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Through her Pillars of Strength Scholarship to pursue a degree at University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC), Morgan Brunketurner hopes she can focus attention on what so many spouses of wounded warriors know: Until the veteran acknowledges his disability, the spouse and family suffer without any help at all.

“There’s so much help available for veterans once they admit there’s a problem,” she said. “Once you get registered you can get counseling for your vet, for yourself and your kids. But you can’t get access to any of those things before your veteran has a disability rating from the [Veterans Affairs] VA, which means they have to admit there’s a problem.”

Morgan is the caregiver for her husband, Army Staff Sgt. Zeke Brunketurner, who was injured a number of times while serving in Iraq. She is also a teacher of music and movement in the Waldorf Elementary Schools. In addition to using the attention she receives from the scholarship to shed light on the challenges of caregivers, she intends to pursue an undergraduate degree—followed by a master’s program—that would prepare her to work with autistic children like her young son.

She said she has come to realize that she, too, is autistic. 

Although many states have good programs to deal with autism, she said, those programs don’t always reach students in ways that can help them function well in the world.

“Many kids still are labeled as bad kids or kids with behavioral problems or put into

special ed programs for slower-paced kids,” she explained, “when they really are brilliant kids who could be moving very fast academically if given the right tools or even the knowledge about how their brains work.”

The highly competitive Pillars of Strength Scholarship allows the caregivers of military members and veterans to pursue �Ҹ������� degree programs tuition free. Because of the constraints on caregivers of people who are ill or injured, there are no time restrictions on how long a recipient of the highly competitive scholarship takes to finish the degree program. Brunketurner said she is grateful for the opportunities that comes with the Pillars Scholarship—including the visibility it could give her in helping the families of wounded veterans.

“I'm hoping that I can do a lot during this time,” she said, “and speak out and be available to support others.”

Brunketurner said a veteran can hide internal wounds, such as those resulting from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or traumatic brain injury, from outsiders. However, the erratic changes in their personality can tear a family apart, damaging the spouse and the children.

“We spouses often know that things are falling apart years before our veterans are willing to get help or admit that there's a problem,” she said. “By that time, the children often have PTSD from all the craziness in the household.”

There has to be some kind of system for families of wounded veterans to seek help on their own, she said. 

Morgan married her husband in 2007 after he returned from Iraq without knowing the extent of his injuries. He soon began exhibiting erratic behavior, but his injuries were not documented, and he refused to acknowledge them. He did not want to give up his military career, which saw him going first to the Army Reserve and then the National Guard.

“The military is a place where men connect with each other, living and working in such dire conditions that they create this dependence on each other that they are just not allowed to have in other places,” Morgan said.

With a team of four children, three adults and one 10-year-old, Morgan has created a handcrafted toy company called Skiddlyrumpus. Women she hired helped create the stuffed animals that she often sells at Renaissance Festivals. She is expanding the entrepreneurial activity into Skiddlyrumpus Studios, which seeks to build social and artistic experiences for community gatherings.