For this season of Veterans' Voices, WYSO is partnering with the southwest Ohio chapter of Blue Star Families, a national nonprofit supporting military families. The theme of this season is the unique challenges faced by family members of those who serve.
Today, we’re sharing a personal story from Emily Maples, a young woman from Middletown, Ohio. Emily’s father served in the Iraq War, and when he returned, the man she knew was no longer the same. In this episode, Emily opens up about the challenges of watching her father struggle with PTSD and how that experience shaped both her childhood and her understanding of military service.
The following transcript is lightly edited for length and clarity.
Emily Maples: Well, my dad was in the military, like he went overseas, he fought for the country. And I think a lot of the reason why my dad went into the military is because of his dad.
I honestly... I think a lot of it runs in the blood, like the desire to want to go join the military to serve your country. It's kind of a family thing, I guess.
I guess some don't understand how hard it can be. And when he got home, it was really bad. I don't remember a lot about it, but I remember that I was trying to get him help and...and going back and forth between VAs when I was little and stuff like that. He has PTSD and a traumatic brain injury. So he... I'm trying to word it in a good way... Anger. He gets angry easily. You just got to be patient with him. He gets frustrated so easily, especially with the memory.
Way back in... I think it was 2010...He got so bad that he forgot how to swallow, and we almost lost him back then. Like he has lesions all over his brain. So he's a stroke risk um really bad. And...And now he has this heart issue because he has AFib.
He literally went over there and left his memory over there, like in the combat zone.Emily Maples
And yeah, there are a couple instances where medication he had a reaction to that... Like a couple of years ago, he had a... I forget which medicine it was, but he came home and he thought we were like... Like the enemy. He thought we were the enemy. Like, no, we're not the enemy. And it's crazy that if your brain is that damaged that a medicine can do that, and it's... just...it opens your eyes.
Last year, actually, he was coming out of anesthesia because he had to have a heart procedure. He thought that he was a prisoner of war, that he had been shot in the neck, that he had been shot in the thigh. And he literally was laying there saying, 'Don't kill me. Don't kill me. I don't want to die. I don't want to die.'

And it wasn't him. He was scared. And it's sad. It's really sad. So I hate it. I hate it for him. I really do.
And he just gets frustrated so easily. So, as a teenager, we argued a lot. But as I got older and I kind of was like, 'Hey, this is why he is the way he is. He can't help it.' He literally went over there and left his memory over there, like in the combat zone. And he'll say, He'll tell you that, too.
And I think just also not knowing him really before was hard on me because I didn't understand it. I didn't know Dad pre.. pre-combat. I was little. I was just a kid. And I think that's similar for a lot of military kids when their dads go overseas when they're younger; it's harder to understand.
I think it just it takes a special person to do something like that. And if you're able to go there, you're able to, um, go to like basic training and pass that and actually like go out there and serve the country in any way, even if you don't deploy. Still, it's a special thing. You have to be a special person to do it, I think.
Veterans' Voices is supported by Wright-Patt Credit Union and the Montgomery County Veterans Service Commission.