Local vet to speak at D.C. symposium, attend half-marathon

Ben Host catches up on his studies outside Charter College in Oxnard.

Ben Host is almost 30 years old and looks like he’s fresh out of high school. He’s eloquent and confident, and he has a drop-dead gorgeous smile.

And that’s the problem.

“When I tell people I’m a war veteran, that I was in Iraq and that I have 23 screws holding my skull together, they don’t believe me,” he says, his smile fading. “They don’t believe the story.”

“The story” is what the Channel Islands Harbor resident will share when he’s a panelist at a wounded warrior symposium in Washington, D.C., Sept. 13, and he’ll share it again as he chats with fellow veterans Sept. 15 at the Wounded Warrior Half-Marathon at Naval Base Ventura County, Point Mugu.

At the Warrior-Family Symposium in Washington, Host will discuss transitions and new beginnings, a topic he knows well. He was a construction electrician constructionman with Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 4 when the right side of his skull was shattered in a 2004 Humvee accident in Iraq, and after several months recuperating at his parents’ home in Illinois, he was assigned to limited duty with the 31st Seabee Readiness Group back at Naval Base Ventura County, Port Hueneme. In 2008, he joined the Naval Facilities Expeditionary Logistics Center (NFELC), and in October of last year, he began yet another phase of his life: college student. He’s now permanently retired from the Navy and working on a business degree.

“I’ve made it through,” he says, the smile returning. “I think I can help a lot of people.”

Through all the changes, Host has had to deal with the effects of his brain injury: short-term memory loss, irritability, anxiety, headaches.

“Perseverance has been the key,” he said. “I’ve never quit on myself.”

He credits his supervisor at NFELC, Denny Rice, for helping him learn that skill.

“He had the intuition to know when to be tough and when to help,” Host said.

At NFELC, Host became a program manager, working on the electrical systems of MRAPs, the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles that Rice’s team was fortifying to better protect U.S. forces overseas.

Rice still praises Host’s electrical know-how, and he values the friendship they formed.

“He might as well have been my son,” Rice says.

Host has found success at Charter College in Oxnard, although he was hesitant at first.

“I was very apprehensive,” he said. “I knew my math was strong, but I didn’t know if I could keep up with the reading and writing, and if I could speak at the higher level college requires.

“My intellect,” he adds, “doesn’t match my dialect.”

Host was 23 when the accident occurred Sept. 7, 2004, in a convoy outside Fallujah. In a field hospital, a doctor bored two holes into his skull to relieve the pressure, and in Baghdad he underwent emergency brain surgery.

Altogether, he has had three brain surgeries and still has a small section of brain that remains unprotected by bone.

His life, he said, is dictated by the first thought he had in Bethesda, Md., after coming back to the United States from Iraq.

“I remember thinking, ‘Well, you can decide you’re done, or you can move on.’ I remember deciding, ‘Let’s get it! Let’s go!’”

Years of medical appointments and psychotherapy have taught him coping skills, ranging from drinking water constantly so he doesn’t get headaches to mentally “checking the boxes” to make sure he’s not forgetting something.

At home, he has an emotional support animal, but he doesn’t bring the dog to school, where both his confidence and his grades are high.

“Ben has innate leadership abilities and a real charisma,” said Cecelia Burrill, president of Charter College. “Ben will succeed in whatever he does.”