Ellie Kennedy and Marcia Franklin

[00:01] ELLIE KENNEDY: Hi. My name is Ellie Kennedy. I'm 65. Today's date is Wednesday, August 31, 2022. We're in Boise, Idaho, and my interview partner is Marcia Franklin, who is a good friend.

[00:14] MARCIA FRANKLIN: And I am Marcia Franklin. I am 60. Goodness. Today's date is Wednesday, August 31, 2022. We're in Boise, Idaho. At Boise State Public Radio, I am interviewing Ellie Kennedy, who is a friend of mine, and also I've interviewed for a documentary I made. So, Ellie, first of all, thank you for allowing me to talk with you, for asking me to talk with you. It's really an honor and a privilege to do so. And I just wanted to start, first of all, and ask you a little bit about where you grew up, how you grew up.

[00:58] ELLIE KENNEDY: Well, I was, my father was in the military, and so I grew up all over the place, as many people have. I lived in a variety of places, lived in Virginia, California, Connecticut, different places in Virginia, different places in California. So that was the majority of my grandmother growing up, moving around a fair amount, and then graduated from high school in Virginia. I went to Norfolk Catholic High School in Virginia. And, yeah, that was my main growing up time.

[01:33] MARCIA FRANKLIN: Was it hard moving around from place to place, or did you enjoy it?

[01:37] ELLIE KENNEDY: You know, sometimes it was hard. I think sometimes it depends on your age. I think the older you get, the harder it is, especially if you have certain friends that you're, you know, you like hanging out with. But I think, you know, it also gives you skills that you don't necessarily pick up anywhere else.

[01:58] MARCIA FRANKLIN: So your dad was in the military. What branch and what did he do?

[02:02] ELLIE KENNEDY: My dad was in the navy, and he was a world War Two veteran, but he was also, for the majority of his career, he was pretty sure he went to. But I don't know a lot about his later years because he was what is now considered a special operator. So he was a seal before seals were seals. He was a diver, and he did both kind of diving, the big things you see with the big helmets on and also scuba diving. So he was doing a lot of top secret stuff. So he was an e nine. So he was at the top of the enlisted scale when he got out. And he was in almost 30 years when he got out.

[02:47] MARCIA FRANKLIN: So growing up around a parent who was serving in the military, did you think you wanted to be in the military, or was that the last thing on your mind after having moved around and all of that?

[03:02] ELLIE KENNEDY: That was the last thing on my mind. And especially since when I graduated from high school, the person who spoke at our graduation was the top ranking Jeremiah Denton Denton, the top ranking POW during the Vietnam war. And they were released while we were in high school. I think it was my junior year and he spoke, or it might have been my senior year, 74. So he spoke at my graduation. And I had a number of friends whose fathers were in, were pows. And so the last thing after being in the military and then seeing some of what they went through, I did not think I wanted to be in the military.

[03:43] MARCIA FRANKLIN: What was his message that he was imparting to you? He was speaking about being a pow.

[03:49] ELLIE KENNEDY: It was very impactful. I mean, most people dont remember their high school graduation speakers, but the quote that he used, it's not on the tip of my tongue right now. I wish I had it. But basically it was just continuing to work together with a teenage can't do anything alone, and that as dark as things can get, there's always hope.

[04:14] MARCIA FRANKLIN: Well, that sounds kind of motivating to want you to go into the military. But there was something else that kept you back here, right?

[04:23] ELLIE KENNEDY: Right. So I just went to college for a couple of years, and then between my junior and senior year, actually, I was going to be, I was going to be transferring schools. I took a little bit of time off and had a serious accident, hurt my leg. And I had planned on going to Pepperdine University University for a couple of years on a partial basketball scholarship. And that was way before people usually had basketball scholarships. And during that time in my rehab, I spent a lot of time with physical therapists. And so I really thought I wanted to be a physical therapist. So once I recovered, one of the easiest ways to get some training in that area was to go into the military. So that's what I did. I went into the army reserves in 1979, and that's how I. That was the start of almost 15 years in the military.

[05:12] MARCIA FRANKLIN: How did you hurt your leg?

