Timm, on the right, and Bob Woodruff in the center spoke on TBI (traumatic brain injury) during a symposium on veteran issues during a recent Town Hall Meeting in Seattle. Both Bob and Timm suffered TBI in Iraq, Bob as a reporter and Timm while serving as a sergeant with the Army. It was an interesting evening. Bob Woodruff spoke of his career and the devastating injury to his brain and the long road to recovery. The panel of experts then discussed veterans issues such as transition back to civilian life, homelessness, suicides among veterans, and many other issues that plague the veteran community. While only two of us from 8870 were able to attend due to the short notice, we made sure that Timm knew we were there to support him. Its great to see our younger vets like Timm, have a positive influence on veteran’s issues. By the way, Timm graduated from Seattle University the day before this event took place and is now enrolling in the Masters program at SU. He works as a Vet Corp representative in the Washington State Veterans Affairs and travels to the colleges in Washington discussing TBI and how the student veteran can cope and the support services the colleges can provide.
The picture above was taken in a private reception for Bob preceding the panel discussion. I more or less (mostly more), invited myself to the affair after walking through a monsoon and looking like a wet dog. However, Bob Woodruff was a gracious guy when Timm asked if the two of us could have our photo taken with him. It ended up the reception was more or less a Who’s Who of veterans issues and it was great spending some time chatting with the folks there, even if I didn’t have an official nametag.