Military and Veterans Mental Health: State Budget Crises Hurt DoD and VA Need for Partnerships, Warns NAMI Convention
Download image WASHINGTON, July 7 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- American troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and other veterans cannot depend solely on the Departments of Defense (DoD) and Veterans Affairs (VA) for mental health care—even though the civilian mental health care system is in crisis, according to the annual convention of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) held this past week.
"The VA and DoD can't do it alone. We need to rely on community providers," declared Jon Towers, senior policy advisor on the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs at a symposium broadcast live on C-SPAN.
In the opening speech at the 2010 NAMI Convention, U.S. Representative Patrick Kennedy warned, "Every day in America, our military veterans are being held behind enemy lines" because of the nation's "Byzantine mental health system."
"By changing the mental health system for veterans, we will change it for all of us," Kennedy said.
"We're only going to see great progress when the civilian community starts paying attention," said Tom Tarantino, legislative associate for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) in the July 2 symposium.
"This shouldn't be a DoD-VA dialogue, but a national dialogue," said the Army Surgeon General's special assistant for mental health, Col. Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, M.D., who called for a "needs assessment" in local communities to identify duplications and gaps in efforts.
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State Budget Crises Hurt DoD and VA Need for Partnerships
Sunday, July 11, 2010
DoD and VA Need for Partnerships, Warns NAMI Convention
Ask just about any group out here in the real world and they will agree with this. The VA and the DOD cannot do it alone. Ask any expert and they will tell you that there is a deep need for clergy to get involved as well. The biggest problem is, getting from here to where we need to be.
"Tea Party" protest at women veterans event?
In the words of one of them,,,this was just "too important to pass up." but when you think that taxes not only pay for war, they pay for the men and women we send as well, this is really sick. Too important for who? Some people to show up and say they don't care about anyone but themselves? Too important for the oblivious ignoring what this even was for? Unable to notice that the government is finally trying to take care of our veterans? This should prove once and for all that when it comes to politics, veterans are used as part of a game and it is disgraceful. They should have been paying attention to what has been happening to the veterans this even was about! Congratulations to the people who said they wouldn't protest this event. They not only showed due respect to the female veterans, they knew this was too important to the female veterans.
Tea party protesters picket Pittsburg women's veteran fair
By Doug Jastrow
Contra Costa Times
PITTSBURG — When three Democratic congressmen planned to lead an information fair to promote health and financial services for female veterans of the U.S. military, tea party organizers were presented with a problem: How do you endorse an event while at the same time protest its hosts?
The answer turned out to be a mixed message.
About a dozen protesters spent hours Saturday outside the event at Los Medanos College in Pittsburg holding signs both condemning the three congressmen and expressing support for female military veterans. Many who attended said they never noticed the small protest as they entered the event.
Once inside, attendees had the opportunity to speak with U.S. Reps. George Miller, Jerry McNerney and John Garamendi, all Democrats, about a wide variety of veteran issues. The fair also provided several workshops and vendor booths designed to assist female veterans as they transition to civilian life.
Jill Price, a tea party organizer, said it was difficult to rally support for a protest. She contacted more than 400 people on her mailing list but said, because of the nature of the event, enthusiasm was low. Price described her group as pro-military.
"I really don't mind standing alone," the Discovery Bay resident said, stating the chance to confront government officials who fail to properly represent the will of the people was too important to pass up.
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http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_15486489?source=rss
Georgia State Trooper on the job even on day off
Thursday July 8, 2010
No Days Off - ‘Morning Express’
Georgia State Trooper Darryl Benton is being hailed as a local hero after foiling a robbery on his day off. According to 'Morning Express' anchor Natasha Curry, "The trooper was out with his family when he noticed a man running behind a group of teenagers." When the trooper stopped his car to check it out, he realized that the man had just been robbed. "So what did he do?" asks Curry, "He chased the teens down and made them hand over the goods."