[05:14] ELLIE KENNEDY: I did something really dumb. I was on a three wheeler back when they used to make three wheelers, you see those little four wheelers that are in dirt and stuff like that? And somebody ran in front of me, went in front of me, and we collided and tore my leg. And so that was also the end of going to school because that was two months before I was supposed to go to Pepperdine University

[05:32] MARCIA FRANKLIN: So did you play basketball again after.

[05:36] ELLIE KENNEDY: That, or did that I did in the military.

[05:38] MARCIA FRANKLIN: Okay, we'll talk about that then. So just back to your graduation speaker. He sounds like he was a motivational speaker. But you said there was something about listening to him and then also knowing that your father's efforts in the military that initially kept you from joining, was it the POW part, the dangers of it?

[05:57] ELLIE KENNEDY: Well, I just think that brought Vietnam home to those of us who were younger. I think sometimes the younger generation weren't as aware of what was really going on. I mean, I was, because my dad was in the military, but, you know, and seeing friends and having friends he went to high school with who, you know, whose dads were gone.

[06:19] MARCIA FRANKLIN: So, yeah, I'm only five years younger than you are, but I, and I definitely remember Vietnam.

[06:26] ELLIE KENNEDY: Right.

[06:27] MARCIA FRANKLIN: It was certainly a driving force. We watched the news every single night.

[06:30] ELLIE KENNEDY: Right.

[06:31] MARCIA FRANKLIN: And you did know people whose big brothers went off to serve.

[06:36] ELLIE KENNEDY: Or fathers.

[06:36] MARCIA FRANKLIN: Or fathers, exactly. So you ended up mostly because you thought it would be helpful to get training as a physical therapist, joining the army reserves in 1979. And was there a reason you picked the army? Your dad was in the navy.

[06:54] ELLIE KENNEDY: No, the only reason I picked the army was because they were the only one that offered. I wanted to go. It was physical therapy assistant school, and they were the only ones that would guarantee that I could go. So it was army reserves, so I was going to spend a year or so on active duty and then just be a reservist.

[07:10] MARCIA FRANKLIN: In 1982, you went into active duty in the air force, though, right?

[07:16] ELLIE KENNEDY: Right. I ended up completing my training in the army reserves, and along the way I played basketball and had a really good experience during that time. I ended up on active d for pretty long time, and then I got out, but I wanted to finish college, and since I no longer had that partial scholarship to finish school, I needed a way to finish college, so I joined. I went on active duty in the Air force so that I could complete school.

[07:45] MARCIA FRANKLIN: And was that still in PT, or had you decided by then that you.

[07:49] ELLIE KENNEDY: No, I wanted to be a physical therapy assistant in the air force, but that's not quite how they do it. You go in and then they decide where they're going to put you, sort of thing. So I ended up being a medic and I did worked in an emergency room the majority of my time in the air force. And then I did actually have a, I did meet someone who was, he had some, you know, he had a way of getting me, you know, he was going to try to get me into physical therapy. And I actually had orders to go to the naval or, excuse me, the air Force academy as a PT assistant, but working with sports teams. And then he tried to get those orders through. And I already had orders somewhere else, so I wasn't able to go, but, yeah. So I spent four years in the military, got married during that time, had two children. It was about four and a half years that I was in. And then I got out and transferred into the air force reserves because my children were little and there were just things that I wasn't able to do in terms of wanting to be there for them.

[08:55] MARCIA FRANKLIN: But when your children were still very young, you then were deployed. Yes. And you went into what we call the Gulf War or Desert Storm. Talk about how that happened. If you were in the reserves, how it happened that you ended up.

[09:13] ELLIE KENNEDY: Well, I was in the air force reserves. Sorry, I didn't interrupt you, but I was in the air Force reserves, and I wanted to go become an officer because I figured I was going to stay in for 20 years in the reserves, and they didn't have any slots in the Air Force. So someone said, well, if you go through the army officer candidate program, then you can usually transfer back once you actually have your commission. So I did that, and I went to officer candidate school in Fort Benning. It's one of the hardest things I've ever done in my entire life because they are the infantry school there. And shortly after I finished all of my training, I had a slot to go back into the Air force. And then the Gulf war came up, and I was called up. So in December of 1990, I was called up to go to the Gulf War.

