Marine Corps Maj. John Ruocco poses for a picture with his wife, Kim, and children, Joey, right, and Billy, in November 2004. The major committed suicide in 2005 after a long battle with depression. His wife has devoted herself to suicide prevention and assisting survivors. Courtesy photo
By Elaine Wilson, AFPS
June 14, 2010
elaine.wilson@dma.mil
I spoke with an amazing woman the other day who lived through a tragic event, yet found the strength to move on to help others.
Kim Ruocco’s husband, Marine Corps Maj. John Ruocco, an accomplished AH-1 Cobra helicopter pilot and father of two, committed suicide five years ago after a long battle with depression.
Yearning to give her husband’s death some meaning, Kim eventually immersed herself in efforts to combat suicide within the military. She’s now the director of suicide education and support for the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping families with a fallen military loved one.
Kim has shared her story with thousands of troops across the nation, working to fight the stigma that kept her husband from seeking help.
“I’ve talked to thousands and thousands of troops and I really get the sense [military] leaders want to find out how to fix this,” she said. “But it’s so hard to keep people from falling through the cracks. It’s hard and heartbreaking.”
After more than a decade in the Marines, Kim’s husband was at the pinnacle of his career field, she told me. An expert pilot, he had accepted an Air Force exchange position at Vance Air Force Base, Okla., where he trained new pilots on the T-37 jet.
But the demands of a fast-paced, post-9/11 military were wearing him down, she said.
“It was taking a toll; the stress and pressure,” Kim said. “He felt indebted to the Marine Corps and the Air Force, and indebted to us. He was trying to please everyone.”
He decided, at nearly 15 years in, to separate and become a reservist. He joined a Pennsylvania-based Reserve unit and started training to be a Southwest pilot. But two weeks after he joined the Reserve, he was deployed to Iraq. He handled the stress of deployment well, but post-deployment life was taking a downturn. The job with Southwest didn’t pan out, and his Pennsylvania-based squadron had moved to California.
“The adrenaline with war was coming to a screeching halt,” Kim said. “He was having difficulty flying because of the anxiety and depression. It was the snowball effect you see so often with suicide.”
Kim tried to talk him into getting help, but to no avail. Her husband was concerned about the stigma of seeking help. He believed it would mean the end of his career, she said.
The day he died, her husband was in a hotel room in California. Kim called him, urging him again to get help. She asked him if he felt like killing himself. He told her he could never do that to Kim and his two boys and finally agreed to get help. But Kim had a nagging feeling something wasn’t right and caught a red-eye flight to California to accompany him to counseling.
But she was too late. Just hours after they had ended their call, the major hung himself in his hotel room.
“I believe he really meant it when he said he couldn’t do that to me and the kids, but he probably sat there and thought about the consequences of getting help, the concept of death before dishonor, and that he was mentally incapable of doing his duty,” she said. “That’s the final straw for [servicemembers], when they don’t feel they have anything to give anymore.”
In the years following her husband’s death, Kim has devoted herself to helping prevent suicide among troops and providing support to surviving families.
“[Families] need a lot of help and often help is not there for them,” she said. “We need to build up services more and build up funding.”
In the meantime, Kim and her sons have worked on taking on healthy roles and building new, happy memories. They traveled to Florida and the Caribbean and immersed themselves in the military’s and TAPS’ support.
Kim also focuses on celebrating her husband’s life, rather than dwelling on how he died. She cites Enid, Okla., as an example of a community that has created a touching celebration of life. She returns there to Vance Air Force Base, the family’s last active-duty station, each year to visit with old friends.
On her last visit, she stopped by a town memorial, where a stone is placed for each military member from Oklahoma who died while serving the nation. To her surprise, the park included a plaque in memory of her husband.
“They were honoring not how he died, but how he lived,” she said. “He served and sacrificed and stepped up, too, and they were acknowledging that. That’s how it should be done.”
For more on Kim’s story, read my American Forces Press Service article, “Survivor Shares Story to Combat Troop Suicides.”
If you or someone you know is at risk of suicide, contact your local mental health care provider or call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-TALK, Veterans Press 1.