Vietnam veteran's widow finally sees survivor benefits
Tulsa World
By Randy Ellis The Oklahoman
Posted: Monday, November 21, 2016
80-year-old widow spent 24 years before Veterans Affairs changed its view
CHICKASHA — Twenty-four years of persistence have finally paid off for the Chickasha widow of a Vietnam War veteran.
After rejecting her survivor’s benefit claims for more than two decades, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has finally acknowledged that wartime exposure to Agent Orange likely contributed to her husband’s death from heart disease.
Along with the admission came $291,000 in retroactive survivor’s benefits.
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Family Buried Decorated Korean, Vietnam War Vet In Backyard After Apparent Suicide, Nassau Cops Say
CBS News New York
November 18, 2016
Neighbors identified him as Frank Mabry — a Purple Heart, Korean and Vietnam War veteran in his 80s. His family claims he was ill, took his own life, and had an unusual request.
NORTH BELLMORE, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) — A North Bellmore neighborhood has had a steady police presence for two days, so neighbors were relieved to hear there was no danger to them.
As CBS2’s Carolyn Gusoff reported, they’re scratching their heads at why a family would bury a loved one in the backyard.
Homicide detectives worked for a second day, scouring the overgrown property surrounding 1369 Pea Pond Road — digging with shovels in the back yard.
By afternoon they found what they were looking for, buried in a shallow 2-foot deep makeshift grave was a body wrapped in blue.
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Local motorcycle club is taking the war to PTSD; SEICAA Veterans Services and Veterans Court receive donation from BSMC, Eastside
Iowa State Journal
By Alessandra Toscanelli For the Journal
November 21, 2016
Hook said he was inspired to champion the cause after hearing stories of those suffering PTSD, watching a YouTube video regarding PTSD and getting in touch with Idaho State University’s Todd Johnson, the director of the university’s Veteran Student Services Center.
POCATELLO — The Eastside chapter of the Brother Speed Motorcycle Club raised money to support the war on PTSD and used the funds from the campaign to help SEICAA’s Veterans Services this last October.
On Nov. 7, the SEICAA Veterans Services and the Sixth Judicial District’s Veterans Court received a combined donation of $3,000 from the motorcycle club.
Those in attendance were Sixth District Magistrate Rick Carnaroli, judge for the Sixth District Veterans Treatment Court; Debra Hemmert, CEO of SEICAA; Kale Bergeson, SEICAA Veterans Services Director; Shantay Bloxham, Operations Director of SEICAA; George “Woody” Woodman, Mentor Coordinator; Casey Cornelius, ISU Addiction Specialist; Andrea Hook, Vocational Rehabilitation; Scott Hook, president of the motorcycle club’s Eastside chapter; local veterans from the program; and fellow motorcycle club members.
SEICAA’s Veterans Services is available for military veterans who are facing homelessness or are currently experiencing homelessness. The program is dedicated to empowering veterans to overcome life’s obstacles and advocate for long-term self-sufficiency. Veterans often struggle with PTSD, physical health problems, mental illness or substance abuse issues and severe isolation.
One recent success story of the Veterans Services program comes from a 54-year-old veteran who wishes to be kept anonymous.
“Before coming into the program, I knew I was screwed up but I didn’t know how to move forward,” he said.
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AMAZING UPDATE!
How a stranger’s generosity helped a desperate Vietnam veteran
KTVA News
By Liz Raines Photojournalist: Ken Kulovany
November 22, 2016
ANCHORAGE – We first introduced you to Robert Stevens in a Problem Solvers piece on Friday. For the last three years, he and his wife, Diane, have been trying to get benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Robert Stevens was exposed to the toxic herbicide known as Agent Orange while serving in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War.
Now, their lives have taken a turn for the better because of one person who saw that story.
When we last met the Stevenses, they were drowning in debt.
“They just turned us into collections because I’ve gotten to a point where there’s so many medical bills for Bob,” Diane Stevens said. “I just can’t do it anymore.”
Robert Stevens believes he was exposed to Agent Orange while making his way through Vietnam after receiving orders to return home to Minnesota on April 1, 1969.
“I had a quadruple bypass,” Robert Stevens explained. “And my heart doctor said it was from Agent Orange.”
In order to get any money from the VA, the Stevens have to prove he stepped foot on Vietnamese soil. However, the VA can’t find his records, so Robert and Diane Stevens are now searching for anyone who might still recognize him from that time.
Diane Stevens posted a cry for help on a reunion page for her husband’s ship, the USS Lynde McCormick. The Stevenses haven’t received a response yet, but someone else in the community was listening to their story.
One KTVA viewer was so moved by the couple’s story that he wanted to give them a check for $3,800.
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A desperate endeavor: Vietnam veteran seeks community’s help getting benefits
KTVA News
By Liz Raines
Photojournalist: Rachel McPherron
November 19, 2016
ANCHORAGE – I first met Rob and Diane Stevens at a Department of Veterans Affairs listening session in September. Diane fought back tears as she told the Alaska VA’s new director, Timothy Ballard, of her and her husband’s now three-year battle to obtain some sort of compensation for Robert’s exposure to Agent Orange.
The Vietnam War ended in 1975, but the heroism of those who served lives on today. The soldiers wear hats now instead of helmets. Robert does so proudly. At the tender age of 17, he joined the U.S. Navy.
“I got to know the guys, the medic,” Robert recalled. “And I was like, ‘I really want to do that.’ And everybody kept telling me, ‘no, you don’t want to do that.'”
Robert spent two years in Vietnam, days he remembers with nostalgia. But there’s one day he’ll never forget: April 1,1969 — his 21st birthday.
“I got handed four sheets of paper and they said ‘your dad’s been in a car accident,'” Robert remembered.
He was sent home to Minnesota to be with his family, but to get there he had to first pass through Vietnam from Vung Tau to Saigon. That’s where Robert’s life changed forever.
“Two helicopters flew over and they dropped this white powder,” Robert said.
That white powder, he believes, was Agent Orange — an herbicide the U.S. Government used to destroy jungles during the war so it could see the enemy. Now the VA recognizes that Agent Orange destroyed a lot more.
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Colorado shows nation’s largest spike in the number of homeless veterans
AMERIFORCE
By Kirk Mitchell
November 18, 2016
Colorado’s overall homeless population increased by 721, or 13 percent, from 2015 to 2016, the report says. HUD volunteers conducted a statewide survey one night in January and counted 10,555 homeless people. Of those, 7,611 were living in emergency shelters or transitional housing and 2,939 were on the streets.
Alfred Zabawa joined hundreds of military veterans streaming into Colorado last year for legal pot or to find a job in a state with a thriving economy, only to find themselves living on the streets and contributing to the highest rise in the number of homeless veterans in the nation.
Zabawa, 61, arrived in Colorado an able-bodied man. On Friday, he pulled up his pajama bottoms to reveal an aluminum prosthetic leg as he sat in a wheelchair waiting in line for free groceries in a parking lot outside Denver’s VA Hospital.
While most states saw their homeless veteran populations drop an average of 17 percent in the past year to a total of 39,471, Colorado was one of only eight states going in the opposite direction with increasing numbers, according to the the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s annual report on homelessness, which was released Thursday.
Colorado had the biggest gain of any state with an increase of 231 homeless veterans, a 24 percent rise. Colorado’s homeless veteran population of 1,181 is now nearly as high as the state of New York, which has 1,248 homeless veterans, the HUD report says.
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