[10:04] MARCIA FRANKLIN: And your rank was first lieutenant? Yes.

[10:06] ELLIE KENNEDY: I went in as a second lieutenant because I was brand new, out of school, and then I made, technically, while I was there. Excuse me, first lieutenant.

[10:15] MARCIA FRANKLIN: So just out of curiosity, did your father, who was a Navy guy, care that you were in these other branches in the military?

[10:25] ELLIE KENNEDY: Actually, I joined a year after he passed away.

[10:27] MARCIA FRANKLIN: Okay.

[10:28] ELLIE KENNEDY: So he never knew, you know, about me being in the military.

[10:32] MARCIA FRANKLIN: So when you got the news that you were going to be going, and again, your kids were like, five and three or something, do you remember that day and what it felt like to know that you were going? Were you excited or were you.

[10:46] ELLIE KENNEDY: No. I was in the middle of graduate school, and I had an assistantship at Michigan State University. I was just finishing up my exams, and I remember getting the call first thing in the morning, and I needed to be gone in just a very short amount of time, like the following week. So I had student housing that was part of my assistantship. And so I just had to drop everything and get packed up and get my kids packed up and be deployed in, like, a week. So it was pretty shocking actually kind of going from an academic environment to, and I wasn't going to, I wasn't in a unit yet, so I wasn't, you know, active in the military at that time, even though I was still in technically. So it was a little bit of whiplash to go from an academic environment to just joining a unit where you didn't know anyone and then ending up, you know, in less than ten days landing in southeast Arabia.

[11:57] MARCIA FRANKLIN: What were you studying in graduate school?

[12:01] ELLIE KENNEDY: I did eventually get my masters in college and university administration in Michigan State, so that's what I was studying.

[12:08] MARCIA FRANKLIN: So you'd moved from PT on to others, right?

[12:13] ELLIE KENNEDY: I just, yeah, that was the main thing at that time. I didn't, it would take another four years just to, to get a doctorate in PT. So it was a long road. And so I really enjoyed being on a college campus and I found out what I really loved. So it was great.

[12:33] MARCIA FRANKLIN: And I want to ask you before we move on, you mentioned how hard officer candidate school was in the army and training with the infantry. And were there other women at that point or many other women?

[12:45] ELLIE KENNEDY: Yes, there were. We started out with 155 people altogether. We only graduated about 87. I don't remember how many women we had, but we only graduated twelve. So we lost, we pretty much lost about three quarters of the women. I think we had about 45 or 50 women. We lost almost all of them.

[13:04] MARCIA FRANKLIN: And what was the hardest, that's the hardest thing you've ever done was, was it the physical part of it?

[13:10] ELLIE KENNEDY: It was both because, you know, they, they want to put you in the highest stress humanly possible, physically and mentally, so that if you are in a war or situations like that, you can still, you can understand what it feels like for your body and your mind. And so it wasn't just making it difficult just to be difficult. I mean, we spent a week in ranger school, so it was really tough. It was really, really tough.

[13:38] MARCIA FRANKLIN: But you made it year one of the twelve.

[13:40] ELLIE KENNEDY: I did. It took me about six months for my body to recover afterwards.

[13:44] MARCIA FRANKLIN: Well, and now. And now you're in. Do you remember the date when you landed in Saudi Arabia?

[13:50] ELLIE KENNEDY: December 22, 1990. Mm hmm.

[13:53] MARCIA FRANKLIN: And you said you were packing up your kids. Did they come with you or were they being packed up to go live with somebody else in your.

[13:59] ELLIE KENNEDY: They lived with my ex husband because I had also recently been divorced.

[14:04] MARCIA FRANKLIN: So a lot going on at the same time.

