After War, Finding Peace and Calm in a Garden

From left, Thurston Mangrum, Patrick Corcoran, Jan Zientek and Reginald Mourning at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in East Orange, N.J. Mr. Zientek has been advising the men on working in the hospital’s garden. Photo: Richard Perry/The New York Times

By Peter Applebome The New York Times

Reggie Mourning wears a Marine Corps sweatshirt and two 9-millimeter pistol rounds on a chain around his neck. There’s an M14 round hanging from his keychain. His tour of duty with a mortar unit in Vietnam was long in the past, but never really ended.

After coming home, he worked for years as a trucker with the jagged rhythms of the war zone wired into his brain — sometimes barreling cross-country, drunk and stoned, with only his dog as a companion. In 2007, sick, exhausted, on his way to becoming homeless, he made it to the substance abuse program at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center near Newark.

“I was more or less a Neanderthal — everyone was scared of me,” he said. “I have a problem with people. Period.”

But when he speaks of this year’s harvest at the center’s vegetable gardens — the tomatoes and eggplant, lettuce and kale, basil, squash, corn, peppers, collard greens and the rest, he sounds like someone who, in a way he never expected, has found a measure of peace.

“When I got here I was completely isolated,” said Mr. Mourning, 58, who has started his own company, Cobra Landscaping, as a result of his experience. “But being with the plants gives me time to think and meditate, to feel the soil or clay or whatever you’re working in. I talk to my plants. Maybe it’s crazy, but it’s given me a chance to get out, work with others, grow something and do something that’s right, not just for myself, but for the whole community.”

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