By Janice Hayes Kyser
Contributing Writer
LOS ANGELES — After returning home from the Vietnam War, Clyde Heads spent 30 years delivering letters, packages and information to countless veterans and others along his Compton mail route. A veteran himself, Heads wanted to make sure former service members got the medical, education, housing and other benefits they deserved and desired.
Delivering mail was his job; empowering veterans was his mission.
“My father was a World War II vet, and he didn’t get what he was entitled to because he didn’t know how to and he didn’t want to deal with all the red tape and racism,” says Heads, who was drafted in 1967 and served in Vietnam after graduating from Compton’s Centennial High School.
“I didn’t want other vets to miss out. I wanted to be somebody to somebody. I wanted to reach back,” he added “It’s about vets helping vets.”
Now 79, Heads is one of countless veterans in metro Los Angeles who continue to serve the community long after they’ve retired their uniforms.
That’s the case for Fabian Severson of South L.A. After graduating from St. John’s University, he joined the Army as a logistics officer with the 82nd Airborne Division.
After serving four years in the Army, he joined the FBI and worked with counterterrorism and gang units in L.A. He says seeing young male gang members without guidance and role models prompted him to join the service fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha.
Through his involvement with the fraternity, Severson, 35, has mentored dozens of youths, taking them on college tours and exposing them to career and life options they may not have otherwise known. He says he’s most proud that one of those students now attends Morehouse College and is paying it forward by mentoring others.
“Seeing Black youths struggling to find their way made me want to do more,” Severson said. “When you leave the military, there’s a void. I was used to a community and being there for others. Service is part of my life’s purpose. My motto is if not me, who?”
A family tradition of service and a desire to secure money for college is what led Marnisha Fleetwood, 47, to enlist in the Marine Corps where she was responsible for tracking and maintaining records for Marine Corps aircraft operations on the East Coast. After military service, Fleetwood began her scholastic journey, eventually earning a doctorate.
Today, she teaches adults how to use technology at Golden Oak Adult School in Santa Clarita. She is also an outspoken advocate for women veterans as a lifetime member of the National Association of Black Women Veterans/Los Angeles chapter, which honors and promotes the service of Black women in the U.S. military. As a result of her work with that organization, Fleetwood was named the 2026 Veteran of the Year for California’s 40th Assembly District.
A longtime social and civic activist, perhaps her most unselfish act of kindness came in 2016 when she donated a kidney to a friend of a friend. That experience led her to begin advocating for living kidney donors and those living with chronic kidney disease.
“I have a passion for justice and people,” Fleetwood said. “Service to me means doing what I can to help others with no expectation of getting anything in return.”
It’s that sense of selflessness that drives Daphne Wright, a disabled Navy veteran and Paralympian, to give back to her fellow service members.
Wright, who served as a cryptologic technician operator, has improved the lives of hundreds of veterans through her work with the Department of Veterans Affairs in L.A. For more than two decades, she has made it possible for veterans to access their benefits so they can go to school, buy a home, manage their health and get off the streets. She also assists veterans with getting other than honorable and bad conduct discharges upgraded.
Wright also uses her talents as a writer, producer and actor to encourage veterans to tell their stories as part of a writing program she conducts in conjunction with UCLA.
“I spent the first 12 years of my life in a military family, and I feel it’s my purpose to serve those who’ve served,” Wright said. “For me, helping veterans is a labor of love.”