[14:06] ELLIE KENNEDY: Right. Thankfully, he was also a student, Michigan state, and lived in a different apartment in the student apartments. So we didn't have to pull them out of their schools or get a different child arrangement child, you know, taking care of the babysitters and stuff like that. So. And what was really interesting, I just want to say this last thing, is that the school that they, that my daughter went to, Michigan State at the time, had the largest number of foreign students of any other college campus. And so there were very few, quote unquote, white kids from the United States in her class. It was amazing. They had kids from Saudi, Kuwait, Iran, Iraq, all over the world. So it was really fascinating that a lot of these families were being impacted by the war as well as me as a veteran, as a soldier going over there. So it was really kind of interesting.

[15:00] MARCIA FRANKLIN: For those kids and a parallel lives, in a way. What was your initial sense of Saudi when you landed in the Middle east? Obviously, eventually you were going to leave Saudi, or did you stay in Saudi?

[15:16] ELLIE KENNEDY: I was in Saudi and Kuwait during the majority of the time.

[15:19] MARCIA FRANKLIN: So what were your initial impressions of this?

[15:22] ELLIE KENNEDY: Oh, my gosh. It's surreal. When you go into a situation like that, it just feels surreal, like you just came out of. I think when you're training all along, it's different. But if you're technically a civilian, even though you're in the military and just be in a situation like that, it's just, it was surreal. It was very surreal. And we, our first place that we stayed was, it was basically out in the middle of nowhere. I don't even remember where we were. It was. But they had all tents everywhere. And then the way that you figured out where you were going and where people were at was done by the United States map. So you had, like, New York and San Francisco and Chicago, and somebody would say, oh, my. And they had little things all over. That's how big it was. We had hundreds of thousands of people there. And if you were trying to find somebody or get somewhere, somebody would say, oh, we're over by Chicago, you know, go down ten tenths to the left kind of thing.

[16:23] MARCIA FRANKLIN: So, so it had, the tents had the names of, like, Chicago and New York on them.

[16:27] ELLIE KENNEDY: Well, they had different areas that were like San Francisco, and then they had, like, these wooden things with the, you know, a map of the United States. And then it would say different units and different places. And, you know, if you're trying to find somebody, where were you?

[16:39] MARCIA FRANKLIN: What was your.

[16:40] ELLIE KENNEDY: I don't remember. I don't remember.

[16:42] MARCIA FRANKLIN: It wasn't Boise, Idaho, though.

[16:43] ELLIE KENNEDY: No, it wasn't boise, Idaho.

[16:45] MARCIA FRANKLIN: So. And it's probably hot and, you know, it's dusty or sandy, and, well, it.

[16:51] ELLIE KENNEDY: Was really cold at night.

[16:53] MARCIA FRANKLIN: Really?

[16:53] ELLIE KENNEDY: It was really, really cold at night. Interesting.

[16:56] MARCIA FRANKLIN: So talk a little bit about your. Your job and what you were assigned to do.

[17:03] ELLIE KENNEDY: Well, I was mostly an administrative type person. That was my title, sort of something called adjutant general. But they didn't have enough postal officers, so I was a postal officer, and basically, we were a postal unit. That was the general postal unit. So every single piece of mail that came to anyone who was in the army came through our unit. And then my primary job while I was there was making sure that all of the trucks left on time every single day to get the mail out to all the apos all over the theater. So that was my job I was in charge of at the time was the largest military postal operation in history, in us history.

[17:50] MARCIA FRANKLIN: And APO stands for.

[17:52] ELLIE KENNEDY: I don't remember. It just. Is there, like, apos, like, if you send something to. I don't even remember now.

[17:57] MARCIA FRANKLIN: Like, kind of having a postal office, basically.

[17:59] ELLIE KENNEDY: Right, right.

[18:01] MARCIA FRANKLIN: So what did you know about delivering mail before then?

[18:05] ELLIE KENNEDY: I didn't know anything. And so that's one thing about being, you know, having been senior enlisted and also an officer is you count on the people who know what they're doing. And everybody in the unit, pretty much everyone in the unit were, as civilians, were postal workers. So that's because it was a postal unit. Right. So they all knew what they were doing, and they were all trained in that area. I had no idea. I was just what they call attached to them. So I didn't know a single thing about postal stuff. So, you know, as a leader, you know that you let the people who know what they're doing do what they need to do, and they teach you. But also, my primary thing was moving the mail, getting it to where it needed to go, to all the different.

