Beyond the tools: Wounded Marines learn filmmaking techniques.(Knowledge & Career)(Wounded Marine Careers Foundation)

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For wounded servicemen and servicewomen returning to the San Diego area from war's battlefields, adjusting to normal life is often challenging, both physically and emotionally. Husband and wife Kevin ("Kev") Lombard and Judith Paixao are doing their best to make that transition easier.

The couple has spent more than two years setting up the Wounded Marine Careers Foundation (WMCF; www.woundedmarinecareers.org), a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to helping non-discharged, wounded Marines--and soon, those who have served in other branches of the armed forces--learn the craft of filmmaking while recovering from service injuries.

The program offers more than an education. Indeed, upon graduation, the participants walk away with the skills to enter into a new profession, one extending beyond the military. The program also serves a therapeutic role, allowing these war-hardened veterans to express themselves to the outside world, giving them a way to tell their own stories.

At press time, the WMCF had just graduated its first class, a group of 19 active service members who recently returned from the war. They spent 10 weeks in San Diego, working out of the organization's new facility--a former warehouse donated by television and film production company Stu Segall Productions. There, they learned the fundamentals of screenwriting, production, sound recording and mixing, and editing.

According to Norman Smith, who assumes the role as dean at the WMCF and as one of the facility's professors, the idea for the foundation grew out of an initial request by a retired, high-ranking general who asked Lombard to produce a documentary on returning servicemen. Smith, a longtime friend of Lombard, says a counteroffer was suggested, one in which Lombard--with help from veteran video professionals--would help teach these Marines how to tell their own stories through the art of filmmaking.

"It would be therapeutic," Smith notes, "and on the other hand, it would be a craft and a chance to make a new beginning as they are getting back into mainstream life."