kids come running up and grab me around the legs and want to know if I have something for them. And mothers out the hospital, they’ll say, “Oh, thank goodness we found you.” That makes it worthwhile. I’m sort of a grandpa to the families.

Sometimes it gets rough—when you’ve got someone—a patient that doesn’t make it or we’re not too sure if they’re going to. Then I visit with the family and fill in for the chaplain until the chaplain gets there.

Then you get some that are mad at the Army and mad at everything and everybody. I figure if they tell me off, they feel better, and it hasn’t hurt me any. As I told the staff out at the emergency room, “I’ve been called worse things than they can even think of.”

It’s very rewarding, and I’ve made a lot of good friends here, especially among the young military families.

Q: Do you believe you can change the world?

A: Well, I like to say that volunteering is my life—and I’m enjoying it.

Q: What do you say to the person who says, “One person’s efforts don’t make enough of a difference?”

A: I would disagree completely. If you help one person, you’ve helped that person. If everybody would volunteer, there would be more helped. As I tell some of the older retirees my age, “Get off your dead butt and do something.”

If I quit volunteering completely, I’d probably quit living shortly. It keeps you in contact with the younger people. The “thank yous” you get are better than money. Those you keep and you don’t spend. Volunteering is a great life.

Q: Is volunteering a part of your faith?

A: Yes. When I was on active duty, I was gone 70 percent of the time. People helped my wife and kids while I was gone, and this is sort of paying it back. My wife and I volunteered together until she got sick and died.

Q: Do you expect a reward from giving back?

A: No. I get my reward in talking with the people and having them call me and stop to visit with me.

Q: What’s been your favorite volunteer moment—the one that keeps you coming back?

A: Part of the reward is just knowing you’ve helped people in a difficult time. When our division was deployed in Iraq we had several deaths, that’s the 101st airborne division stationed at Fort Campbell (approximately 25,000 troops). It’s tiring and stressful and still rewarding. I got to be an expert at putting artificial limbs on; I got so I could strap those on and help them learn to walk. You get someone who is bitter and mad at the world in general, then you finally get them to where they are laughing—then you’ve been paid.

It’s very rewarding and fun. If it wasn’t, I’d quit. Out at the hospital sometimes they say, “Oh, man, you’ve been working all day. You better be getting home and getting some rest.” And I say, “When my volunteering gets to be work, that’s when I go home.”

Volunteering is really my life and I’m enjoying it.

Top Of Page | Magazine Home Page