For Susie Coates and her husband, David, his decision to go into the Marine Corps changed the entire course of their lives together.
“We met in high school at Fort Bragg. We were both army brats,” said Coates. “We had just moved to Fayetteville from Germany. And the only person I knew was my girlfriend next door. Her boyfriend lived in the neighborhood that David lived in and they hung out. So that’s how I met David and yeah, he was a wild one. You know, he’s a child of the 70s, he was a bad boy. And a lot of females are attracted to the bad boys. So, we got to know each other and got close.”
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During their senior year, Coates fell pregnant, so David stepped up.
“He said, ‘I’m going into the Marine Corps. I want you to marry me before I go. And then we’ll take it as it comes’. I’m like, ‘Okay, sounds good to me,’” laughed Coates. “And, you know, part of that going in the service was either you’re going to go into the service or you’re maybe spending a few days somewhere that you don’t want to spend them.”
Coates said although they initially struggled a bit financially while David was at Camp Lejeune for most of 1977 and 1978, it ended up being the best thing for them at the time.
“It made a huge difference in both of our lives. It gave him the discipline that he needed. And if I hadn’t experienced that, I don’t know where I’d be either, to be honest with you, because the path that I was going down was not the path that my parents wanted me to go down,” said Coates.
David served his four years in the Marine Corps, then got out and joined the Army for 18 more years, where part of his service included time in Desert Storm.
But it wasn’t until years later, settled back down in South Carolina, that his health would really take a turn.
“He mentioned to me one day that the VA told him that they thought he had fatty liver disease. And it didn’t sink in to me at all that that was a serious issue and could actually take him down. And he was already 100% disabled through the VA with PTSD. So he was getting all of his care at the VA in Columbia. But then the pandemic hit, and everything just kind of stopped,” said Coates.
Coates said by the time doctors started seeing patients again, David was in a fair amount of pain.
“They discovered that he had myocarditis. The day that the gastroenterologist told him that he was going to put him on the list for liver transplant was the day that he found out he had myocarditis,” said Coates.
But that transplant never happened.
“The doctor gave him some medication for his heart and his blood pressure bottomed out. and he ended up in the hospital,” said Coates. “They tried to bring his blood pressure back up, but they could never get it up high enough so that they could release him. And between that and the symptoms of the liver disease, the hospital said there’s nothing else that we can do for him.”
In late fall of 2020, David came home and hospice began coming by daily to check on him.
“My kids all pretty much moved into the house with me and helped me take care of him,” said Coates. “But I just lay there next to him at night, knowing that he was not going to make it and there was nothing I can do except hold his hand. And when they put him on morphine, it was like, this is the end. He’s only got a few more days. And the last thing he said to me, I told him I loved him. And he said, ‘I love you too.’ And that was the last words he said.”
David died the next evening; he was 62 years old.
Coates said with him, died all the plans they made for retirement.
“I was going to retire and then we were going to travel, he loved to go to Germany. We tried to go like every other year. And we’d just buy plane tickets and book a hotel and rent a car and ride down the Autobahn and go to the festivals and eat the food and visit the castles. That was what he loved to do, I loved it too,” said Coates. “We were both born in Germany, and we were stationed there twice as well.”
Instead, now it’s just Coates and the dog. Her family still lives in the area nearby, but she can’t help feeling alone in this fight sometimes. That’s why meeting the women from the Camp Lejeune Toxic Water Widows group has been such a good thing for her.
“I’ve learned a lot from these people, from these women. I’ve learned a lot and I think I’m going to learn a lot more, but they help anybody that needs help,” said Coates. “It helps mainly because I’m not alone. I can just shut down and not socialize, not talk to people except at work or what have you, but it makes me realize that there’s other women going through the same thing.”
There are many women, many other people, still fighting for the benefits just like Coates is.
“I filed initially when he passed away, and of course, they denied it,” said Coates. “And then with this Camp Lejeune issue started coming up and I realized, yeah, we were in Camp Lejeune in those years. I refiled with the VA and I haven’t heard anything and it will be a year in October, and I haven’t heard anything other than they wanted more paperwork. And then I filed under the Camp Lejeune Water Act. The VA just loves to tell me no, and I think they try to do that with a lot of people.”
While she waits for what she and her family deserve, Coates will continue to fight and continue to remember David fondly.
“David was in a motorcycle club, and his road name was Grumpy. And it fit him perfectly because he was grumpy. He was matter of fact, you knew if he liked you, and you knew if he didn’t like you,” said Coates. “But he was very smart. And he had a lot of common sense. And he looked out for me in ways that I never even realized until he was gone.”