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No Days Off
No Days Off - ‘Morning Express’
Georgia State Trooper Darryl Benton is being hailed as a local hero after foiling a robbery on his day off. According to 'Morning Express' anchor Natasha Curry, "The trooper was out with his family when he noticed a man running behind a group of teenagers." When the trooper stopped his car to check it out, he realized that the man had just been robbed. "So what did he do?" asks Curry, "He chased the teens down and made them hand over the goods."
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No Days Off
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Top Army generals fly to Pasco to apologize to soldier's grieving father
Top Army generals fly to Pasco to apologize to soldier's grieving father
By Erin Sullivan, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Saturday, July 10, 2010
DADE CITY — Four of the Army's top officers left the Pentagon on a jet Thursday morning and headed to Florida to tell a grieving man they were sorry.
The generals — Peter Chiarelli, vice chief of staff; Colleen L. McGuire, provost marshal general and the Army's highest ranking military police officer; John F. Mulholland Jr., commander of Special Forces; and Eric B. Schoomaker, the Army's surgeon general — arrived at Mike Murburg's rural, 5-acre ranch in the tiny community of Darby in full uniform. Murburg, drenched in sweat, worked outside on his tractor until they showed up. He showered quickly, but did not dress up.
Murburg, a lawyer, had been fighting for this — for a response, for answers — for two years. In June 2008, his 20-year-old son Norman "Ehren" Murburg III died during a Green Beret training exercise near Fort Bragg, N.C. At first, the Army said Ehren died from being bitten on his left hand by a 39-inch water moccasin, which was found near the site, its venom sacks empty. Murburg was shown photos of the snake. He didn't believe it. Ehren, who was an anthropology major at the University of Florida before joining the Army, grew up hunting and fishing. He knew about snakes. When Murburg visited Fort Bragg days after Ehren's death, he said many on site said they thought the death was related to the record-breaking heat wave.
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Top Army generals fly to Pasco to apologize
By Erin Sullivan, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Saturday, July 10, 2010
DADE CITY — Four of the Army's top officers left the Pentagon on a jet Thursday morning and headed to Florida to tell a grieving man they were sorry.
The generals — Peter Chiarelli, vice chief of staff; Colleen L. McGuire, provost marshal general and the Army's highest ranking military police officer; John F. Mulholland Jr., commander of Special Forces; and Eric B. Schoomaker, the Army's surgeon general — arrived at Mike Murburg's rural, 5-acre ranch in the tiny community of Darby in full uniform. Murburg, drenched in sweat, worked outside on his tractor until they showed up. He showered quickly, but did not dress up.
Murburg, a lawyer, had been fighting for this — for a response, for answers — for two years. In June 2008, his 20-year-old son Norman "Ehren" Murburg III died during a Green Beret training exercise near Fort Bragg, N.C. At first, the Army said Ehren died from being bitten on his left hand by a 39-inch water moccasin, which was found near the site, its venom sacks empty. Murburg was shown photos of the snake. He didn't believe it. Ehren, who was an anthropology major at the University of Florida before joining the Army, grew up hunting and fishing. He knew about snakes. When Murburg visited Fort Bragg days after Ehren's death, he said many on site said they thought the death was related to the record-breaking heat wave.
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Top Army generals fly to Pasco to apologize
NATO: 6 US troops killed in Afghanistan
NATO: 6 US troops killed in Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Six American service members and at least a dozen civilians died in attacks Saturday in Afghanistan's volatile east and south, adding to a summer of escalating violence as Taliban militants push back against stepped-up operations by international and Afghan forces. NATO said four U.S. service members died in the east: One as a result of small-arms fire, another by a roadside bomb, a third during an insurgent attack and the last in an accidental explosion. Two other U.S. troops died in separate roadside bombings in southern Afghanistan. Their deaths raised to 23 the number of American troops killed so far this month in the war.
