Veteran handles PTSD, family life with faith

At 18, John Cornelius III followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the U.S. Army. When he left military service after serving in South Korea and Iraq, he still had battles to fight and win.

Today, Cornelius is a peer specialist at the John J. Pershing VA Medical Center and talks freely about his struggles, victories and willingness to help his fellow veterans.

Speaking with pride, Cornelius explained, it was “always a big thing John Jr. was an Army veteran.”

Born in Poplar Bluff, Cornelius was raised with his dad’s family on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He is an Oglala Lakota Native American.

“I lived there until I was 18 and I joined the Army,” he said. “There was not much to do on the reservation. I was 15 when I got my first taxpaying job after I got my work permit. There was not many job opportunities and I was tired of school.”

Cornelius served in the Army and National Guard. As a new recruit, he was trained to be a stinger missile operator and did a tour of duty in South Korea.

He smiles as he recalls his time in the military, talking about the camaraderie among his fellow troops. There were no judgments made, “people jumped right in.”

“I can still remember doing things like strapping a plywood board to a vehicle and using it to plow snow,” he said. Another time he and his friends went “surfing down the stairs on an ironing board.”

After returning from deployment to South Korea, he was stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas. He also went to “jump school,” which is the United States Army Airborne School, where he was trained to be a paratrooper. He was trained to be a Chinook helicopter mechanic and was stationed at Fort Bragg before being deployed to Iraq.

At first in Iraq, the weather was cool, but it soon became so hot he had to spray water on the helicopters before he worked on them outside.

After completing his time in the Army, he joined the National Guard where he was trained as a combat medic and served with a military police unit in South Dakota.

During his time in the military, Cornelius developed post traumatic stress disorder and suffered a back injury.

Dealing with PTSD and the injury, Cornelius developed a substance abuse problem. It didn’t help, he and the mother of his daughters, Mikiyela, Emily and Eden, divorced. While the tribal court gave them joint custody, his former wife moved out of state, so he feels he lost custody and visitation rights.

“When I was fresh out of military going through PTSD and substance use, I was alone,” he said.

He didn’t realize programs were only 80 miles away from him in South Dakota.

“By the time I found out about the help, I knew I was leaving anyway,” he said.

Cornelius admits he “went to a dark place bouncing from job to job, ultimately living in Phoenix, Arizona.”

When he left Phoenix, he recalled telling God he didn’t care where, but asked God to take him to a better life.

After three months, he ended up in Poplar Bluff. “I knew one person and had $50 in my pocket,’ he said.

While he was born in Poplar Bluff, he had never lived here.

His early help with his issues was putting a Band-Aid on his problems, but no real treatment, he said.

While he was in the military, he believed “on the board scale everyone came before me.”

His goal was to work at the local VA Medical Center, but his first local job was at the Sonshine Home on AA Highway. Caring for Sonshine residents, he learned he could “take care of people and do good, which was a really good thing for me. It was an opportunity to grow and learn.”

His next job was at WW Wood Products, Inc., where he acquired work and church friends. One of those friends came to him and asked, “are you still trying to get a job at the VA?”

Cornelius admitted, “I had tried five or six times.”

The friend said, “Let’s brush up your resume. There is a job in housekeeping.”

“He helped me every step of the way and I worked in housekeeping almost three years,” he said, adding “I was getting stronger in my recovery from substance abuse. I would watch other veterans struggling in recovery. When I had a break, I headed to their rooms and we would read a devotional together. Somebody noticed I was doing that. A man named Paul stopped me and said there is a job and you need to apply for it.”

He applied for and was awarded a place on the certified peer support team at the local facility.

Cornelius explains his recovery “goes back to the Sonshine Home. I get to be the person who says these are my options. I have the gratification of knowing I am in a place in my own recovery. I can work with a great team and help homeless veterans find supported employment and a place to live.

“I want to brag on the John J. Pershing VA Medical Center as a whole and especially the at-risk program. No one uses VISN (Veterans Integrated Services Network) like the local medical team. I’ve been blessed to work with a team of several veterans who are so dedicated to serving veterans. They are people who go above and beyond. I am very grateful to be a part of that.”

Cornelius and his wife, Krista, have a son. “When I learned nine years ago my youngest child was going to be a boy, my family in South Dakota thought the baby would be Cornelieus IV,” but he surprised them by naming him Kal-El, which is Superman’s name. They are two separate Hebrew words Kal, child of God, and El, messenger of God.

Cornelius likes to read, cook, exercise and “spend time with my boy who wants to be an engineer and on the first manned mission to Mars.” He attends Memorial Baptist Church.

He also enjoys his 2007 Honda Shadow 1100 and said with a smile, “every summer I say I’m going to get rid of it, but I keep riding. If I go on my bike, just know I went happy.”