HARTFORD, Conn. — Robert Doyle had a couple of dress suits, but when he was in Iraq they were stolen from his storage unit along with his desktop computer and golf clubs.

So Doyle, who was a sergeant first-class in the U.S. Army, was particularly pleased with the $1,000 midnight-blue, double-pinstripe suit he was fitted for Thursday. It was a gift for him from Brooks Brothers on the first day of the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities, based at the University of Connecticut.

The 10-day entrepreneurial program, which is sponsored by foundations, individual donors and businesses, will cover topics ranging from "elevator pitches" to marketing to social media and financing.

Like the two dozen other veterans in the program, Doyle, 39, of Northborough, Mass., hopes to build a business and rebuild his life despite injuries, which in his case include lung damage and post-traumatic stress. His plan is the re-sale of "value-added" electronics to the military and others.

"I'm basically going to do be doing what I did in Iraq," Doyle said. "You take something from one area, you escort it to another area. … It's the same thing I did in Iraq only no one is going to be shooting at me. There's going to be no bombs and I'm not going to have pick up my soldiers' pieces off the ground."

The business boot camp for veterans opened Thursday with a fitting for new suits provided by Brooks Brothers at Westfarms mall.

The suits are "an outward manifestation of this new identity they have," shifting from the military to the business world, explained Mike Zacchea, a former Marine and director of the boot camp.

"For some it's the first suit they ever owned," said Zacchea, who is a former U.S. Marine. "Getting a new suit can change someone's outlook; how they think of themselves and how they interact with the world."

As store employees stretched measuring tapes across broad shoulders to get just the right fit, Kim Cleverdon, store manager for Brooks Brothers, explained that the company has been making military uniforms since the Civil War era. She said the company is "honored" to provide the entrepreneurial veterans with a suit, shirt and tie for their new lives.

"This is a serious treat," Doyle said, noticing that the price of his tie was almost $100.

In 2010, the UConn School of Business became part of a national consortium of schools that offer the entrepreneurship boot camp for veterans with disabilities. Zacchea said the program at UConn is completely run with private money raised from charities, charitable individuals and businesses , including the Bank of America and the Walmart Foundation.

In the previous two years that the program has run at UConn, Zacchea said, 37 veterans have participated; of those 25 have started 27 businesses. Only one business has failed, he said.

The program is intense, he said, with 80 hours of instruction and 40 hours of homework and assignments and it extends beyond the intial 10 days. The participants are assigned mentors who are students in UConn's business programs and are provided with help to write business plans and other details for a year.

"We don't just send them off into the big, bad world after a week," said Zacchea. "We actually help them get on their feet."

According to literature provided by the boot camp, Connecticut is the eighth-worst state for veteran employment, with an unemployment rate for them of 15.8 percent. Zacchea said the boot camp aims to change that, focusing on entrepreneurial work that veterans are particularly suited for with its emphasis on "mission accomplishment." Similarly, military emphasis on "mission planning" translates easily into the business world as "project planning."

Zacchea said that military members, even in the lowest ranks, learn to coordinate complicated ventures by planning backward to ensure readiness by a deadline. That ability is also important in a business, he said, when goods and services must be delivered by a certain time.

"Vets are far more mature and accomplished than the average twentysomething," Zacchea said. "In some ways, they are almost like wonder kids."

Cory Hixson, 29, a former member of the U.S. Marines from Springfield, Va., who has a business rehabilitating distressed properties and wants to start his own green construction company, expects the hands-on practical topics to be covered in the 10-day program to be as useful to him as his master's degree in finance.

"As much as business degrees can help you out, there's nothing like real world practice," said Hixson. "The main thing is I just want to be kind of like a sponge and absorb as much as I can."

Hixson returned from Iraq seven years ago, but it wasn't until a few years later that he began to understand that the emotional numbness he sometimes felt and the heightened state of awareness were related to post-traumatic stress.

Hixson remembers only twice being actually scared during his service, but "the rest of the time your adrenaline is just going. … That was the hardest part of coming back, adjusting to things just being more lackadaisical. You know, you're not worrying about a roadside bomb. You're not worrying about someone hitting you or shooting you."

Doyle, who was awarded a Bronze Star for his service in Iraq, said that when he first returned from deployment he ignored his troubles and that caused more trouble. "I ran out of money. I was pretty much living out of my car," he said. "My wife left me. Everything fell apart. ... I was too stubborn to accept that I had something wrong."

But now with years of medical help for his breathing and with therapy, Doyle is beginning to feel like himself again. "You know, I want to be a taxpayer again. I want to be a normal person again, so that's what's kind of motivating me to do this. I'd like to one day not need the disability payment."
 

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