The Soldiers Project Helps Vets Heal

The curtain on Dr. Judith Broder's new life opened at a tiny theater in Hollywood in 2004.

No one expected it--certainly not Broder, who was there solely to enjoy an evening of drama. Her future was set. A grandmother of five, she was winding down her long career as a psychiatrist. She and her husband were pondering trips to take in retirement.

Nothing about the obscure playhouse suggested a transforming experience. Sunset Gardner Stages is about as far off Broadway as one can get--a basement alcove of 80 seats tucked beneath a Thai restaurant. Few had heard of the play's producer, Sean Huze, then a member of the U.S. Marine Corps' 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, or the drama he had written and staged, a series of monologues titled "The Sand Storm: Stories from the Front."

As Broder recalls, the confined quarters only heightened the intensity as the actors--most of them real soldiers--poured out wrenching accounts of the horrors of war, drawn from Huze's own combat missions during the invasion of Iraq. They spoke of friends dying, of rifle fire and fear, of rage and the lust for revenge. They talked of atrocities so repugnant that some felt it impossible to return home and fit in again with normal society.

"That still gets to me," says the petite, curly-haired Broder, who has the soft-spoken demeanor of a kindly librarian. To her, it was unthinkable that soldiers sent abroad should come back so broken and isolated. She brooded all night. By morning, she had decided to put world travel on hold. Startling her husband, Donald, she unveiled an entirely new plan to form what would soon become the Soldiers Project, a nonprofit network of licensed therapists providing free counseling to returning soldiers and their loved ones. The project has since expanded nationwide, with 400 therapists donating thousands of hours, and satellite centers operating in Boston, Chicago, New York and Seattle.

"I woke up with this whole scheme in mind," says Broder, now 69, who directs the organization from her home in Studio City, Calif., a short distance up the freeway from Hollywood. "Did I think about it? Not really. I just started going."

With clear bemusement, Donald Broder remembers how abruptly the couple's plans of itinerant leisure vanished. "She said she was retiring, and I thought that's what she meant," he says. "Instead, she took up this thing, and before you knew it--I mean, she's as busy or busier than she's ever been."

Judith Broder says she works close to 60 hours a week organizing, promoting and growing the network, moved mainly by her strongly ingrained sense of public service. None of her three adult children--Benjamin, Michael and Leah--served in the military, so Broder attributes her zeal to the lessons of her childhood in Maplewood, N.J., just outside Newark. Her father, Dr. Leonard Tushnet, was an old-fashioned family practitioner who treated even those who could not afford to pay. "Sometimes people paid him with food or paid him with a painting or something," Broder remembers. Her mother, Fannie, was a school social worker. Both parents were political activists who cared deeply about the state of society.

"It infused our home life," Broder says.

Her determined, selfless labors have impressed a long list of admirers, including retired U.S. Marine Corps Col. Joseph N. Smith, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.

"I think the world of her," Smith says. "If there's one person that I have met in my 21 years here who really goes the extra mile in helping veterans, it's Judith Broder. She's the real deal."

Barbara Schochet, a West Los Angeles therapist in private practice, learned about the Soldiers Project four years ago and immediately volunteered time from her schedule each week. Now serving as assistant director, she describes Broder as "a real go-getter" and "absolutely fearless" in taking on the challenges of so huge a problem.

Like the soldiers of an earlier era who tried to cope with the traumas of Vietnam, the men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan often suffer unseen damage. Some have difficulty sleeping, holding jobs or maintaining relationships. Some are spooked by loud noises. Some drink. Some, especially the women, have been targets of sexual harassment. Some have seen spouses cheat on them. Some have missed important moments in life, such as a baby's first steps.

Former Marine Corps Infantryman Victor Manzano lived in constant fear of death in heavy fighting; he was deployed both in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I lost a lot of buddies, saw a lot of dead bodies, shot a lot of people," he says. Once home in Los Angeles, he suffered nightmares. He dealt poorly with family life. Now 28, and running a music production and talent management company, Manzano credits Broder and the Soldiers Project with helping to alleviate his post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I'm engaged," he says proudly. "I have two little boys. It's taken me a while to get to this point."

As an active member of the Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies, Broder turned there first to set up the network. The institute's Ernest S. Lawrence Trauma Center already operated a program for teenage mothers, and Broder won approval and modest financial support--$20,000 over several years--to start the new project for soldiers. The effort received scant notice until early 2008, when Broder organized a three-day conference at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

Known as "The Hidden Wounds of War: Pathways to Healing," the event drew military veterans and therapists from across the nation and led to the expansion of the network to other major cities.

Media attention at the time also attracted donations. "People, out of the blue, from literally all over the country, hear about the project on the radio or TV or they read about it, and bam! The next thing you know, here's twenty-five bucks, or fifty, or five hundred," says Donald Broder, a retired psychiatrist himself who now assists his wife part-time.

In the past year, the money has improved. An award of $135,000, known as the Welcome Back Veterans grant, came from Major League Baseball and the McCormick Foundation. In October, Broder won a $100,000 Purpose Prize presented by San Francisco-based Civic Ventures, a national think tank devoted to baby boomers and social issues.

Friends jokingly ask when she plans to buy a yacht, but Broder, whose eyes light up at the good fortune, says the infusion will help to hire a small paid staff so she can finally start reducing her workload.

Husband Donald will believe that when he sees it, but he marvels at the magnitude of the task his wife has taken on.

"We now have 1.8 million Americans who have gone to Iraq and Afghanistan," he says, "and the number of them coming back with psychological injury is substantial--in the hundreds of thousands. My mentality would be to look at that and say 'Oh my God, what could we do?' And she said, 'Well, let's try'--and she did. That's what she did, one step after another."

Sean Huze also marvels. The actor and playwright, who is appearing alongside Matt Damon in Green Zone, a war film that came out in March, recalls that many people were touched by his play at the little underground theater in Hollywood. But only Judith Broder answered the call.

"You can be really inspired and moved by something until your BlackBerry goes off or somebody Twitters and you go on to the next thing," Huze says. "Judy was moved to take action. It just really matters to her."

SecondAct contributor David Ferrell is a former staff writer for the Los Angeles Times and the author of Screwball, a comic baseball novel.