Madison woman runs nonprofit to help prevent veteran suicides. Here is how to help
This story explores mental health. If you are at risk, please stop here and contact 988 Suicide and CrisisLifeline.
One month after graduating from Madison Central High School in 2009, Michael Vinson joined the U.S. Air Force and rose through the ranks to reach the role of technical sergeant working on search and rescue planes.
After seven years in the air force, he earned an honorable discharge, but he faced mental health issues in silence before taking his own life in 2019.
As a result his mother, Susan Cleland of Madison, founded Mission Vigilant — For the 22 the next year in 2020.
"No one ever knew his struggles were so deep," Cleland says on the Mission Vigilant website.
Mission Vigilant began as a way for Cleland to heal, she said.
Following the tragedy, she connected with Michelle Ladd, founder of the Facebook group Mothers of Veteran Suicide.
Obit: Michael Ryan Vinson
Ladd encouraged Cleland to share her journey of faith and healing. Cleland decided to start a non-profit dedicated to helping Mississippi’s veterans connect with mental health services.
Cleland said Mission Vigilant aided 21 veterans last year by covering the costs of their counseling. This year, she hopes to double that number.
The name “Mission Vigilant” shares the same initials as “Michael Vinson,” Cleland said, noting that the name helps her remember and honor her son every time she says it.
The “For the 22” came Cleland said after she heard that 22 veterans die by suicide each day in the United States. The accuracy of that number is uncertain but in recent years as many as 16 per day, according to the 2022 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report, have been reported, and Cleland said she wants to keep that number from growing.
Mission Vigilant is a donation-based nonprofit and will host a fundraiser called Ruck22 Buddy Check from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 16, at the Bellevue Clubhouse at Lake Caroline, 667 Bellevue Dr., Madison.
This Saturday will mark the third-annual event held in September in honor of Suicide Awareness Month and will feature several activities including a 5K ruck, a bake sale and a silent auction with art from local artists. The grand prize for this year’s silent auction is a one-week stay in an Alabama cabin.
Participants can sign up on the nonprofit’s Facebook and their website.
A "ruck" involves soldiers carrying everything on their backs while traveling on foot, sometimes for miles. Cleland said a ruck is more than a physical journey.
“It’s a time to tell your stories. It’s a time to keep everybody’s morale up,” Cleland said.
Participants are not required to carry anything during the ruck, but Cleland hopes the activity will invoke endurance and camaraderie even without the weight.
The fundraiser begins with a warm-up at 8:30 a.m. before the ruck begins at 9 a.m. The remaining activities begin at 10 a.m.
A book detailing Cleland's journey, "Mission Vigilant: A Mother’s Crusade to Stem the Tide of Veteran Suicide," available now on Amazon, will officially debut at Saturday’s event where co-authors Cleland and Sherye Green will sign copies.
During her healing, Cleland came to Green, a Jackson-based author and her friend of 20 years, and told her they needed to turn her experience into a book. Over the course of the last 18 months, Green worked with Cleland to tell her story.
Green previously wrote "Surviving Hitler, Evading Stalin: One Woman’s Remarkable Escape from Nazi Germany." Green worked closely with the book’s subject, Mildred Schindler, in order to craft the narrative from Schindler’s perspective.
Using interviews with Cleland and transcriptions from Cleland’s prayer journals, Green pieced together her story. In comparison to "Surviving Hitler, Evading Stalin," Green said her personal relationship with Cleland made it easier to craft a narrative in someone else’s voice. Still, she said the most challenging part of the writing process was accurately portraying Cleland’s experiences through her eyes.
Both "Surviving Hitler, Evading Stalin" and "Mission Vigilant" are faith-based, but Green said the reader doesn’t have to be Christian to find meaning in Cleland's story. She hopes the book will touch others with similar experiences who might feel isolated.
“It’s human nature for any of us to think when we have a problem, 'No one would understand me, or if I told someone this, they would think I was nuts,'” Green said. “One of our greatest hopes with this book is to bring into the mainstream conversation the subject of suicide.”
The book takes the reader through four parts: Part one details Cleland's experience with Michael. Part two centers around the phenomenon of veteran suicide across the country. Part three describes Cleland’s healing journey, and part four focuses on the nonprofit. There is an additional section with several pages of mental health resources.
Cleland, who normally spends her days as a traveling hair stylist for home-bound people, said she wanted to write the book to give mothers like her a sense of resilience. The first few chapters describe the hardships she went through losing her son. Then comes the hope.
“After you get past the hard part, you start to feel like your heart is filling up with hope,” Cleland said. “You think you know your purpose in life and God is going to just slap it in your face and say, ‘This is your purpose in life.’”
Green said another goal the pair hopes to achieve is curbing the stigma surrounding suicide within the military. With her son, Mark, in the Navy Reserve, Green said she feels a great sense of responsibility to bring attention to the mental health of active and former military members. She hopes Saturday’s event will continue the conversation.
“There are a lot of veterans we found in these last years that have attended,” Green said. “Sometimes even in a non-assuming way, you can begin a conversation with someone that, you know, you hope maybe later might save a life.”
When asked what she would say to a struggling veteran, Cleland’s message mirrored Green’s:
“Don’t give up. It’s minute to minute. Hold on. It will go away. There is hope.”
If you go
What: Ruck22 Buddy Check
When: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 16
Where: Bellevue Clubhouse at Lake Caroline, 667 Bellevue Dr., Madison
This article originally appeared on Aberdeen News: Madison MS donation-based nonprofit works to prevent veteran suicide