[18:46] MARCIA FRANKLIN: Units, which is so important because that's a connection between a person in the military and their family and friends and everything. So if they don't get their mail, it's.

[18:56] ELLIE KENNEDY: Yeah, it was quite. I could honestly say it was a nightmare because everything. People came in so fast, and units moved away so fast that we couldn't keep up with where people were and things weren't computerized like they are now. We didn't have the kind of communication like we do now. So it was really hard just to track people down and figure out where everybody was, just the units, much less individual people. So it was very interesting.

[19:21] MARCIA FRANKLIN: And so you were having to make sure that mail got into trucks or was that how it was delivered, or planes or trucks?

[19:28] ELLIE KENNEDY: They came, it came in by plane and it had to go by trucks.

[19:31] MARCIA FRANKLIN: And so the truck drivers, were they also military or were they saudi or.

[19:36] ELLIE KENNEDY: They were from all over. They were foreign nationals. They could be Saudi, they could be Kuwaitis, they could be Pakistanis, Filipinos. Kind of a variety of issues.

[19:44] MARCIA FRANKLIN: Mostly men?

[19:46] ELLIE KENNEDY: Yes, all men.

[19:47] MARCIA FRANKLIN: What was that like to kind of be in charge of a group of people from all over who were male?

[19:56] ELLIE KENNEDY: Well, I wasn't in charge of them, but they had to drive the trucks. And so then we had usually a transportation group of soldiers who would ride in the truck with them. They're called mail guards. So they would be armed, and they basically guarded the mail because there's money.

[20:12] MARCIA FRANKLIN: In some of it.

[20:13] ELLIE KENNEDY: There could be, and then make sure that the mail got to where it needed to be, and if it didn't, they came back.

[20:19] MARCIA FRANKLIN: So you were doing logistics, basically trying to figure out where trucks go and who's going to drive them and when. So what I think is interesting is so often people, when they think about the military, they say, what was it like to be in combat? And people automatically think of the front lines of the military, but there's all these support positions that, in fact are in danger as well. Talk about that.

[20:48] ELLIE KENNEDY: Well, we were the first ones hit, so I don't know if a lot of people remember, but that was the first war that chemical weapons was a big factor. Saddam Hussein was expected to use chemical weapons. We were trained about what would happen to us if we were exposed to chemical weapons. And we saw a lot of, at that time, very classified movies that were quite scary, honestly. So it was the first time that there's chemical weapons in other wars, but this is the first time that it was expected to be used on a mass scale. So that was very scary. And we were actually hit with the first Scud missiles that were shot by Iraq. So, and it was constant from January 7, which is when the ground war started. Excuse me, the air war started. So from that time on, it was almost a daily thing in the beginning, and it was really terrifying because it wasn't just the missile coming in, but you didn't know if there was chemical weapons associated with it. So every time you heard something, you had to start getting your stuff on and make sure you had it on correctly and all that. So that was really different.

[22:02] MARCIA FRANKLIN: So they were flying over you. Was there a noise that you could hear?

[22:07] ELLIE KENNEDY: Usually you would hear the, sometimes. Most of the time you would hear the sirens that would go off first. That meant that a Scud or missile of some sort was coming. Sometimes they came so fast they didn't have time and you just heard a bang. And so. But yeah, they were just, you know, they were trying to hit the rear, which was where the logistics is, you know, the weapons, trying to get to the front, the, you know, all of the water, the food, all of that. And that's part of, you know, the doctrine that they were, you know, they were former soviet doctrine, but they, that was what they were doing, trying to hit the rear first.

[22:46] MARCIA FRANKLIN: So did any Scud missiles hit this area where you were and do damage?

