The 70-year-old knew he wanted to help on the frontlines from the moment Russia invaded on February 24, and after months of communicating with various groups and family members, Siclari left the U.S. to go to Ukraine in late July. It took him months to figure out how to make his journey work considering many groups required much longer than Siclari's two weeks of vacation.
"My major mission was just to provide day-to-day care for whatever the needs were," Siclari added."So [it] might be checking a wound. It might be taking care of a cut. It might be a sprain or a strain. It might be making sure that they got their medications for their blood pressure or their diabetes. So it was really a day-to-day just walk-in type care for the population taking care of sniffles and kids with coughs and [those] types of things.
His dad’s age “never really factored into” the conversation, the younger Siclari said, adding, “It was one of those things where he was physically able to help. He was still motivated to help and so he went and did it,” along with the support from his entire family. "It was one of those things where if you had the ability to help someone in a situation no matter who it was or what the situation was [and] ... you're capable and able of doing it, then it was something that you did," the younger Siclari explained.
In 2011, when Siclari was in his late 50s, he decided to enlist in the National Guard after seeing U.S. service members his children's age come home in body bags from Afghanistan and Iraq. He pulled out of the National Guard shortly after joining because he wanted to be overseas, helping U.S. service members on the battlefields.
The war should be stopped, but it seems there is interest in keeping it alive.