By Debbie Gardner
dgardner@thereminder.com
Water. Humans have known about its healing properties for millennia. From the Greek’s “water cure” to the famed Roman baths to today’s healing springs in the Azores, humans have sought out the peace and tranquility of water to restore the body and mind throughout recorded history.
Anna Symington of South Hadley and Donna Salo of East Longmeadow found exactly that kind of healing in a dragon boat on the Connecticut River. Symington was a breast cancer survivor. Salo had joined the team as a supporter.
The women came to appreciate the fellowship and support of their fellow dragon boaters, during the weekly training sessions and the seasonal races with the breast cancer survivor and supporter team, first in Springfield, and later on another breast cancer survivor/supporter team in Northampton.
And as the two became friends through the teams, an idea was born.
If being on the water could help people facing the trauma of a life-threatening illness like cancer heal and thrive, could it do the same to help heal the bodies and minds of returning veterans?
Though neither woman was a veteran themselves, they had “grown up” hearing about and around veterans. Salo’s father and uncles had served in World War II, and cousins had served in Vietnam. Symington’s parents were immigrants, but always talked about the American soldiers and “the help they gave to the women and children” in their village during World War II.
“Donna and I had always talked about our passion for veterans and our respect for them,” the 68-year-old Symington told Prime as she talked about how their desire to help veterans initially took root.
That desire soon coalesced into a dream to bring veterans out on the water in an all-veteran dragon boat team, to offer them the kind of healing the two women had experienced on their teams.
The pair started exploring the idea of creating a dragon boat team in 2013, even running the idea past a number of veterans officers to get their take on the proposal.
“It’s a team sport, it’s not like any other sport, everyone is valuable [on a dragon boat],” Symington shared. Their pitch was a dragon boat is like a military unit – and what better way to bring veterans back together for camaraderie and support and healing than to create an atmosphere they are familiar with.
Symington and Salo received lots of positive feedback. But even a basic dragon boat costs a pretty penny, and at the time, the two women had no funding.
The big break
“We had been in the process of trying to get the team going. We’d written letters [looking for support] but had no luck,” Salo shared.
Things changed in 2018, when the pair came across a contest hosted by New Holland Brewery in Michigan, which was relaunching a beer called Dragon’s Milk. As part of their brewery’s marketing campaign, it was looking for submitted stories under the banner of “Share a Legend.”
The theme of the contest was “when sharing drinks, a story is told so many times it becomes a legend,” Salo, who is now 66, said. She took the contest theme and wrote a story about Symington “as a breast cancer survivor and her dream of creating a dragon boat team for veterans” so they could experience the kind of healing on the water that she had.
With the help of a video production team the pair found in Chicago, Salo and Symington turned the story into a submission for the New Holland contest. To their surprise, Symington’s story garnered 60% of the national vote, and won the contest. “We had some good people sitting on our shoulders,” Symington said of their unexpected win. The initial prize was $5,000, but New Holland decided to double their prize money to $10,000.
“I think that what impressed the New Holland people is when they asked us what we were going to do with the $5,000, when I said it was our mission to make [the veterans dragon boat] happen and we were not going to put all this funding back towards ourselves, I think that’s why they doubled it,” Salo explained.
With that $10,000 Symington and Salo purchased a plain white dragon boat – most come with a wrap featuring colorful dragon scales – and added a patriotic wrap. Veterans Dragon Boat USA became the first dragon boat in the nation outfitted in that way.
Creating a team
With the boat purchased, Salo and Symington set out to recruit dragon boat team members. The women first approached the nonprofit rowing club, Holyoke Rows at Jones Ferry Marina in Holyoke, Massachusetts with their idea. The club was looking to add more programming for veterans,and saw the proposal as a "win-win" for the potential team and the club. And the work began.
“We started reaching out to veterans service officers – every city and town has one,” Symington said. “We also approached a group called Veterans Voice [and] were invited as a guest to make a presentation. Sitting around the room were different veterans resource people. They thought the idea was a no brainer, a good activity for veterans transitioning back to civilian life … this would be a way to recreate camaraderie [and] a team.”
The women also created flyers, hosted open houses at Holyoke Rows where the veteran’s dragon boat team is located – and social media posts to help recruit members.
That next year – 2019 – was pivotal, according to Symington. It was when she and Salo began aggressively recruiting potential paddlers. “That’s when we took advantage of any veterans fair that was happening, we set up a table with photos of what dragon boating was and were there to answer questions,” Symington said. “It was that effort that got us on the water in the summer of 2019.”
“The other part of the team is Alan [Symington], he’s the coach” Symington continued. “We are all doing this on our own time. We are not pulling any funding or salaries; everything goes right back to the team.”
The first group of dragon boaters began practicing – and the team still practices – Tuesday and Thursday evenings at Holyoke Rows, located at Jones Ferry Marina in Holyoke, Massachusetts. There is no cost for a veteran to join the team. “Anna and I supply everything through fundraising,” Salo said. The team recently became its own nonprofit.
