10 Legion Family members throughout the state have been selected to be certified in the suicide prevention course to provide training in their districts to save lives.
Jennifer Barloon received a phone call last year that she is committed to never hear again. Her command sergeant major, who she deployed with in 2004 in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, died by suicide.
“He had an amazing career, his service, and he was retired and got to do all the things he wanted to do. To get that call, it was really, really had for me, and I don’t want to ever hear that again,” said Barloon, an Iowa Army Reserve veteran and member of American Legion Post and Auxiliary Unit 682 in Altoona, Iowa. “I don’t want people to lose any other family members because the military is my family, and the Legion’s my family. I just don’t want to go through that again. I want to help.”
Barloon is one of 10 Iowa Legion Family members – Legionnaires, Sons of The American Legion, Legion Riders and Auxiliary members – who applied and were selected to be on the department’s Be the One QPR Team. They will become certified QPR (question, persuade, refer) suicide prevention gatekeepers through the QPR Institute and then go on to train others at the post level in their districts. They too will be a point person to call when a veteran is in crisis. This training, like the Columbia Protocol, is in support of The American Legion’s top priority of saving lives – Be the One.
“That’s my biggest thing … I want to help. I want to stop it,” Barloon said. “If I can be that person that someone can call, or I can reach out to them, then I want to be that person.”
To get the 10 QPR Team members started on their journey, they were given a briefing on Be the One and an overview of QPR by National Headquarters Be the One Manager Tony Cross, who is a QPR certified gatekeeper, on Feb. 14, during the Department of Iowa’s Mid-Winter Conference in Des Moines.
QPR is asking the hard question “’Are you thinking of killing yourself?’ If you’ve never done it, it’s going to shake you,” Cross said. “When you’ve done this training enough you can tell when a person is just not good.” Then it’s persuading the person to live and referring them to help. “QPR is all hope. Be a beacon for these people. I have a feeling we are about to see some incredible things here in Iowa.”
The start. The Be the One QPR Team initiated from a conversation about a year ago between Iowa’s Be the Committee chair and members Whitney Smith McIntosh, Cliff Barker and Larry “Grumpy” Haitz, respectively, who also are certified QPR gatekeepers. They wanted to do more to support Be the One, veterans in crisis and those trying to help them.
“What do we do when a Buddy Check call goes wrong?” asked Barker, the Department of Iowa’s Legion Riders chairman and 6th District vice commander.
“Or when it goes right and they actually open up,” added McIntosh, 6th District vice commander.
“There were some individuals who were concerned they weren’t ready (to ask the hard questions). And we went looking for training,” Barker continued. “The idea is to saturate the state of Iowa with people who are ready and able to ask the hard questions. Are you in danger? How do we get you to a safe place? How do we get you to one more. Whether it’s one more day. One more week. One more sunrise. We need one more.”
Those trainers were identified through an application that McIntosh put together and was publicized on the department’s website, Facebook page and newsletter. Questions asked about Legion Family affiliation, area of location, why they wanted to be a suicide prevention trainer, if they were comfortable with public speaking, can they be trusted, and if they were ready for the three-year commitment being asked of the trainers.
“We wanted people who were ready to put in three years,” McIntosh said. “Ready to have those hard conversations … are you thinking about suicide? Are you planning on dying tonight? Are you planning on not being here tomorrow morning?”
“This was not a voluntold situation,” Barker emphasized. “We weren’t looking for someone who was told to do this. We were looking for someone who wanted to do this.”
The commitment. Interviews were conducted with the applicants among the Be the One Committee members, and the identified 10 were sent offer letters for their signature. Richard Schwerdtfeger of Post 374 in Des Moines received and signed the offer letter.
“If I can train others that might catch somebody that I’ll never know, that’s another life saved,” he said. “By being a trainer, the more you get out, the more people you train, people are going to get saved. It’s just going to multiply to the point where hopefully there won’t be any veteran out there that cannot find somebody to listen to them.”
The commitment was not only asked of the trainers, but department leadership as well to support the QPR team initiative.
“I give a lot of credit to department staff for not just listening but understanding what we were trying to do,” Barker said. “This is not just a Legion program. This is a situation where it doesn’t matter who is in trouble, we have to do something. This will give the ability for the Department of Iowa to go to the next step. Because the hard realization is that we can’t save everyone, but we have to try. We have to put the information out there. We have to put the effort in and do the leg work.”
The QPR certification training is a 14-hour online course that cost nearly $600 a person. McIntosh has a grant request for $12,000 to Iowa’s biggest casino, Prairie Meadows, and is in the process of filling one out for $10,000 with Casey’s General Stores to train more Be the One QPR Team members.
Be the One “is not just something we’re going to say,” McIntosh said. “It’s something we’re going to do. QPR and Be the One, it’s not just about suicide, it’s about relationships. It’s about making those relationships stronger. By having this (QPR team), we are going to make the Legion Family stronger.”
The why. Barker recalls Past National Commander Daniel Seehafer asking why you are here as we all have our reasons. “That stuck with me. Why are we here? Why are we putting in the last year 50,000 emails and phone calls into something like this? It’s to make a difference,” he said. “To be the one to make a difference, it has to start somewhere. We’ve all lost someone to suicide. It’s difficult to have someone say, ‘I can’t stop it.’ Well, we can’t stop trying.”
Haitz sees the QPR team as giving hope and a message to veterans to keep moving forward.
“Be the One is everything. Suicide prevention, everything,” Haitz said. “Stopping this mentality of ‘There’s nothing I can do, I’m going to end it, and everything will be great.’ It won’t be great.
“It is so important for (veterans) to realize it is not the way out. It just creates so much more hurt and pain for everyone. You might be ending your life, and you think you’re going to be great, but you’re not. You have to realize, ‘I’m going to take one more step. I’m going to go on today.’ If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl. But go forward. Continue on. It will get better. It may not be tomorrow, but it will get better. We have to get that word out and QPR is the way to go. We can be the catalysts to show them that way.”
“Don’t quit,” Haitz added.
“Don’t quit,” Barker reiterated.
- Be the One