NATO 6 US troops killed in Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Six American service members and at least a dozen civilians died in attacks Saturday in Afghanistan's volatile east and south, adding to a summer of escalating violence as Taliban militants push back against stepped-up operations by international and Afghan forces. NATO said four U.S. service members died in the east: One as a result of small-arms fire, another by a roadside bomb, a third during an insurgent attack and the last in an accidental explosion. Two other U.S. troops died in separate roadside bombings in southern Afghanistan. Their deaths raised to 23 the number of American troops killed so far this month in the war.
NATO 6 US troops killed in Afghanistan
Former VA head and Georgia senator Max Cleland helps local veterans
Former VA head and Georgia senator Max Cleland helps local veterans
By Stephen Hudak, ORLANDO SENTINEL
July 9, 2010
TAVARES — Max Cleland, a former U.S. senator permanently disabled in the Vietnam War, on Friday helped troubleshoot complaints of veterans frustrated by red tape binding their medical and pension benefits.
Cleland, 67, who lost both legs and his right forearm in combat in 1968, accompanied U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D- Orlando, to forums for Central Florida veterans in Tavares and Winter Garden.
"The nation has a built-in obligation, a moral obligation, that if we send people to war…to take care of them when they come home," said Cleland, who served as Veteran Affairs administrator under President Jimmy Carter, a fellow Georgian. "Wars are not over [for soldiers] when the shooting stops."
In Tavares, veterans griped about a wide range of issues — from shoddy medical care, VA bureaucracy and proposed taxes on prosthetic limbs to their inability to find jobs or win relief from a home foreclosure.
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Max Cleland helps local veterans
By Stephen Hudak, ORLANDO SENTINEL
July 9, 2010
TAVARES — Max Cleland, a former U.S. senator permanently disabled in the Vietnam War, on Friday helped troubleshoot complaints of veterans frustrated by red tape binding their medical and pension benefits.
Cleland, 67, who lost both legs and his right forearm in combat in 1968, accompanied U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D- Orlando, to forums for Central Florida veterans in Tavares and Winter Garden.
"The nation has a built-in obligation, a moral obligation, that if we send people to war…to take care of them when they come home," said Cleland, who served as Veteran Affairs administrator under President Jimmy Carter, a fellow Georgian. "Wars are not over [for soldiers] when the shooting stops."
In Tavares, veterans griped about a wide range of issues — from shoddy medical care, VA bureaucracy and proposed taxes on prosthetic limbs to their inability to find jobs or win relief from a home foreclosure.
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Max Cleland helps local veterans
Obama: No longer will veterans have to prove what caused their illness
Unlike some people in congress, others value our veterans and know that when they need to be taken care of because they risked their lives, there is nothing to debate. It's a debt we owe to them not the other way around. It is a bill the taxpayers were prepared to pay for the day the troops were sent into combat and we know no amount of money is too much to pay for what they gave up for us. Shame on any in congress who had no problem paying to send them away but find it too expensive to take care of them back home!
Obama: More post-traumatic stress help for vets"I don't think our troops on the battlefield should have to take notes to keep for a claims application," the president said. "And I've met enough veterans to know that you don't have to engage in a firefight to endure the trauma of war."
By JULIE PACE, Associated Press Writer Julie Pace, Associated Press Writer – 11 mins ago
WASHINGTON – The government is taking what President Barack Obama calls "a long overdue step" to aid veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, making it easier for them receive federal benefits.
The changes that Veteran Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki will announce Monday fulfill "a solemn responsibility to provide our veterans and wounded warriors with the care and benefits they've earned when they come home," Obama said in his weekly radio and online address Saturday.
The new rules will apply not only to veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but also those who served in previous conflicts.
No longer will veterans have to prove what caused their illness. Instead, they would have to show that the conditions surrounding the time and place of their service could have contributed to their illness.
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Obama More post traumatic stress help for vets
Weekly remarks: Obama on more veterans benefits; Phil Gingrey on unaffordable federal deficits
July 10, 2010
Remarks by President Obama, as provided by the White House
Last weekend, on the Fourth of July, Michelle and I welcomed some of our extraordinary military men and women and their families to the White House.
