Lt Col Chartrand has served for 12 years in the United States Air Force. She received her medical degree from the Medical College of Wisconsin and completed her Pediatric residency at David Grant Medical Center, Travis Air Force Base.   Lt Col Chartrand served as staff pediatrician at Scott Air Force Base and at Wright Patterson Air Force Base as associate Pediatric Program Director.  She currently is completing her fellowship in Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics at Boston Medical Center.

Lt Col Chartrand’s research interests include the impact of deployment on children in military families and medical education.  She recently completed a study of the impact of deployment on young children at a large Marine base—the first of its kind.  These findings will be presented at the national meeting of the Pediatric Academic Society.

Lt Col Chartrand serves as an advisor to a Department of Defense funded project to develop a parent-child treatment program for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.  She has given trainings on the impact of military deployments on children at the national meeting of the Society of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, regional training for SOFAR USA and others.  Her work has been published in the American Academy of Pediatric News and Ambulatory Pediatrics. Lt Col Chartrand is also a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Society for Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics.

 Jan C. Scruggs, Esq.
Jan is Founder and President of the Vietnam Memorial Wall. He conceived the idea of building a memorial dedicated to all who served in the U.S. Armed Forces in Vietnam.  Scruggs was a wounded and decorated Vietnam War veteran, having served in the 199th Light Infantry Brigade of the U.S. Army. He felt a memorial would serve as a healing device for a different kind of wound – that inflicted on our national psyche by the long and controversial war.

In May 1979, Scruggs took $2,800 of his own money and launched the effort. Serving as president of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Inc., the non-profit organization set up to build the Memorial, Scruggs headed up the effort that raised $8.4 million and saw the Memorial completed in two years. It was dedicated on November 13, 1982, during a week-long national "salute" to Vietnam veterans in the nation's capital.

Scruggs is a native of Washington, D.C., and grew up in Bowie, Maryland. He received his BS and MEd degrees from The American University, Washington,D.C., and his law degree from the University of Maryland,Baltimore

Dave Tela

After a one year tour in Vietnam, 9/19/69 to 9/12/70, Dave Tela would return home to Turners Falls, Massachusetts with over 1,100 hours of recorded combat flying time flying “Cobra” AH-1G gunships as an aircraft commander and functional test pilot for A Troop 3/17 Air Cavalry.  Total time spent in the Army, including training, was only 2 years and 9 months.

By October of 1975, under the care of Dr. Catherine M. Hartwell, MD at the Boston VA Outpatient Center, he was diagnosed with a serious case of PTSD.  It would take nearly six years of personal effort, without the aid of medication, therapy, alcohol or drugs to diminish the severity and disabling effects of the PTSD to a point where he was emotionally confident.

In 1974 a career in cinematography and videography would begin with WGBH Educational Foundation (PBS) doing many documentary productions in film and video.  Independent productions would lead to work in Ghana, Mexico and Canada as well as various locations within the United States.  These production efforts, focusing on other people and situations, worked as a form of silent group therapy by making it possible to take a break from the constant and private burden of PTSD.

Although a severe traumatic brain injury from a motorcycle accident in July of 1990 would end the daily PTSD issues for more than a decade, the daily cognitive and neuro-muscular challenges would require the same degree of focused effort to recover to a near normal state of daily life.  Therapy and medication are still required for the TBI.

Today, he works for General Dynamics managing the trade show efforts of the Marine Systems Group in over 20 national and international events a year, a job that he has held for more than 25 years.
 

Andrew Pomerantz, MD

Dr. Pomerantz is Chief of Mental Health at the White River Junction VA Medical Center and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Dartmouth Medical School.  He is a geriatric psychiatrist whose clinical work is primarily focused on World War 2 and Korean Veterans with PTSD.  Most recently his work has focused on implementing integrated Mental Health/Primary Care programs nationally and developing treatment and community support programs for troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan locally.  His approach to understanding combat trauma has led him to be quoted and featured in local, regional and national media coverage of the problems faced by OIF/OEF soldiers and their families.