The Life and Lonely Death of Noah Pierce

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In April 2008, Ira R. Katz, deputy chief patient care services officer for mental health at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, became embroiled in scandal when a memo surfaced in which he instructed members of his staff to suppress the results of an internal investigation into the number of veterans attempting suicide. Based on their surveys, along with tabulations from the National Center for Health Statistics and the Centers for Disease Control, Katz estimated that between 550 and 650 veterans were committing suicide each month. It pains Noah’s family and friends that the Pentagon will never add him—nor the thousands like him—to the official tally of 4,000-plus war dead.

Likewise, PTSD and minor traumatic brain injuries (MTBI) are excluded from the count of 50,000 severe combat wounds—even though PTSD and MTBI often have far greater long-term health effects than bullet wounds or even lost limbs. A study by the RAND Corporation found that approximately 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans—one in five—suffer from depression or stress disorders and another 320,000 suffer from MTBIs that place them at a higher risk for depression and stress disorders.

Noah’s mother, Cheryl Softich, believes her son’s death could have been avoided had he received counseling. Statistically, veterans outside the VA system are four times more likely to attempt suicide than those within the system. Now Cheryl’s mission is to have a clause inserted into every standard military contract that would require veterans to visit a therapist every two weeks of the first year after a combat deployment. “Soldiers are taught to follow orders,” she says. “It needs to be mandatory. Noah was an excellent soldier, and if it was mandatory, he would have gone faithfully to every appointment.”

Cheryl is a slight, chain-smoking woman of 50, whose disarmingly direct approach to conversation could easily be mistaken as brusque by an outsider. Sinking into the oversize leather couch in her living room, she recounts her 12-hour labor, two days before Christmas 1983. She remembers the blinding pain of each contraction and smiles when she recalls that the doctor asked permission for a group of 20 medical students to observe. “As long as you get this baby out of me, I don’t care who watches,” she remembers saying. Then her smile fades: “As soon as they put him in my arms, this feeling washed over me, and I knew instantly that I was going to outlive this child. Did not know how or why, but I was going to outlive this child.”

The feeling returned the day, not long after 9/11, that Noah came home with enlistment papers. He was a few months shy of 18 and needed a parental signature. “He put me between a rock and a hard place,” Cheryl says. “ ‘Either sign these papers and show you support me and my decision, or I’m signing them in a couple of months without your support.’ Well, no child of mine is going off to war thinking I don’t support him. Did I try to talk him out of it? Hell, yes. Did I finally give up trying to talk him out of it? Yes, because it was what he was going to do, so I accepted it, and I was proud of him for his decision.”

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