MEDIA ADVISORY

May 27, 2010

Senate candidate Bob Krause to meet with veterans with PTSD in Logan Friday afternoon

U. S. Senate candidate Bob Krause, a retired Lieutenant Colonel with the U. S. Army Reserves who chaired the Iowa Democratic Veterans Caucus from 2006 until a few months ago, will meet with two veterans of the Iraq war on Friday afternoon at the Harrison County Jail in Logan at 2:30 p.m. They will discuss how war alters lives and minds and Krause will stress the need for more support for the growing number of victims of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among veterans returning from service in the Middle East.

U.S. Senate candidate Bob Krause

"Our troops, those on the war front and those who are just returning from war, need more support than simplistic three-word patriotic bumper stickers," said Krause, who said that Matt Clayton of Onawa is an example of veterans who need treatment and support. Krause will meet with him and with Maria Deike of Plainfield, Ia., who also suffers from PTSD as a result of her service in Iraq.

Clayton, who turned 35 on May 21, the day before he began a 71-day jail sentence, was a gifted mathematician and a college senior planning to become an algebra teacher. His career path took a detour in 2003 to Iraq, where he served as a Navy Corpsman with the Marine Corps’ 1st Tank Battalion on the war’s frontline. He nearly shot a 10-year-old boy on the first night of the war and later found himself giving medical treatment to the same "enemy combatants" he had earlier been instructed to shoot.

Matt Clayton, a Navy hospital corpsman who served with the Marines on Iraq's frontline, was a college senior and gifted mathematician who hoped to complete his education and teach algebra at the college level once he finished his tour in Iraq.

Clayton made it home from Iraq to Iowa, but his dream of teaching math at a community college did not. Instead, the dream escaped somewhere in Iraq near his fallen comrades and what Matt calls "carnage and destruction burned into my memory forever."

Some time after leaving the military, Matt was arrested after breaking into Onawa Family Dentistry in Onawa in search of painkillers. Matt's parents are Lance Clayton, a veteran who served 20 years with the U. S. Marines, and Kim Berens, a registered nurse, both of Onawa.

Krause, a former state legislator, is one of Iowa’s three Democratic candidates for the U. S. Senate to oppose incumbent Senator Charles Grasley in the general election.

"Bob has spent his entire career serving his community, his state and his country," said Jody Ewing of Onawa, an Iowa Democratic Party State Central Committee member who helped to arrange Friday's meeting. "He has worked tirelessly in recent years to bring to the forefront important veterans’ issues such as PTSD, substance abuse and homelessness. From the moment I learned he was running for Senate, I knew help and change was on the way for my nephew and thousands more veterans like him."

Krause and his wife, Vicky, make their home in Fairfield.


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Thursday, May 27, 2010

Contacts:
Keith Dinsmore
573-230-5360
keith@krauseforiowa.com

Jody Ewing
712-433-2379 or 712-333-1989
jody@jodyewing.com