[22:52] ELLIE KENNEDY: Oh, yes, yes. In fact, we had one hit right outside of our building because at the time, we finally got into a building, these real tall buildings that were built for the Bedouins, and it was called Khobar Towers, but they didn't go to the Khobar Towers. So we, you know, all were, which to me seemed insane because it just seemed like, you know, we were sitting ducks. I would have much rather been in a tent out in the middle of nowhere. And so it was, it was terrifying. You know, you'd hear things blowing up around you or you'd see flashes of light and different things. And then we had a group of people who they were supposed to leave to go to the mail site. And I said, no, don't go, because I was the highest one in charge at that time until we get the all clear. And it's a good thing because right where the bus would have been sitting for them, they had a scud that hit the ground, you know, didn't get taken out by the Patriot missiles yet. Patriot missiles would try to intercept them, but it didn't always happen. And so that was pretty terrifying. The whole building shook. And, you know, I thought, oh, my gosh, who's dead? That's your first thought. But thankfully, we didn't lose anyone from our unit. But there were some of the transportation guys that went with us who, you know, I passed away, and then a good friend of mine, after we left, died by a vehicle accident, which is how a lot of veterans or a lot of soldiers died in Saudi.

[24:23] MARCIA FRANKLIN: Why?

[24:24] ELLIE KENNEDY: Well, there was no real speed limit there. And so the, I've never been anywhere where I've seen that kind of driving. And in fact, you know, we had a truck in front of us, big, huge truck in front of us one time, and somebody, one of a saudi national came flying off the highway and ran through a stop sign and he was going so fast. Probably well over 100 miles an hour that it flipped the truck over. And, you know, a couple of the guys were hurt and then the guy who was driving the car passed away. So, and that was interesting because I, being a former medic, I jumped out and started trying to do the CPR and run the site because I used to be an ambulance. I worked in an ER and I did an ambulance. So I started automatically doing that. And I was pulled away because women did not do those sorts of things. Like, if I would have had to, I would have probably tried to start CPR or something because that's sort of my nature coming out of being a medic. And then someone grabbed me and pulled me away and said, no, no, don't do that. And we pulled everybody away and let the Saudis take care of it when they got there.

[25:38] MARCIA FRANKLIN: I see.

[25:39] ELLIE KENNEDY: Because culturally it would have been, you couldn't do that.

[25:42] MARCIA FRANKLIN: So, Ellie, I remember the Gulf war, and I remember what is called Gulf war syndrome, for want of a better word. Lots of different effects that soldiers had, physical effects, some from they feel from shots that they were given, like, you know, anthrax, others from pills, maybe, or both. Did you have to take any medicines in anticipation of chemical warfare that you feel were very difficult on your body or maybe still have lasting effects?

[26:18] ELLIE KENNEDY: Yeah, we did have one shot that to this day was never put in our records because we had to sign a thing saying that this is classified. And they were not able to tell us what it was. It was probably botulism or anthrax. But we're not, none of us really know for sure. So there's that. That happened. And then we also had to take something called PB pills. And it's like pyridostigmine bromide. I can't even pronounce it anymore. But basically they had never been used before for that reason. And the reason was to counteract nerve gas, if we were exposed to nerve gas. So if we had that in our system for long enough, we had to take it. I think it was one or two a pack every 8 hours. Then supposedly the nerve gas wouldn't impact us, but it had never been used in that way before. And they had an emergency authorization from the FDA, the Department of Defense, for us to take in. And those pills made me extremely ill. The first time I took them, I was extremely ill. And so we're probably about a third of the troops were very ill, got really ill from those pills. But I do think it's a combination of things. We had so many exposures burn pits. Fires. You know, the fires, 700 plus fires were. Oil wells were on fire while we were there. And so it was, you know, the sky was black, the air was black. When you breathe in or out, when you, you know, blow your nose, it was all black. So there was a lot of, you know, exposures, a lot of different things.

[27:52] MARCIA FRANKLIN: Yes, you mentioned burn pits, and many people may not realize what those were maybe because of the news recently with John Stewart, you know, advocating on the steps of the Capitol for veterans from these wars. They have a little bit more information. But explain briefly what these burn pits were.

[28:13] ELLIE KENNEDY: Well, you didn't really have, like, the garbage man coming and taking garbage away. So basically any kind of stuff that you needed to get rid of had to be burned.

[28:22] MARCIA FRANKLIN: But there were also weapons being burned.

