SEQUIM – Ask Matt Ward how he changed since he went from Sequim to Iraq to re-entering rural life, and he describes that journey in matter-of-fact terms.
Ward, 27, “screwed around for a year and got into a bunch of trouble” after graduating from Sequim High School in 2000.
Then, against family expectations, he decided it was time to get on with life and enlisted in the Marines.
After his first tour in Japan, Ward was sent to the Kuwait border in January 2003, shortly before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
In March, he became part of the field artillery corps that fired some of the first shots of the war, advancing across the desert to Baghdad, raiding Iraqi military compounds and patrolling the city’s streets.
His convoy was shot at, the chemical-weapons threat was high and at one point he was caught in “friendly fire,” in which one of his friends was hit.
After six months in Iraq, Ward spent some time back in Sequim and then was sent to serve another tour in Asia.
He rose to the rank of corporal, and in December 2004 received an honorable discharge three months early, he said, “to go to college.”
But that plan was not to be.
“When you get back from war, you think you’re fine,” Ward said.
“But you’re still in shock. And you have all this freedom” after four structured years in the Marine Corps.
Like other young veterans of the war in Iraq, Ward struggled to readjust; he drank, and “things started snowballing.”
“I had a lot of problems. I realized I needed help,” he recalled.
When Ward talked with older veterans of the Vietnam era, they advised him to find out what kinds of help were available from the Veterans Administration.
Ward saw a counselor in Port Angeles for about a year and now praises the VA for guiding him toward the resources he needed.
“The help is there,” he said. “You’ve got to take it upon yourself to get it.”
Civilian life “is a big fight for anyone who comes back,” he said. “Everyone’s going to have some type of problem.”
Last summer, Ward faced another battle: that of making a living.
He had entered an electrical lineman apprenticeship program, but as the economic downturn worsened, he saw he was not going to get enough work with contractors.
So Ward took a step in another direction.
He started a business, Left Coast Enterprises, and began marketing himself as a one-man landscape management and enhancement service.
In August last year, he had two clients. Today he has about 50 and often works seven days a week. He deals with heat, hornet stings, billing and income taxes — and loves it.
“I don’t get tired,” Ward said while surveying the lush expanses at BJ’s Garden Gate Bed & Breakfast, a Port Angeles inn that hired him to keep the place neat and green.
“You don’t get worn out when it’s your own,” he said of the business. But Ward took care to credit two mentors, his brother-in-law Gary Biondolillo, who runs Pacific Mowing & Gardening, and Pat Allen of Allen Landscape Maintenance.
And his father, Jeff Ward of Sequim, is his “common sense factor” when he wants to bounce ideas around.
Ward spends hours mowing large-acreage estates, so he has time to think up such ideas. The building of a business, he said, is a good thing on which to focus his thoughts as well as his labor – but he also gives himself time away from it all. Ward is an avid surfer, a lover of both the waves and the peacetime in between.
Sliding into the water “is the best way to clear your mind. Even when there are no waves . . . the ocean is the best place in the world to be.”
The Pacific Ocean and Left Coast Enterprises will keep Ward here, along with his family ties. “I’m never going anywhere else,” he said.
When considering his son’s transitions over the past eight years, Jeff Ward expresses pure admiration.
“I realize the major change in him probably occurred not when he went into the Marines, but when he decided to enlist,” Jeff said. “When he was younger, Matt did not always finish what he started and tended to take the easy way out when things got tough.
“He called me from Seattle the day he enlisted and explained to me that he chose the Marine Corps because he needed to put himself in a place where he had to follow through. He realized, at the age of 18, that he needed to learn to face challenges.”
Ward’s years as a Marine “showed him what he was capable of doing, and the experience is probably what gave him the confidence to start a business from scratch, in a dismal economic climate, and succeed.”
Jeff added that he and his wife, Blythe Barbo, are proud of each of their five children, as was their grandmother, June Ward.
Jeff sees June as a strong influence on Matt. “She grew up during the Great Depression and was a fighter and survivor all her life. She died in 2003 but was able to watch Matt grow up and return safely from Iraq,” he said. “She was very proud of him, no matter what, and he always spent time with her when he was home.”
Jeff added that watching his children find their way in the world has inspired him. “Most of the time,” he said, “they teach me things – not the other way around.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
