Turkey Hunt Draws Vietnam Veteran Out Of Longtime Isolation

GRAY — Glen Lowe served in the Vietnam War for 18 months. Then he returned to the United States and spent three decades isolated from the world. He was on guard, distrusting of anyone other than his family. He avoided anyone who could do him harm, which he believed amounted to most people. But this month, for the first time that he can remember, Lowe spent five days with a group of people he didn’t know and shared with them a part of himself that had been mostly shut away. He joined a group of disabled veterans and hunting guides who came together on May 6 to hunt wild turkey, as part of the Veterans Adaptive Sports and Training program at Pineland Farms. Thanks to the outdoor program, a few encouraging doctors and therapists, and his own willingness to learn to trust again, Lowe felt for the first time in 35 years what it means to laugh with strangers, as he watched with a hunting guide he didn’t know a wild bird parade around and come in to a call. “I don’t know how to put a value on it, as far as the self-esteem it’s given me.