Every summer, Randy Carter’s mother, Bea, would ship him up north to stay with his grandparents. “She was worried because she was a single mother. She worked all day at restaurants up and down Essex Street and she wanted me to be safe.”
Randy is the youngest of Bea’s six children and the first one to graduate from high school. “I remember my mother saying ‘one of my kids is going to graduate high school if it kills me!’ She said she’d take me to school every day if she had to. I decided on GLTS because a lot of my friends were going there and I thought I’d have the chance to learn a good trade.”
Carter grew up on Hancock Street before moving to Essex Street in the early 70’s. “Even that was a culture shock. I was three streets away but it was still a culture shock.” He attended the Hennessey, Bruce and Oliver Schools and then enrolled in the Distributive Education shop at Greater Lawrence Tech.
While Randy avoided getting into trouble he was no stranger to “mischief”. “I met some good people growing up and had some good teachers in school who steered me in the right direction. I had some teachers, like Mr. Yancy and Mr. Troia, who would grab me by the back of the collar and tell me ‘there are two roads you can take and you’re going down the wrong one.’” Carter listened.
Carter’s biological father was not in the picture but his stepfather, Pat Biron, became a very important influence. “He was a huge influence, really a father figure. He was a hard working guy. He let us make our own choices as long as our schoolwork wasn’t affected. ‘I’ll give you enough leash to hang yourself and then that’s it,’ he would say.”
“I grew up in a neighborhood where every kid would know everybody. Their parents knew who you were and when one kid got in trouble, the other parents would get a phone call. The good ol’ days,” Carter laughed.
“Going to GLTS I was able to meet kids from Andover, North Andover, and Methuen who I had a lot in common with. When I was a kid Methuen seemed like it was on the other side of the world. Going to GLTS gave me a sense of diversity and I realized that a lot of kids, wherever they’re from, have the same social issues and they think they’re alone and they’re really not. There were a lot of great teachers when I went there, a lot of supportive teachers. We felt like we were more than just a number and that the teachers cared.”
In 1983 Randy got married, graduated high school, had a child, left for boot camp, graduated from boot camp in Fort Knox, Kentucky and turned 18, in that order.
GLTS’ Coach Connors pulled Carter aside when he learned of his plans to join the army. “He was concerned…he was like an older brother.” The coach became a great influence. “He wouldn’t scream and yell – he’d just make you do what you were supposed to do and throw in some extra laps if you didn’t. We’d run those laps and he’d say ‘Don’t just run, think about what you’re doing while you run.’ I never had the chance to sit down and talk to him and tell him what an influence he had on me.”
After boot camp, Carter drove a tank and an armored personnel carrier and was deployed overseas to Iceland and Germany. In 1990 Desert Storm began and Carter saw action in Saudi Arabia. After serving 9 years in the army Randy switched to a different branch of the service – the Air Force. “A friend of mine was in the Air Force at the time and he was flying to all these exotic places, so I decided I wanted to give it a try.” Carter ran flight lines and had deployments across the globe.
Carter once again saw action in the Middle East during the Iraq war. “I didn’t really think about being scared – there’s always something that makes you stop thinking about the fear. You’re either worried about the mission or you’re worried about the people next to you. You really don’t think about it until afterwards – after the adrenaline stops – and that is one of the biggest problems with a veteran or anybody with a high stakes job. You have hours and hours of mundane dullness and someone flips the switch and you go from zero to 100 and then the switch flips again and you go from 100 to zero with no gradual relief. Veterans are never taught how to take a breath.”
After serving 24 years Randy retired in 2007 with an E7 rank – Technical Sargent, and began working for a company inspecting steel in buildings. But he soon learned that “what goes around, comes around” when his son, Craig, joined the service and was deployed in Iraq. “I got to feel what my family had felt when I was away.” In 2011 Randy’s son left the military and soon after suffered a heart attack and a stroke.
Carter took some time off to help Craig with therapy, he was suffering not only from paralysis in his left hand, but also from post-traumatic stress disorder. They were frustrated with the treatment he was receiving from an overwhelmed VA system so Randy met with the director. He asked what he could do to better help his son and the doctor said they needed more triage on the outside and asked Randy if he had a degree. Carter walked out of the office, went home and told his wife he was going back to school full time.