They were just like the thousands of active duty personnel and veterans I’ve met across this country and around the globe. Proud. Strong. Determined. Men and women with the courage to answer their country’s call, and the character to serve the United States of America.
Because of that service; because of the honor and heroism of our troops around the world; our people are safer, our nation is more secure, and we are poised to end our combat mission in Iraq by the end of August, completing a drawdown of more than 90,000 troops since last January.
Still, we are a nation at war. For the better part of a decade, our men and women in ...
... uniform have endured tour after tour in distant and dangerous places. Many have risked their lives. Many have given their lives. And as a grateful nation, humbled by their service, we can never honor these American heroes or their families enough.
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Obama on more veterans benefits
Tape of Mel Gibson telling ex-girlfriend "that it would be her fault if she were raped" released
We make heroes out of people like this because they can act or direct a movie, but in real life, they prove themselves to be selfish, thinking they are above everyone else. Gibson left his family, started another one and then "allegedly" said it would be his girlfriend's fault if she were raped. What kind of a man thinks this way? Yet this man was among the many celebrities treated as if they should be held up as someone to honor? For what? Pretending he is something he isn't? He played heroes in movies, on a pretend set with a script and a director telling him what to do, how he should sound and look.
That's the problem in this country when we care more about a minority of actors than we do a minority of veterans risking their lives, unselfishly, every day for this country. Celebrities make the news but TV reporters don't really seem interested in how many were killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, or stories like the one posted today on the combat veteran with 4 small kids and leukemia. They don't seem interested in how many are wounded, in Walter Reed or Bethesda or Haley in Tampa, or back home in our cities and towns trying to get their lives back. The difference is while celebrities make millions pretending, the troops are paid very little. I guess it's true what they say and money gets to talk.
That's the problem in this country when we care more about a minority of actors than we do a minority of veterans risking their lives, unselfishly, every day for this country. Celebrities make the news but TV reporters don't really seem interested in how many were killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, or stories like the one posted today on the combat veteran with 4 small kids and leukemia. They don't seem interested in how many are wounded, in Walter Reed or Bethesda or Haley in Tampa, or back home in our cities and towns trying to get their lives back. The difference is while celebrities make millions pretending, the troops are paid very little. I guess it's true what they say and money gets to talk.
Tape of alleged racist rant by Gibson released
Male voice resembling actor's harangues on Grigorieva's appearance
by ANTHONY McCARTNEY
LOS ANGELES — Mel Gibson is allegedly heard using a racial epithet and calling his ex-girlfriend a "whore" in a recording released by a celebrity news website Friday.
The two-minute recording posted by RadarOnline.com includes segments in which a voice sounding distinctively like the Academy Award-winner is heard telling his then-girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, that she is dressing too provocatively and that it would be her fault if she were raped. He uses the N-word at one point, and the recording is laced with his profanity.
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http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/38173191/ns/today-entertainment/
Rock Hill veteran, father of 4, battling leukemia
Rock Hill veteran, father of 4, battling leukemia
Facebook page, Web site set up to help family
By Andrew Dys - adys@heraldonline.com
The license plates say veteran.
The pictures of Qatar and Kuwait and Turkey say veteran.
The guy, 36 years old, with four tiny sons, can say veteran.
But he can’t do much more.
Jeff Wyman, Air Force veteran of four deployments, has to save his strength for the chemotherapy poison that can save his life as he battles acute lymphatic leukemia.
“My daddy has cancer,” says Aaron Wyman, 6, oldest of the four sons. The son Jeff has to tell, “Be tough, you’re the man of the house,” when Jeff leaves for the hospital for days at a time.
The wife, Wendy, whom Jeff Wyman calls “incredible,” has to say things at the grocery store or doctor that this family with the youngest son just 3 months old never thought any would say.
“I have a WIC voucher,” she says of the federal Women, Infants and Children program that pays for formula and food for newborns.
Or, “I’m paying for this with food stamps,” at the checkout counter.
Or, “Here’s my Medicaid card,” when taking the boys to the doctor.
“It has been, to say the least, a very humbling experience,” said Wendy Wyman.