[28:24] ELLIE KENNEDY: Yes, there was, but not so much ours. One of the things that did happen that a lot of people are just not aware of is that, and you know, that sometimes this gets a little tricky with politics, but the US was an ally of Iraq prior to the Gulf war. So pretty much up until just a few months prior to the war, we were giving them a lot of their weapons as well as chemical weapons, even though it was technically illegal, we were giving them a lot of the things for biological weapons and things like that. So we knew where Saddam had his weapons. And so one of the main goals was to blow up those weapons. Unfortunately, we blew up the weapons that we supplied, or at least partially supplied, and exposed ourselves. And unfortunately, they didn't really, especially the first 15 years or so, it was still classified. So there's still a lot that's still classified. So basically, they were telling a lot of us who were really ill, because I was sick immediately from coming home, that it was all in our heads and that it was PTSD. And, yes, I did have PTSD, but that wasn't the primary thing. And now they're finally acknowledging certain things, especially, like I was, I have brain atrophy and I have ataxia, which is a balance disorder. And that's the short version of my long list of issues. But I was told in 2019 by the war related and Illness Institute that it was more than likely because of exposure to sarin gas when I was in Kuwait, because we went up into Kuwait and established a post office up there immediately when the war ended, when they called a ceasefire.

[30:17] MARCIA FRANKLIN: And where would the sarin gas have come from?

[30:19] ELLIE KENNEDY: It would have come from those areas that were blown up. So when they started pinpointing where they knew about, because we don't know all the places, but the places that have been declassified that I was pretty close to one of the main areas that was blown up that had a lot of sarin, known to have sarin gas.

[30:41] MARCIA FRANKLIN: Ellie, when did you come home?

[30:43] ELLIE KENNEDY: I came home in June of 1991.

[30:47] MARCIA FRANKLIN: So you were in country abroad for about six months?

[30:54] ELLIE KENNEDY: Yes. And the war ended. The 25 February, 1991, you mentioned that.

[31:00] MARCIA FRANKLIN: You had symptoms upon arriving home. What kind of symptoms did you start struggling with, and did you correlate them with your service? What was happening?

[31:10] ELLIE KENNEDY: Well, I was sick when I was over there as a result of the PB pills. But when I came back, I used to be a triathlete before I went, and so I started trying to run again, bike and swim and all that. But I just noticed that I couldn't. I was really struggling, and I didn't really know what it was. So it was a number of years before we really found out. 1998, I was in a study where I had two different kinds of bacteria in my blood, and that study was never published because it was actually squashed by Department of Defense. So we can't find any of the information on that. But, and then, you know, all the other exposures, the, you know, the vaccines, the smoke, the this or that. And I think they're finding out now that there's a certain percentage, which is about 25% of the Gulf War veterans who are ill or have died. Thousands and thousands. And really two thousands. At that time, about 10,000 had died already. I don't even know what the numbers are now. But.

[32:17] MARCIA FRANKLIN: What would you say your main symptoms are? I know you because I interviewed you for a documentary on athletes with disabilities, and you talked to me about ataxia, which I had never known about before. This balance disorder, which can make you fall suddenly.

[32:32] ELLIE KENNEDY: Right?

[32:34] MARCIA FRANKLIN: Is that the main disability that you.

[32:37] ELLIE KENNEDY: Oh, that one came later.

[32:40] MARCIA FRANKLIN: What are some of the things that you live with today?

[32:43] ELLIE KENNEDY: I have chemical sensitivities. I've got about six pages of things that I'm allergic to. I've got immune disorder issues. I've had neurological problems for years. It's hard to even go back and remember. But it started out with fatigue. That was the main thing was trying to exercise. Fatigue, muscle cramping. A lot of veterans died early on from ALS, and I was in a study where they thought I had ALS because I had all the symptoms of ALS. Thankfully, I never. My symptoms did not go on to that. So a lot of muscle cramping, fatigue. I have foot drop. They have no idea why I have foot drop. So basically, that foot doesn't lift on its own. And definitely a lot of allergies. You know, I have to take a lot of powerful medication sometimes to dampen down and deal with the different allergies that I developed over time. Chemical sensitivities.