“Everyone comes to a fork in the road and you’ve got to decide which path to take – so by my going to school I could learn what his issues were and how to work with them and at the same time I was able to help others too.” Carter graduated from Hesser College with a degree in psychology and began volunteering at the Veterans Northeast Outreach Center in Haverhill, which soon turned into a full time career.
The Outreach Center has been in continuous operation since 1985. Established in Lawrence, VNOC started as a storefront operation, staffed largely by volunteers, to provide support and advocacy to Vietnam Veterans. Through the years, the focus of the Center has expanded to accommodate over 50,000 Veterans in our region who are eligible for care. The Center provides a continuum of care to Veterans, their families, from the very basic food and shelter needs to advocacy, information, referral, career, and education services.
VNOC also sponsors a number of outreach initiatives to Veterans of all eras and families of Veterans. The Center is funded, in part, through contracts with Department of Veterans Affairs, Mass. Department of Veterans Services, US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, and private donations.
Currently, VNOC operates twelve properties throughout Essex and Middlesex Counties which provide affordable housing for Veterans. The center is constantly working to expand and add living spaces in order to provide more affordable housing units for as many local Veterans as possible.
“One of the biggest needs for veterans in this area is educating them on the benefits they can tap into. Homelessness is an issue, opioid abuse is an issue, unemployment and underemployment is an issue. If a vet walks in my door we can basically do whatever the need is; if they’re underemployed, we can help them get a better job, if they need a place to live we own or manage about two hundred apartments in Massachusetts. We have very strict case management, we do financial counseling. If they need other counseling we have onsite clinicians. We do something as simple as guitar therapy every Monday.”
The veterans are a very solid group, Carter acknowledges. “They’re tight and they don’t feel they should be the one to get the benefit – they’d rather see someone else get the benefit. It’s a pride thing. One of my jobs is to assure them that this benefit belongs to them – they earned it!”
One of the greatest benefits of joining the service is camaraderie. “Kids like us, we leave the streets and we don’t know what we’re getting into, but we find the teamwork, we find the brothers and sisters that we always wanted to have. And once you get that feeling, you don’t want to lose it.” Leaving the service is often a feeling akin to returning to a home with divorced parents.
“Most of these vets…their most memorable time was when they were in the military, when they had the most responsibility, when they had the most people who relied on them. I think of a line in a movie: ‘I was in charge of 10 million dollars of equipment, now I can’t even get a job at a carwash.’ That’s a problem.”
Natasha Young, a VNOC outreach program coordinator and a retired two time combat deployed marine, agrees with Carter about leaving the adrenaline highs behind. “With adrenaline, like addiction with any substance abuse, the chemistry of the brain changes.”
“And what does that do to one’s psyche?” Carter asks. “It’s what we’re seeing now – a lot of these veterans had that, they had that rush and they had that adrenaline and they come out and don’t have a way to use that out here.”
Luckily, they have the Veterans Northeast Outreach Center. “We’re a good staging area, we’re a good foundation for them to start building on. Like I said, we don’t just put someone in an apartment, we have intensive case management. And fortunately, Massachusetts has more benefits for veterans than any other state in the nation.”
Randy’s son, Craig, has made great strides and runs the food pantry at the Center. The VNOC serves 65 to 70 veterans every Tuesday, and that doesn’t include the countless calls they receive for bags of groceries that are often need for veterans and their families. “Raytheon is a huge supporter of us, every year they donate a sizable amount to help us keep our food pantry going.”
While retirement is something Randy can see on the horizon he’s not ready yet. “When I retired from the Air Force someone asked me how I knew when it was time – I said you know when you wake up and don’t want to put the uniform on anymore.”
“I finally found what I love to do – I mean the military was great, it gave me such a strong foundation, but it’s also a family and that’s what I’ve found here. I know I can count on the people I work with here, whether it’s day or night or weekends.”
And as for his Reggie Family? “I had a great high school experience – and I have lifelong friends that I still keep in contact with and have a beer and talk about the old days. Thank God for Facebook!”
And thank you, Randy Carter, for your life in service.
For more information on how to donate to the Veterans Northeast Outreach Center Food Pantry call 978-372-3626 or visit the website at www.vneoc.org.