Stolen Valor Fake Navy SEAL William Burley Gets 3 Years

Fake Navy SEAL gets three years in prison for defrauding charity
Chicago Tribune
Robert McCoppin
December 19, 2016

After officials with the nonprofit became suspicious, they said they contacted Don Shipley, well-known for exposing SEAL impersonators, who confronted Burley about discrepancies in his background, and IAS cut ties with him.

A man who pretended to be a U.S. Navy SEAL who could rescue kidnapped workers for a Chicago aid agency was sentenced Monday to three years in prison, prosecutors said.

William Burley, 36, formerly of Yucaipa, Calif., was ordered to pay full restitution of $32,454 to International Aid Services America, or IAS, a nonprofit Christian aid group that provides clean water in Africa, authorities said.

The president of the board of the aid agency, Jonathan Wildt, welcomed the ruling as "fair."

"We're just glad to see the justice process work appropriately, and glad for that outcome," he said.
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Don Shipley's Phony Navy SEAL of the WEEK William James Burley. Fake Fraud Phony Military Impostor

PTSD Veteran Getting Help After Smashing Cars in Canada

Driver In HSC Parking Lot Was Veteran Suffering Extreme PTSD 
VOCM News 
December 20, 2016 

A 42-year-old combat veteran is in hospital and getting the care he needs following an unusual incident in the Health Sciences parking lot last night.

Police were called to the Health Sciences around 11:45 last night following reports of a man driving erratically in the lot and smashing his pickup into vehicles and other property. 

The man had to be subdued by police using a taser A family member tells VOCM News the man, who served many years in the military both in Canada and in Bosnia, had gone to the hospital seeking help but never had the nerve to go in. She says he's now receiving care and she encourages any military veterans or others struggling with PTSD to reach out and get the help they need.

Elgin VFW Post 1307 Needs Help To Hope Again

Tough choice for struggling Elgin VFW post: Time to sell building?
Daily Herald
Elena Ferrarin
December 17, 2016

If you walked into the members- and guests-only bar of Elgin VFW Post 1307 on an average Friday night, you'd be lucky to find 10 people.

There is no bingo or fish fry anymore, although twice-monthly country line dancing and weekly raffles have survived. Occasionally, the hall gets rented for events.

And now, the post's membership will make a pivotal decision about its future on Jan. 2: Sell the building, or mortgage it to make much-needed repairs with no foreseeable means of repaying the debt.

Post Commander Art Buckheister and Post Quartermaster Scott Webb believe it's best to sell.

"The VFW is not about bars and canteens and things," Webb said. "The VFW is about veterans. Serving veterans and serving our community. That's what must be paramount. It's time to get out of the bar business."

Buckheister agreed. "We were pretty good at it for a lot of years. Now things have changed and it's time to refocus."
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Iraq Veteran's Life Ended "A single shot followed, then silence"

The life and death of a Marine
Lincoln Journal Star
CINDY LANGE-KUBICK
Updated 2 hrs ago

Later, his roommate would tell Josh's grieving parents their son’s face went blank -- like a curtain came down -- before he turned away from the television and went to his room, then returned to the hallway.

A single shot followed, then silence.

Joshua Markel loved being a Marine. Here, he hands out candy to kids during his first deployment to Iraq, where he also made friends with local police. Courtesy photo

He had a beer at the bar with his dad that Saturday, then headed home to watch his Huskers play a night game.

Josh Markel had been living in the civilian world for nearly three years by Oct. 6, 2012, a Lincoln North Star graduate deployed twice as an infantryman in Fox Company — 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment.

Josh was the corporal who always had a joke but was steady under fire. Looked up to by his fellow Marines.

Back in Lincoln, the 25-year-old worked as a correctional officer at the Nebraska State Penitentiary, receiving honors for his work ethic and his role in attempting to save an inmate critically injured in an altercation.

And he was closing in on his dream of a law enforcement career, with a job offer from the Hall County Sheriff’s Department.

He was also drinking too much. He was struggling to sleep. He was going through a divorce.

He went to the VA for help, but didn’t want to take the medication doctors recommended, his father says.

Later, at the urging of his mother, he saw a counselor, declaring himself fine after a pair of sessions.

And everything seemed fine that last day.

Josh worked until mid-afternoon, talked football with his dad at the bar and called his parents several times during the game, a matchup with Ohio State in Columbus.

The tight-knit trio talked often, and Josh went over weekly for supper and to play cards, four-point pitch, his favorite.

Their son sounded like himself, Jim and Patti Markel remember.

“I know he was a little disappointed in the score,” Patti says. “But Josh was always positive that Nebraska would pull it off.”