That first summer Symington said they had 18 veterans out on the water.
Stan Hilton, who now captains the veterans dragon boat team, was the first to sign up. He’s one of 11 core team members, a mix of male and female vets, which Symington said now range in age from 30 to 77 years old.
“I knew Anna from another charity we had worked on together and I heard about [the team] … or actually my wife saw it on Facebook and let me know about it,” Hilton told Prime. “I saw the success [the concept] had with the two breast cancer teams [and] I know Anna … if she was going to make this happen, she was going to make it happen. I decided to jump in, and it gave me an outlet.”
The 45-year-old veteran, who had done his first stint in the Army in 1996 at the age of 18, was part of the first Army Reserves unit to be deployed in Iraq in 2003. He was close to finishing his reserve tour when the war hit, and his mustering out was put on stop. “It was hard, we were the first to relieve the invasion force,” Hilton shared. He was eventually mustered out in 2005.
Hilton said the weekly training on the water “helps me burn off excess energy. It helps calm my mind; it’s even peaceful, almost meditative.”
Joining the team in 2019 came, he said, “about the time I needed help with my mental health; it was a great outlet for me.”
Coping with COVID-19
Hilton said like so many other group activities, the coronavirus pandemic caused a change in the dragon boat team.
“We were up to 26 [members] at one time, but when COVID hit, people decided to go different ways,” Hilton shared.
And it wasn’t for lack of trying to keep the team together.
“We got very creative,” Symington said.” We saw the bonds that were being made. The thing we learned was the more you are together, the more you want to be together. We worried we were going to lose everyone.”
It was winter practice, and Symington said she, Salo and Alan Symington “took the rowing machines outside and put them on the deck” built plastic dividers to keep people six feet apart and the team practiced outside. They also instituted a Sunday practice at the Wilbraham YMCA pool, where everyone wore face shields “because you can’t wear a mask in a pool area.”
“The veterans were all too willing to get some practice in” and stay together, Symington added.
New paddlers welcome
“We’re always looking for new members” Hilton shared, adding the team had recently raced in the Pioneer Valley Riverfront Club’s Springfield Dragon Boat Festival on Oct. 14, placing in the final seed and beating the all-female team, the Valkyrie Dreams, by a mere one second.
That race included a drummer who was a Gold Star Mother, according to Symington, along with a handful of supporters to help fill out the dragon boat crew, which for those races included 13 veterans and five supporters, for a total crew of 18. The dragon boat can hold 20.
“We had a small group of people who had dragon boat experience who asked if we were willing to take on supporters,” Salo said. “Some of these people have connections to the military – brothers and relatives, one has a family member who is a Vietnam vet. [Being in the boat] feeds their souls as well, that’s what they receive by serving our vets.”
Veterans interested in joining the team can reach out to Veterans Dragon Boat USA at holyokerows.org by clicking on the veterans dragon boat link.
Symington shared the kind of connection she’s seen when veterans join the group.
“We had a new veteran join the team [and] he was standing in the parking lot meeting everyone,” Symington shared. “One of our original veterans was coming across the parking lot and he recognized him. They had served together in Iraq and hadn’t seen each other for years.”
Symington said she asked the original veteran how he felt about the encounter. “His only response was, ‘I’m so glad he’s alive,’ He was just so grateful he made it out. He’s lost touch with the man and didn’t know if he’d survived,” she recounted.
Watching the connection between old comrades in arms was just “surreal,” Symington added. “The extraordinary things that they share with us … the stories that come out of this, it’s one of the reasons we keep doing this,” she said.
The ‘water cure’
“The range of veterans isn’t just age or branches of service,” Symington said of the paddlers who join Veterans Dragon Boat USA. “We have veterans with PTSD, some have self-admitted that. Some have injuries, so we’re aware of the individuals [and] we try to adapt whatever we’re doing based on whoever is coming [to that training], whether it’s a physical injury or an emotional injury or a psychological injury, we’re there to support them and do what we can.
“We don’t fix it, but we are there, we support the whole person,” Symington continued.
And the river does the rest, Salo said.
“The river plays a huge component in the relaxation of the possible demons that may be encroaching on these veterans,” Salo observed. “When they leave the dock, they know that their focus must be on what they are doing, must be aware of paddling as one, aware of your surroundings.
“You become one with the river,” Salo continued. “It’s very therapeutic, the nature is therapeutic … it applies to breast cancer survivors as well. It’s very therapeutic to be on the river, watching the river. When you are working so hard, there’s some physical exhaustion. But there’s also the experience – you are all breathing together. People have said again and again that you are just at peace.”
It’s a peace, and a strength that Salo said isn’t just experienced by the veterans in the boat.
“It’s such an honor to be with these individuals, Salo said. “It’s just an honor to sit back and listen to them or watch them. Beyond paddling, you can leave this earth knowing you did something worthwhile, leading this team.”