Capt. Dan Grinstead ’72
Iowa City, Iowa

Dan Grinstead’s work history looks fairly straightforward at first glance: a Master of Social Work from the University of Minnesota in Duluth in 1975 after graduating from Wartburg in 1972, and then the start of a long career as a social worker and instructor. He rose from being a staff social worker at the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics to serving as a social service division supervisor, and then a social work specialist at the hospital who worked with patients and taught students and residents at the university.

But then, in 2008, a turn in his career seems like a typo: At age 57, Grinstead joined the Iowa National Guard as a first lieutenant.

It was certainly a fork in the road that the self-described hippie would never have expected while demonstrating against the Vietnam War in the 1970s. But the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and headlines about military veterans committing suicide kept him thinking, “Is there something I could do to help?” In 2007, a psychiatry resident who was a member of the Iowa Army National Guard urged Grinstead to check out the opportunity to make a difference as a social worker serving other soldiers. In 2008 he was taking an oath to support and defend the Constitution, and then became the oldest Iowan deployed by the National Guard in modern times.

Grinstead was promoted to captain before heading to Afghanistan in 2010 as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, where he would be running a combat stress clinic at Bagram Airfield. Later, he moved to Forward Operating Base Mehtar Lam to staff its behavioral health clinic. In the course of his work, Grinstead debriefed soldiers who had survived a suicide bombing that killed 12 fellow service members, and their bravery inspired him just as he helped them cope with the trauma of the incident. “Dan has a deep faith in humankind that allows him to reach out to others who are in pain and need his caring and his mental health expertise,” wrote his nominator. “He genuinely cares for this earth and the creatures and people who inhabit it.”

Since his one-year deployment, Grinstead has appeared twice on “NBC Nightly News” and has presented dozens of lectures about the impact of deployment on U.S. troops. He returned to the U of I Hospitals to work on an adult inpatient psychiatry unit and has generously shared his knowledge by teaching in various schools and programs, including Wartburg College, Buena Vista University and the University of Iowa. He has been a researcher with the Iowa City VA Health Care System, and after retiring from the University of Iowa in 2019, Grinstead was asked by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to recruit volunteers for a research study to explore whether the VA should pay for service dogs for veterans.

“It’s not every day you meet a retired social worker who felt his mission to lead and serve others for mental health safety wasn’t over, joined the military, and then took on a third career to continue striving to make a different in others’ lives,” wrote a former colleague. “You don’t often get to meet people who are so compassionate, engaged with constant learning and teaching, and generous with their spirit.”