[33:42] MARCIA FRANKLIN: Are you angry at all?

[33:43] ELLIE KENNEDY: I used to be. I used to be. I'm not anymore. I feel like I'm the lucky one that I know a lot of people that have passed away. I used to work. I used to be very active and go for issues early on. And the majority of those people that I was working with, we were on AOL back when hardly anybody even knew what AOL well was. Almost all of those people are no longer with us because I have a pass for a variety of brain cancers and lung cancer and kidney cancer. And I could go ALS. I could go on and on. So I feel like I'm lucky. In fact, I had a researcher, Doctor Haley, who just recently posted a new study about sarin gas and the effects on Gulf war veterans. And I was in one of his studies, and he called me and said, you're one of the few people that are still alive. And I was getting ready to go back to work. And he said, what did you do differently? And so, you know, I was just blessed to do some alternative things. And, you know, so I just feel lucky. I feel like I'm no longer angry.

[34:49] MARCIA FRANKLIN: How do you think that that experience, which still lives with you today, of being in the military and abroad, has affected you in other ways other than physically? I know that you got involved in peace efforts.

[35:06] ELLIE KENNEDY: I did. I was involved with trying to stop the second Gulf or the, when we went to Iraq in 2003, because I felt like from what I knew and the people I was in contact with, that we had no reason to go there, that we had already taken care of most of the weapons that were there. And in my mind, they hadn't figured out what was wrong with the majority of, we're talking hundreds of thousands, thousands and thousands of Gulf war vets, and yet they were going to send men and women back over there again. And there was, in my mind, no reason to do that. So I was very active with that. It was the biggest peace movement in the history of the world up until that time. Unfortunately, we were not able to stop it. But, yeah, so, you know, I sort of went one to one extreme, and now I'm sort of, I'd say I'm more middle of the road now. I still believe in peace first. But, you know, I also recognize that wars happen, and we have to defend our country and defend our allies.

[36:13] MARCIA FRANKLIN: I would be remiss if we didn't end this interview talking about something very positive. And the reason that I got to know you is that you are still an athlete, and you have found a way to be an athlete despite some of these physical things that you have, and you are a cyclist, a paracyclist using a racing tricycle. What has it been like for you to find these modifications and adaptations so that you can still be active?

[36:40] ELLIE KENNEDY: Well, the first time I rode a trike, I had not ridden a trike and many, many years and was told I would never ride another bike ever again. And I was in San Diego, and I just cried when I first started riding it. It's been great. I never thought I would race. I'm 65 years old, and I won two national championships last year at the age of 64. So that's been really cool, not only for myself, but to basically show people that it doesn't really matter what your ability or disability is or what your age is, that you can still do something, you can still enjoy your life, whether it's sports or, you know, other things. And so that's part of. Part of my journey is to try to help others get out and enjoy themselves. And I've spent a lot of time trying to work with other veterans, mostly one on one. I'm more of a one on one kind of person, but I just trying to help people get out of that dark place that I was in at one point. You know, I didn't want to be on the planet. I didn't feel like. I felt like I was dying, which really I probably was at the time and wasn't a very good parent because I was very sick. But, you know, at the time, they were telling me it was all in my head, you know, and now I know it wasn't. And I feel vindicated in some ways, but also just feel really blessed, and I'm just lucky to be able to be active and do things. It's not the way it used to be, but nobody at 65 can do anything the way they used to be, so the way they used to. So I would like to wrap up with one thing. I am in the process of writing a book right now about my experiences, and it's called rise above war. And this is from Jane Evershed who wrote a thing or did a. She's an artist, and this is what she put on her card. And also, she used to have a print, and it says, man is unable to construct boundaries in the sky. So above the war zones, in the sky is a place to mourn the loss of loved ones and comfort one another knowing the pathetic futility that war is. And that was rise above war. And that'll be the name of my book.

[38:59] MARCIA FRANKLIN: Well, Ellie, I'm so grateful to have met you in the course of my work and now become friends with you. And I thank you so much for your generosity of spirit to others and to me in allowing me to do this interview.

[39:13] ELLIE KENNEDY: Thank you very much.