VCU news

By Malorie Burkett

In December 1969, Donald Mason, a 21-year-old machine gunner serving in Vietnam, experienced an injury from an exploding grenade that was so severe it wasn’t certain whether the young man would leave Vietnam alive.

However, a team of Army medical professionals, including a medic who worked on him after his initial injury, and neurosurgeon Harold Young, M.D., started the process of treating him back to health in Chu Lai.

“He had a significant brain injury. Both lobes of the brain were severely injured by this fragment, or missile wound, in Vietnam,” said Young, now chair of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine’s Department of Neurosurgery.

Because Mason was in a comatose state when Young and his team first began to work on him, he would not be able to recall anything about the care he received. But that would not be the last time he encountered Young.

Subsequent to his time at Chu Lai, Mason would be Young’s patient again at Fitzsimons Army Hospital in Colorado and later, in Kansas City.

Over the years, Mason says he thought of the doctor, but never knew his first name until his second wife, Donna, a nurse, discovered it while searching through old medical records. A quick Internet search led the Masons to the VCU Medical Center.

“Coincidence or whatever you want to call it, there was somebody that had his hand on me, and I am so proud that he did,” said Donald Mason. “I thought about him everyday and just didn’t know how to get in touch with him.”
 
As part of a trip from their hometown in Lebanon, Mo., that included a visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., and a reunion of his platoon in Connecticut, the Masons also made their way to the VCU Medical Center to visit with Young some 41 years after their initial encounter.

The Masons were able to catch up with Young, who learned that in addition to Donna’s two sons and Donald’s two sons and a daughter, that they had more than 40 foster children. According to Donald Mason, all the foster children were unattachable and unadoptable, but each one ended up being placed, including one daughter they adopted together.

Donald Mason suffered such a significant brain injury — and has tried to work various jobs throughout the years — but he often experienced difficulties.

“Even though his life took a serious and tragic turn when he was injured at war, he has been able to turn it around and put his life to good use in caring for other people,” said Young.

I know he certainly never wanted to be injured — never wanted a Bronze Star or Purple Heart, he would rather have been normal, but he’s been able to take that adversity and build a unique character and impart that to other people.”

“Thanks is just not enough,” said Mason. “He is just like family to me. I knew that if it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t be, period.”