In the end, Ohio State rolled over the Huskers and Patti went to bed thinking: I bet Josh is madder than heck ...

A police officer rang their doorbell at 1:30 a.m.
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Trumps Picks Army Secretary with Ties to Florida, and 101st

Army veteran Vincent Viola, billionaire owner of the Florida Panthers, named Trump’s Army secretary
Washington Post
Dan Lamothe
December 19, 2016

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated as his Army secretary Vincent Viola, an Army veteran who became a billionaire after founding an electronic trading firm and went on to buy the Florida Panthers hockey team.

Businessman Vincent Viola enters Trump Tower in Manhattan on Dec. 16.

(Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

Viola is a 1977 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., and funded the creation of its highly regarded Combating Terrorism Center after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. A former infantry officer and Ranger School graduate, he has pressed for innovation in cyber warfare, saying at a conference five years ago that the Army of the future will be built on a “gestalt of geekdom.”

Viola was raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., by Italian immigrants, and served in the 101st Airborne Division after the Vietnam War ended. His father and several uncles served in combat in World War II, and he grew up believing that serving in the military was a deeply honorable profession, he recalled in an interview for the West Point Center for Oral History.
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Over 44,000 Volunteers Placed Wreaths At Arlington National Cemetery

Stunning images of Arlington National Cemetery with Wreaths Across America.

Photos: 44,000 volunteers brave icy weather to lay wreaths for veterans
WTOP News
By Kathy Stewart
December 17, 2016

ARLINGTON, Va. — More than 44,000 volunteers turned out even in the icy, cold and rainy weather to carefully lay 245,000 remembrance wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery on Saturday, as part of “Wreaths Across America.”

It was the 25th year that wreaths have been placed at Arlington National Cemetery. The theme for this year’s event was #SayTheirNames.

The wreaths are placed at grave sites nationwide to honor and remember fallen veterans and their service. After placing a wreath, volunteers are encouraged to take time to read the headstone, to honor the memory of that fallen hero and to say the veteran’s name out loud.

For Julie Hunter from Mt. Laurel, New Jersey, this has become an annual pilgrimage. The experience, for her, is a somber one.

“You see all kinds of people that come together from all different walks of life just being grateful for the service and the lives that were lost,” Hunter said.

This year was the first time that Wendy Nixon from North Carolina volunteered to place the wreaths. She lost her 21-year-old brother-in-law; he was killed in Iraq. She was awe-struck by the event at Arlington National Cemetery on Saturday.

“People come from all over just to do this,” she said. “No words can even describe, you know?”

And when the volunteers’ work was all done, the scene left behind is breathtaking: a sea of beautiful balsam wreaths with red bows at Christmastime.
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Col. Andrew Poznick, One of Too Many Fort Hood Suicides

Soldier suicides: Stressors, substances and shootings
Killeen Daily Herald
By David A. Bryant | Herald staff writer
December 17, 2106

By all outward appearances, Col. Andrew Poznick was a man with success written all over his future.

Spc. Jared Forsyth | U.S. Army
Lt. Col. Andrew Poznick speaks to his troops with 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, in Basrah, Iraq, on July 29, 2011. Poznick was commander of the battalion. On Sunday, March 20, 2016, Poznick was found dead at his residence near Carlisle Barracks, Pa.

He was a successful combat commander who led 1st Cavalry Division soldiers in Iraq. He had just been promoted to the rank of colonel. And he was preparing to join the faculty of the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pa.

On March 20, 2016, he took his own life.

He wasn’t young. He wasn’t new to the Army. He wasn’t under financial duress, and he had left Fort Hood only a few weeks earlier.

But like at least 13 other soldiers on Fort Hood in 2016 — 13 confirmed and four pending confirmation — he chose suicide as a way to end his personal pain.

The soldiers lost to suicide this year on Fort Hood had little in common. About half had deployed to combat before, the other half had not. The youngest was 20 years old; the eldest 45. They were Americans of African, European and Hispanic heritage.

Some were junior enlisted, some were noncommissioned officers and some were officers.

Their names:

Staff Sgt. Devin Lee Schuette

Maj. Troy Donn Wayman

Staff Sgt. Brian Michael Reed

Staff Sgt. Steven Daniel Lewis

Sgt. John Andrew Stobbe

Sgt. Marcus Lamarr Nelson Sr.

Spc. Bernardino Guevara Jr.

Sgt. Duane Cass Shaw III

Spc. Alexander Michael Johnson

Spc. Dion Shannon Servant

Spc. Bradley Michael Acker

Spc. Korey Deonte James

Pvt. Wanya Bruns.

