At 19, Mike White was not studying for exams or learning a trade. He was fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, serving on a sniper team as a spotter.

“You’re looking through a scope, like watching people’s movements, and kind of observe and report,” White said. “And if the shooter has to take a shot, you help guide his round on target and give him the kind of math associated with the trajectory.”

White, a 2009 Eudora graduate, enlisted in the Army on his 18th birthday. He went to basic training in Georgia 11 days after he graduated and then completed Airborne School there. White then chose to join the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Italy because he knew they would be deploying soon.

“We joined to go participate in the war,” White said. “Everybody was a volunteer. Everybody, like, made the decision to do this. Nobody was drafted or anything like that.”

White spent some time in Germany before deploying to Afghanistan. After participating in over 110 combat engagements in Afghanistan, White went back to Germany and then to Fort Hood, Texas, where he finished his military career.

White eventually used his GI Bill benefits to attend Emporia State University and get a political science degree. Since leaving the service, and especially while at college, White has been an active advocate for veteran mental health and suicide prevention. 

White said he became the youngest Veterans of Foreign Wars commander in the state while he was in Emporia. During his three terms as commander, White said he lessened the post’s debt and tried to change its culture.

“We started doing a lot more activities, throwing dances and had bands in to play and stuff like that,” White said. “Tried to turn it less into a drinking establishment and more into, like, a family-type environment.”

White was also president of the Students Veterans Association at Emporia State for two years. During this time, White created a new Student Veteran Center at the university. The association’s vice president at the time, Houston Clearwater, said they raised over $120,000 for the new center.

“Mike was more than instrumental in that,” Clearwater said.

Clearwater said they built the new center because the association’s previous meeting space was about the size of a closet.

“That Student Veterans Lounge was probably enough for maybe five people to be in there at one time,” Clearwater said. “And we were cramming, like, 25 people in there.”

Clearwater also said the Students Veterans Association had roughly 30 members at the time, and most of them would show up to every single event. He said that it was every bit “because of Mike White and his leadership.”

Every year, the association would do something to recognize the number of veterans who died by suicide each day.

One year, for the 11 days leading up to Veterans Day, the association chalked 22 body outlines on the sidewalk along with the veterans crisis line phone number. 

“Some people came by and thought it was really disturbing,” White said. “Other people came by and thanked us for what we were doing.”

While White was drawing these outlines, he recognized a homeless older man sitting on a park bench and went up to talk to him.

“I offered him a cigarette and we just started talking and talked about our service. I found that he’d been in the Army, like, years ago,” White said. “And so we sat there and we visited for a while.”

Although White didn’t think much of that conversation, a few days later, he received a letter that this man, called Mr. Will, had written. The man wrote that he was going to take his life that day.

“They shared the letter with the Student Veterans Association,” White said. “I started reading it and, like, started crying and then realized.”

In the letter, Mr. Will wrote how he decided that day to “die peacefully by the river.” However, while on his way, he stopped to watch White and his peers draw the body outlines. Mr. Will wrote that White “talked me out of killing myself that day.” Unbeknownst to him, White had saved a man’s life.

“You never really know what somebody’s going through,” White said. “That’s helped drive me to be a lot more open to talk and, just, willing to listen, kind of regardless of what somebody’s got going on.”

White listened when one of the men he served with called him and said he was afraid he was going to end his life. White then called the serviceman’s military base and chaplain, who intervened just in time. That man came to White’s family Christmas that year.

Clearwater went to Emporia State right after leaving the service and said he “couldn’t have asked for a better friend” than White when coming out of the service.

“You lose your identity there for a little while and, you know, you feel kind of lost sometimes,” Clearwater said. “Having that kind of community, having somebody like Mike that understands, you know, is huge.”

In the 12 years that White has been out of the service, he has seen six of the men whom he served with die by suicide.

“It makes me wish that every one of them had just, like, picked up the phone and called,” White said.

In 2022, 6,407 veterans died by suicide and 41,484 non-veterans died by suicide, according to the 2024 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Veterans Association report. The unadjusted suicide rate for veterans was 34.7 per 100,000, and the suicide rate for non-veterans was 17.1 per 100,000. In 2022, 17.6 veterans died by suicide per day.

White has dealt with mental health issues of his own, but he said whenever he feels himself getting down, he goes to VA therapy and gets help. He said he tells his friends about the resources at the VA, too.

“Walk in and say, ‘I want to talk to somebody. I need to talk to them today,’ and they will find somebody,” White said.

The Behavioral Health Department at the Eastern Kansas VA offers psychiatry, psychology, treatment for addictive disorders and transition programs for returning veterans.

Suicide rates for veterans being treated by the VA for anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder each decreased over 30% from 2001 to 2022. Suicide rates for veterans being treated by the VA for Alcohol Use Disorder decreased 13%, according to the 2024 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Veterans Association report.

A literature review on veteran health care from 2015 to 2023 found that VA care is consistently as good as or better than non-VA when it comes to clinical quality and safety. However, it also found that VA care was not consistently better or worse when it comes to access and cost/efficiency.

White said getting help at the VA can be complicated.

“I’ve been dealing with the VA for 12 years and there’s still stuff that I have to learn, like, all the time,” White said. “And there’s no, like, simple roadmap. Honestly, you’re navigating a minefield and you’re, like, doing it blindfolded.”

He said talking to the older veterans in the lobby can help, though, because they have been working with the VA for longer.

White is now back in Eudora with his wife and infant son, Wesley. This past February, he hosted a reunion in Kansas City with about 30 men who he served with during his Army days. White said it was truly “the most healing experience.”

“We went and visited the grave of one of our guys that passed away. He OD’d after he got out,” White said. “His family came in and they all got to meet all of us. And it was a huge, huge deal for his family to get to see all the guys that he served with.”

White is already planning the next reunion, and he thinks it will be in Pennsylvania. There, former and current servicemembers will honor another fallen veteran who passed away last year. White said this veteran had taken a gunshot wound to the face in Afghanistan that left him paralyzed and unable to speak.

To White, Veterans Day is an important time to honor the sacrifices of those who have served, both living and dead. Veterans Day began in Emporia, Kansas, when one of its residents proposed that Armistice Day be renamed to honor all veterans, according to Kansas Tourism. 

“To recognize their courage and commitment to their shared partnership in keeping America the land of the free and the home of the brave,” White said. “Although appreciated, it means a lot more to me than a free cup of coffee or a discount at a store.”

Reach reporter Bella Waters at [email protected].