Testa Dura, my father used to call me. It became my second name. His complaint — I had a hard head.
Even as a kid I was what he called hardheaded. I call it tenacious. I keep at it till I achieve my goal or I realize on my own that I need to readjust. On my own. That part matters.
I’ve come a long way from a 650 square foot tract home in a little town outside of St. Louis. I remember walking home from school one day, my usual route, past the Mayor’s house, past the Kroger’s, then across the tracks to my subdivision. And it hit me — I just crossed the tracks. The Mayor’s house is on the other side. That must mean I come from the wrong side of the tracks.
Seemed fitting.
I’m 69 now and if you’ve read any of my stories you know I should have been dead a long time ago. A beat-up kid with no prospects who barely survived getting out of my father’s house. I served my country honorably in the US Navy for eight years and would have made it a career if disability hadn’t ended it.
But God or the Universe had other plans. Instead of serving my country, I was sent down a rough and treacherous path to serve my brothers and sisters in the struggle.
December 1990. Honorably discharged. Medals. Outstanding performance reviews. And I was a broken mess sitting in a puddle of tears. Just like that I became another disabled veteran, nearly unable to function, afraid to admit I needed help, and clueless where to find it.
I ended up at the VA in ‘91. I’ll spare you the details for now — that’s its own story. What matters is that’s where I met my people. It was mostly men back then, quite a few Vietnam veterans, and they took a liking to me. Over coffee, in group therapy, they told me things. How the system worked. How it failed. How long they’d been fighting — as my chief used to say, since I was shitting yellow. They were military veterans but they were also VA veterans, seasoned in a war I was just entering.
I listened. And my righteous outrage grew to the point I had to do something.
So in 1997 I founded HadIt.com, for veterans who had had it with the VA claims system. I had to teach myself the web, coding, VA law — the internet was barely a thing when I started figuring this out in ‘94, ‘95. But I did it. Twenty-nine years of helping my brothers and sisters not get lost in the maze. If it helps one veteran, it’s successful.
Turns out the only thing my father ever got right about me is I have a hard head.