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Vet who asked to be arrested gets help finding home

Terry DeMio
tdemio@enquirer.com
Michelle McKenney, of Hebron, helps her father, Eugene McKenney, to a chair in his room at Atria Highland Crossing, Fort Wright. McKenney, 63, a Vietnam War veteran who was homeless and went to the Elsmere Police Department and asked to be arrested for vagrancy so he could get shelter. Several social service agencies and family members have worked to get him help and shelter.

ELSMERE – The rail-thin man wore a cap that stood out to Elsmere Police Sgt. Todd Cummins. This was a Vietnam veteran.

The man had slowly pushed himself with a walker to the door of the Elsmere Police Department on March 12 and quietly demanded to be arrested, but Cummins wasn't about to do that.

The man had done nothing wrong. He just had no place else to turn.

The officer sought help from nearby homeless ministries for Eugene McKenney, starting a turn of events in the veteran's life that would lead to a future potentially more promising than he'd had since before he went to Vietnam in 1970.

"I was a door gunner," McKenney offered last week, sitting with his daughter, Michelle McKenney of Hebron, and two advocates from Northern Kentucky homeless ministries who've been helping him.

Bob Plaskett, right, founder of PIN Ministry, was among those who helped Eugene McKenney, 63-year-old Vietnam War veteran who was homeless and went to the Elsmere Police Department and asked to be arrested for vagrancy so he could get shelter.

McKenney speaks little these days. He suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, Parkinson's disease and has had multiple strokes. He sat back Wednesday as his daughter relayed one of his most vivid memories of Vietnam.

"It's his first time he's out, and he has to shoot people. He said he couldn't do it," she said. "They told him to do it. He closed his eyes and started shooting.

"He had a buddy with him," she said. "The incoming fire came and blew his buddy's head off."

McKenney said he was ordered to clean up his buddy's remains hours later, after they'd been "baking" in the helicopter. When he said he couldn't do it, someone shot him up with heroin, he said, and he did as ordered.

Many things have happened to him since but this is the memory that stands out, says his daughter. This is the one that, for him, defines him.

The war changed her father and, Michelle McKenney said, altered what she is certain would have been a more functional, happier family life.

"He gave his life for our country in a hopeless war, and we did, too," she said.

Eugene McKenney returned to the United States in 1971 and was stationed in San Antonio when he got married and started a family. They returned to southern Kenton County in 1974, and Michelle, his middle daughter, was born in 1975.

McKenney quickly got off heroin but turned to alcohol, she said.

He was a hard worker, his daughter said, a welder for a while and a self-employed contractor, an electrician, plumber and painter. She cherishes memories of her dad taking her along to paint houses with him.

"My dad was a very vibrant young guy," Michelle McKenney said. "He told me he loved me every day. He played with me a lot. He could do back flips."

That inspired her interest in gymnastics, which has followed through to her daughter, Khadijah Hudson, 20, who is a University of Kentucky gymnast.

But there were dark times, and they increased over the years.

"I noticed his outraged behavior," Michelle McKenney said. "He'd be the most loving father. But he would become angry; he would sink into himself."

McKenney had the first of a series of strokes when Michelle was about 13. He'd already been notably depressed, his daughter said. "He wouldn't want to take a shower. He wouldn't brush his teeth. As we got older, it got worse. He physically started shutting down."

McKenney got divorced in 1999, and he found a place to live. But he was suffering, his daughter said.

"He just sort of started disappearing," his daughter said.

Then, on March 11, a longtime friend of his brought Eugene McKenney to his middle daughter's home.

He was more frail than she'd ever seen him. She got him a motel room and pondered what to do.

"It was on my heart," she said. "I thought, 'I can't just sit back here and do nothing.' "

But, by the next day, McKenney had disappeared again. It's not clear why he left the motel. He has some trouble remembering things. But he knows exactly why he thought he needed to go to the Elsmere Police Department that afternoon.

"Nobody wanted me," McKenney explained simply. "I'd been to the hospitals. Everything. The only thing I had left was to have them arrest me."

Sgt. Cummins brought him into the lobby and drove to Lifeline Ministries of Northern Kentucky. They called Bob Plaskett of People In Need, or PIN, Ministries, who came with a cooler full of sandwiches and drinks.

Plaskett took charge and got McKenney a room at a local motel, and Lifeline Ministries took over payment for the room for a week.

Cummins and Plaskett tried to learn all they could about him. They learned that McKenney actually had an income from disability and other benefits totaling $4,200 a month. But they also learned he'd been swindled out of all of his money. He didn't even have a debit card, because he'd handed it to someone who promised to get cash for him.

They looked for his family. Who was, in fact, frantic that he was gone.

When Khadijah Hudson came home from college that weekend and heard her grandfather had disappeared, she was worried. "We went out looking for him," her mother said.

They did not find him. But when Michelle returned home and opened her Facebook page, she saw a Lifeline Ministries post about an Elsmere police officer who'd helped a homeless man.

"It was the wrong picture. It wasn't them," she said. "But I knew it was him. I just knew."

Now she is in charge of his finances and has power of attorney over him. "They can't take advantage of him anymore," she said.

On Wednesday, Michelle McKenney signed a lease for her father at the Atria Highlands Crossing in Fort Wright.

"He has to sign out to leave," she said. "He's safe here. He will get the help he needs."

Sitting in the lobby of the Atria, McKenney seems unfazed by his surroundings.

Does he think he'll like this new life?

"Yes," he said.

When his daughter returns and walks him into what will become his apartment, she cheerily points out the furnishings and amenities.

Michelle McKenney is relieved.

"People think that when veterans come back they're supposed to have a normal life," she said.

"He didn't want to come back from Vietnam," she said, turning to him and saying, "Right, dad?"

"He didn't like being back into a normal society. He was traumatized. People forget. They need help and assistance."

Eugene McKenney got a small measure of that this month.

Everyone hopes it will be enough.