Four other deaths are still under investigation by the Army as possible suicides.
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Veterans outnumber non-veteran suicide rates 80 to 29 percent

Veteran suicides: Mohave County ranks third in Arizona
When thanking them for their service isn't enough
Daily Miner
By Aaron Ricca
Originally Published: December 18, 2016

Suicides caused by homelessness, easy access to guns and substance abuse are well known and documented. “Those are the ones that are reported to the VA,” said Farrell. He added that the grisly deaths – car accidents and suicide by cop – that don’t make the official reports “is unacceptable.”

Wartime deployments can be brutal, but coming home can sometimes be more destructive than combat itself.

For more than a decade, suicide rates among veterans has surpassed that of non-veterans. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have given rise to a new generation of service members returning with PTSD, sexual assault trauma and mental and physical scars related to military – especially combat – service. Millions of these Americans join those of past wars who carry the same burden, and many of them have taken their own lives when they can no longer endure.

According to a recent study by the Arizona State University’s Center for Violence Prevention and Community Safety, Mohave County ranks the third highest in Arizona in veteran suicide rates (the highest being La Paz County). The latest U.S Census population estimate of Mohave County is 204,737 (including 25,312 veterans). There were 121 veteran suicides per 100,000 people from Jan. 2015 to June 2016. Pinal County had the lowest suicide rate at 51 per 100,000.

Of the total Arizona veteran suicides, 78 percent were from gunshot wounds. Suffocation (including hanging) was second with drug and alcohol overdoses, incision (cutting and stabbing) and blunt force trailing.

Men commit suicide more often (nearly 81 per 100,000) than women (25 per 100,000). Veterans outnumber non-veteran suicide rates 80 to 29 percent.
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Don't Bumble Healing PTSD--Join Other "Misfits"

If you are in the military, you fit in fine with others serving, yet, not so much when you are among civilians. Yep, even though you were one of them once, you'll never really be one of them again. 

You do not get back your civilian title. You become a veteran. One thing you'll notice is, you may want to "fit in" with them, but you won't, simply because they are not like you.


That is not always a bad thing because while some young folks spent way too much time on self-promotion, you were worried about staying alive. This lady is talking about what she encountered with a group of 16 year olds. 


Being a misfit among them, you can get along with them, but when you meet others like you, you discover where you do belong and fit in.

Bumbles

In the movie Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer  none of the main characters felt as if they did not belong anywhere. 

Circumstances led them to discover others and they helped each other get through whatever life dealt them.

By the end of the movie, the "normal ones" discovered they were wrong about the outcasts.

 "Maybe misfits have a place, too. Even Santa realizes that maybe - he was wrong."

It is really amazing to understand that you may feel like a misfit until you notice how well you fit with others just like you. How can you expect folks to see the goodness in you if all you show them is someone to fear? Bumbles bounced back from going over the cliff and so can you if you do not bumbled your future. Find other veterans just like you!

Iraq Veteran, Robbed of Gifts, Embraced With Love Then Pays It Forward

Family that had presents stolen plans to pay it forward
Reno Gazette Journal
Sarah Litz
December 16, 2016

“We will be paying it forward for a long, very long time. Everyone has been so amazing to us and they just want to make sure our boys have a good Christmas, and that means the world to us.” Kelly Howe

Kelly and Brian Howe sit together with their adopted children Charlie, left, and Kirt while speaking with the RGJ in their home in Reno on Dec. 15, 2016.
(Photo: JASON BEAN/RGJ, RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL-USA TODAY NETWORK)

Kelly and Brian Howe saved up for months to create the perfect Christmas for their adopted 2-year-old twins, Charlie and Kirt. The parents hoped to get the twins things they loved for Christmas – toy cars, books and anything with lights or music.

After a day of shopping, the family made a last stop for the day at the Walmart on Kietzke Lane. When they returned to their car in the parking lot, they found the car door open. What they didn’t find was a stroller, diaper bag, bottles, jackets and the presents they had just bought.

According to Lt. Zachary Thew with the Reno Police Department, the doors were locked and the suspects popped a door lock to get inside and burglarize the vehicle.

Kelly said the family lives on a fixed income with many hospital bills. Brian was shot in the Iraq War and suffers from traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder and cognitive seizures. Kelly – who is a full time caregiver to her husband and children – was diagnosed with a rapid form of Meniere’s disease.

Both boys suffer from cortical visual impairment, sensory and auditory processing issues and agenesis of the corpus callosum – a rare birth defect in which the matter between the two hemispheres in the brain is missing. She said the boys have trouble focusing, don't talk and are being tested for autism.read more here