LIHUE — Jo Ann Carvalho has only seen her husband, James, cry twice in his life. The first time, she said, happened when his father died. “My husband doesn’t show his emotions,” Jo Ann Carvalho said. “I guess, if he
LIHUE — Jo Ann Carvalho has only seen her husband, James, cry twice in his life.
The first time, she said, happened when his father died.
“My husband doesn’t show his emotions,” Jo Ann Carvalho said. “I guess, if he gets emotional, he goes off by himself.”
It came as a surprise then, when he admitted to becoming emotional about two weeks ago, when he picked up the morning paper and read that his classmate, Army Gen. Eric Shinseki, had resigned as secretary of the country’s Department of Veterans Affairs.
His resignation came two months after a whistleblower revealed that dozens of veterans could have died while waiting for appointments at the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care system.
The revelation prompted an audit into VA medical facilities nationwide, which found that long wait times — some of which were months — were a systemic problem.
The Spark M. Matsunaga VA Medical Center in Honolulu alone reported the longest average wait time — 145 days — in the VA system when scheduling new patient primary care appointments.
Federal lawmakers and two veterans groups, Concerned Veterans for America and The American Legion, called on Shinseki to resign, citing a need to reform the federal health care system.
Those, like Carvalho, who grew up with Shinseki, however, tell another story.
Several of Shinseki’s primary and high school classmates who spoke to The Garden Island following his resignation say the four-star general and Purple Heart recipient is a kind, natural-born leader who tried over the past several years to upright an already broken system.
Lihue resident Mike Cockett said he met Eric Shinseki in the third grade when they attended Lihue School.
“By fourth grade, he was swapping his bento to me and I was giving him my tuna sandwich,” Cockett recalled.
Even at a young age, Cockett said he and his classmates knew Shinseki was special.
“It was apparent to most of us that Eric was different,” Cockett said. “When we would play kickball in the yard and needed a captain, when we were picking our teams, or when it came time to elect officers for our class, Eric was always the one who was nominated and elected.”
During his seventh and eighth grade years at Lihue School, Cockett recalls attending Lihue Lutheran Church on German Hill, where they would don their black ceremonial robes, light candles behind the church alter and take turns reading the epistle.
Cockett later attended Kamehameha Schools for high school, while Shinseki continued on to Kauai Intermediate and High School.
It was there Koloa resident Ilona Fu Moritsugu remembers meeting Shinseki during their freshman year in 1956.
What Moritsugu said she remembers most about Shinseki from their high school years, was “his wonderful attitude, friendliness, mannerisms, respectfulness, and his good, warm heart.”
They are, she said, qualities and traits that never really changed over the years, even after they and their 172 classmates graduated from Kauai Intermediate and High School in 1960.
“The class of 1960 has developed many leaders who will undoubtedly play an important part in the future of our state and nation,” Kauai High School Ke Kuhiau yearbook staff wrote in 1960.
During that year alone, Shinseki was the school’s student body president and served as member of the high school’s National Honor Society and senior prom court committee.
As a legacy that he left behind for others to read, Shinseki fortuitously chose a Bible verse — Ecclesiastes 2:13 — for his senior quote in 1960: “Wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth darkness.”
“He still has his old rascal and humorous ways that our class of 1960 enjoyed during our youthful and adventurous days up to now,” Moritsugu wrote in an email. “Our KHS class of 1960 has maintained the reputation of being the closest, tightest and having the most get-togethers and gatherings beyond the usual reunions. Eric has kept in touch even when his priorities have prevented him from joining us at times.”
Cockett, who has attended several Kauai High School class reunion events over the years, agreed.
“If anything, the pride we felt in Eric continued as he went through West Point, went to Vietnam, became a general and later became the chief of staff of all the other generals,” Cockett said.
That is why, Cockett said, many of the emails exchanged between his classmates immediately after Shinseki’s departure from the Department of Veterans Affairs expressed shock and dismay about how he was treated.
“I’m very aware of what happens when they need to pretend they’re going to do something about something in this day and age, and that’s to throw the head guy on his sword,” Cockett said. “It just seemed to me that’s what they were going to do to Eric and that’s what they did to him. I’m sure he was working very hard to try correct and amend some of the stuff that was going on in the VA hospitals and clinics.”
