Iraq War vet honored by older vets in Hauppauge

Not long ago, when Spc. Michael Ryan of Kings Park was nearing the end of his one-year tour of duty in Iraq, he got a package from some of the residents at the Arbors Assisted Living Community in Hauppauge.

The cookies were immediately raided by the guys in his platoon.

The sheaf of letters that came with them he kept.

They were written by the 25 veterans who live at the Arbors. They contained flashes of old wars - what it was like fighting at Iwo Jima, what it was like to see a man dead by your hand, what it was like to walk into the Nazi concentration camp in Dachau, Poland. What it was like coming home after.

"I took it as advice," said Ryan, who returned to the United States last month and was guest of honor at a Veterans Day ceremony held in the Arbors' community room Thursday afternoon. "These are my seniors. These are guys who've been through war and can relate. They said it's a tough transition, but not an impossible transition."

Ryan's own transition is just beginning. He is 25, back on Long Island on leave, but an Army man until June 11, 2011. He plans to take a spot in the steamfitters union, take night classes at Suffolk County Community College, propose to a young woman, Stacey Tuckman, who was at his side as he spoke Thursday.

But he misses the closeness he shared with the platoon, the feeling he got when it was time for a mission. "Like, if you play football, that feeling you get just before kickoff," he said.

Even while driving on American roads, he still finds himself scanning for explosives; when he sits in a public place, he still likes his back against the wall and his eyes on the door.

Some of this - maybe all of it - will pass, in months or years. "I know what you're going through," Sal Bucolo, 80, a Korean War veteran, recalled writing in his letter. "Just take it slow and you'll adjust to American surroundings."

The ceremony was brief and simple, the brainchild of Ashley King, the Arbors' director of community relations and a childhood friend of Ryan's since long before they attended Kings Park High.

"It's like how we play 'God Bless America' at the end of a program so the residents know it's over. This is so you know it's over and you know it's time to go forward with your life," she said of the ceremony for Ryan.

The roughly 100 residents and their relatives who were gathered recited the Pledge of Allegiance and presented Ryan with an American flag blanket. Ryan shook hands around the room, bending to take the hand of Sebastian Brusca, 90, a World War II vet who was in a wheelchair.

Another World War II veteran, Tony Misa, 83, took the podium. "Thank you for all you have done," he said. "You will always be our adopted soldier. May you always feel welcome in our home."