02/21/2026
Kirk’s Story: From Near Death in Vietnam to a Sense of New Life Thanks to Quantum Leap Farm and its Warrior Mission: At Ease Retreat.
By Dave Scheiber
Kirk could easily have said no, that one day on the steamy, sweltering tarmac of Phu Loi U.S. Army base, his life would have been forever changed. He would have returned home in one piece, rather than seeking peace for five decades, until he finally found it amid the harmony and healing of Quantum Leap Farm and its Warrior Mission: At Ease Retreat.
But back in January of 1970, when his superior asked if he could fly one last helicopter mission in the final days of his second tour, there was no question that his answer would be yes.
“I knew the guys who were flying – they were my friends,” he recalls. “And even though I was at the end of my enlistment, I really wasn’t ready to go home. That’s how it happened.”
What happened that afternoon is seared into his memory.
Around 1 p.m., cruising above a tree canopy, Spec 5 Crew Chief Kirk manned a machine gun on the bench of a UH-1 Huey, the iconic workhorse U.S. Army helicopter. Not long into the “hunter-killer” mission to seek and destroy Viet Cong fighters, he heard a tremendous bang and felt the small craft shudder violently.
Though he didn’t know it in the moment, they had been hit by a shoulder-fired, Soviet-designed RPG-7 rocket-propelled gr***de. The blast had penetrated the tail boom and severed the rotor shaft. And the four young men onboard – the pilot, a commanding officer, another bench gunner, and Kirk – instantly began spinning in the damaged helicopter and plummeted to the ground.
All four of them were severely hurt and knocked unconscious by the impact just outside of the U.S. base in Sông Bé. “If we had been found by the VC, one of two things would have happened – they would have killed us outright, or captured us and then killed us,” he says. “We were a high-money target and would never have come back home.”
Fortunately, they were located by U.S. troops. It took their rescuers the better part of a day to reach them, fighting their way through the jungle, then carefully extracting them from the mangled chopper and rushing them back to a field hospital.
Kirk had suffered a crushed pelvis, broken bones in his legs, ankles, feet, and ribs, and a lumbar disc injury as well. After treatment, he was transported to Japan, then back home to the States, and finally to Fort Devens in Massachusetts.
“That was it – I was done,” he says. “I could not stay in the military.”
A new journey was about to begin, but leaving the old one behind wasn’t easy.
The son of an Air Force pilot, Kirk had eagerly enlisted in the Army after graduating from high school. He was still 17 when he finished his training, but that was too young to go to Vietnam. In the interim, he was sent to Germany for more training. “And the minute I turned 18, I was sent back home for two weeks, then to Fort Lewis, Washington – and then off to Vietnam.”
He recalls being more exhilarated than frightened. “It wasn’t courage – more like a teenage adventure,” he says. “But we had no idea what we were getting into.”
In fact, Kirk lost many of his fellow crew members during his two tours. When he was sent back home, he and his aircraft commander were the only two from the original crew left alive. After recovering, Kirk found a job in a gas company's billing and accounts receivable department in Haverhill, Mass. He felt isolated, constantly lost in his thoughts. On top of that, there was the intense resentment aimed at Vietnam vets by anti-war protestors.
“I remember one day at work, I saw this demonstration outside…,” he recollects. “I was standing there, and a woman next to me yelled, ‘I wish I had a machine gun – I would shoot all of those protesters.’ Right then and there, I decided to quit. I said, ‘I can’t work here. Do you realize what I’ve been through the last two years?’ I just couldn’t be around that kind of talk. So I walked out, took off my sports jacket, and joined the protest.”
Kirk’s motivation was not political but rooted in the camaraderie he badly missed. “It wasn’t a matter of being angry at the administration in Washington,” he says. “Yeah, it was messed up, but what I cared about were the friends I left behind, and I wanted them home.”
The post-traumatic stress and effects of the mild traumatic brain injury he sustained remained with him in the years that followed. He moved to Florida some five years after his discharge to live with his mother and stepfather, a horse trainer. Along the way, there was a failed marriage that he attributes to “never being present” for his wife and blames on himself.
But in time, he found a good career as an electrician, operating towering cranes, and finally went to work for the Hillsborough County School System. And most importantly, he found love again, recently celebrating his 31st wedding anniversary with his second wife, Jeanene, and they have a daughter together - despite Kirk being told he could never father a child after his injuries.
Now, he has discovered something else that has changed his life.
Some three years ago, he had been receiving acupuncture treatment for the lingering pain of his combat injuries. A woman doing the treatment, Jennifer of Yin-Yang Labs, performs acupuncture therapy for veterans at the Warrior Mission: At Ease retreats. She suggested he inquire about attending one. He signed up – and immediately had second thoughts.
“I tried everything I could to get out of going – for instance, my wedding anniversary is Jan. 14, and that’s when that retreat was taking place,” he says. “But my wife said, ‘No, you’re going! And that’s why I went.”
Kirk was initially unsure of what he had gotten into – most of the participants were Desert Storm veterans, and he was the senior member from the Vietnam War. But the age boundaries quickly vanished during the intensive, emotionally raw therapy sessions. “Here I was 20 to 30 years older than most of them, but we all fit in together,” he says. “We all understood that combat is combat – it doesn’t matter where it’s at.”
But for Kirk, the turning point came while working with the horses in an exercise supervised by Jenna Miller, a co-creator of the retreat who also serves as the farm’s equine-assisted psychotherapy facilitator and therapeutic riding instructor. After completing an exercise involving traffic cones that represented different aspects of his life, Miller asked him to tell the horse his life story.
“So I did that and got to some of the difficult moments, and I think my energy was so strong that it spooked the horse,” he says. “But Jenna told me to be calm, just breathe. And as I calmed down, so did the horse. And off we went. That’s my story of awareness and change. And every time I go to the farm now, it doesn’t have to be a retreat; I come away with something positive.”
Today, he is a fixture as a volunteer, often leading guided therapy rides in the arena and doing a variety of chores around the farm.
“Kirk has such a resilient spirit,” Miller says. “He just keeps showing up and doing the work for himself. He’s incredible. I think it might have taken him a while to feel like he could get the proper support, but his belief that each day can be better is remarkable. I really admire his desire to not carry the stuff he carried for so long.”
Kirk’s praise of Miller is equally strong: “Let’s put it this way. She is an absolute angel. I’ve been through a ton of therapists in my life. She’s absolutely head and shoulders above any of them. You take the knowledge and experience she has and put a horse in the mix – it’s amazing.”
Amazing could also apply to his own story – a shattering, near-death experience in Vietnam and a long road back to wholeness thanks to a rejuvenating retreat at a very special farm.
