Condrey and Clark met at last year’s fundraiser in Hamilton and he invited her back to talk about the impact of her husband’s death by suicide.
“Her story is exactly what we’re trying to avoid,” Clark said after the breakfast.
In other words, trying to reduce the number of veterans dying by suicide by providing what Clark called “immediate assistance.”
For a veteran struggling with mental health, there is no time for delays. You can’t tell them to wait for services. If you do, it may be time to start writing their obituary.
“There is a crisis already,” Clark said. “It could be too late.”
Condrey certainly knows about the cost of crisis created by brain injuries.
On Sept. 3, 2018, her husband, Chief Petty Officer Ron Condrey, 45, a 25-year Navy veteran, died by suicide with a gunshot wound to his chest. It was nearly three years after he showed his first suicidal tendency.
Condrey said every time she thought her husband was going to kill himself, she secretly placed a bullet in her sock drawer. Once the bullet count continued, the sound became “overwhelming,” she said. She eventually stopped the ritual.
The gun shot that killed her husband was “the worst sound of my life,” she said.
She immediately held her hand tightly over the wound and frantically tried to call for help. But her hands were covered with blood so she was unable to unlock the cell phone.
“I lost my warrior, my partner, my best friend,” she told the audience.
Those in the military live in a “bubble” and after her husband left the service, he struggled finding “purpose” as a civilian, she said.
“It’s like you lost a loved one,” she said.
To combat the depression, he was shoved programs and pills.
“It didn’t work at all,” she said.
Condrey said her husband, a Master Explosive Ordnance Disposal technician and Master Naval Parachutist, conducted missions around the world during his 14 deployments. He sustained a variety of traumatic brain Injuries during combat and training, including a helicopter crash, Humvee rollover and repeated explosive blasts, she said.
Condrey, a member of Team Fastrax, a Middletown-based professional skydiving team and the reason the couple settled in Middletown, scattered some of her husband’s ashes during a skydive in North Carolina and wears a necklace that holds ashes.
Five years later, she wonders how their lives could have been different had her husband received better mental treatments. Instead of talking about suicide, she could be telling “a survivor’s story,” she said.
Her husband is buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C., and his tombstone, in part, is engraved with three simple, yet powerful words: “Never stop inspiring.”
His late wife is carrying on his legacy.
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