“We both have worked all our lives, worked hard,” Jeff Wyman said. “Now we have found out that these programs are for people who get into situations just like ours.”
Jeff Wyman is the kind of guy who never asked anybody for anything.
Read more: Rock Hill veteran, father of 4, battling leukemia
Facebook page, Web site set up to help family
By Andrew Dys - adys@heraldonline.com
The license plates say veteran.
The pictures of Qatar and Kuwait and Turkey say veteran.
The guy, 36 years old, with four tiny sons, can say veteran.
But he can’t do much more.
Jeff Wyman, Air Force veteran of four deployments, has to save his strength for the chemotherapy poison that can save his life as he battles acute lymphatic leukemia.
“My daddy has cancer,” says Aaron Wyman, 6, oldest of the four sons. The son Jeff has to tell, “Be tough, you’re the man of the house,” when Jeff leaves for the hospital for days at a time.
The wife, Wendy, whom Jeff Wyman calls “incredible,” has to say things at the grocery store or doctor that this family with the youngest son just 3 months old never thought any would say.
“I have a WIC voucher,” she says of the federal Women, Infants and Children program that pays for formula and food for newborns.
Or, “I’m paying for this with food stamps,” at the checkout counter.
Or, “Here’s my Medicaid card,” when taking the boys to the doctor.
“It has been, to say the least, a very humbling experience,” said Wendy Wyman.
“We both have worked all our lives, worked hard,” Jeff Wyman said. “Now we have found out that these programs are for people who get into situations just like ours.”
Jeff Wyman is the kind of guy who never asked anybody for anything.
Read more: Rock Hill veteran, father of 4, battling leukemia
Vietnam Vet says "It's not what you lost but what you have left" at Wheelchair Games in Denver
‘It’s not what you lost’ - Local veterans find fun, camaraderie at Wheelchair Games
LINDSAY FIORI
DENVER - Last week two local veterans took part in the National Veterans Wheelchair Games and each of those veterans will return to the Racine area this weekend with eight medals between them, including several golds.
Though both veterans were excited by their winnings, they said the medals aren't the important part of the annual Olympics-style games for wheelchair-bound veterans, which took place last week in Denver with closing ceremonies wrapping up Friday night.
"It's not just a sporting event but a way to get back on track with your life," explained Gus Sorenson, a 62-year-old U.S. Army veteran from Sturtevant who took part in this year's games. "Veterans realize others are living their lives with the same conditions."
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Local veterans find fun camaraderie at Wheelchair Games
LINDSAY FIORI
"There's an old saying that it's not what you lost but what you have left," said Sorenson, who was a specialist fourth class in the U.S. Army while serving in Vietnam. "If you have a disability you can sit at home with a blanket on your lap and look out the window ... or else you can go outside and get on with your life."
Vietnam veteran Gus Sorenson, number 10, participated last week in the National Veterans Wheelchair Games in Denver. Sorenson, of Sturtevant, took part in bowling, shot put, table tennis, discus and quad rugby, which is shown above. CREDIT: Photo courtesy Dept. of Veterans Affairs.
DENVER - Last week two local veterans took part in the National Veterans Wheelchair Games and each of those veterans will return to the Racine area this weekend with eight medals between them, including several golds.
Though both veterans were excited by their winnings, they said the medals aren't the important part of the annual Olympics-style games for wheelchair-bound veterans, which took place last week in Denver with closing ceremonies wrapping up Friday night.
"It's not just a sporting event but a way to get back on track with your life," explained Gus Sorenson, a 62-year-old U.S. Army veteran from Sturtevant who took part in this year's games. "Veterans realize others are living their lives with the same conditions."
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Local veterans find fun camaraderie at Wheelchair Games
Missing Marine found safe
Missing Marine Located In Rutherford County
War Vet Suddenly Left Home Thursday Night
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. -- Police in Rutherford County on Friday afternoon located a Marine Corps combat veteran who had been missing since Thursday night. Crews began their search early Friday morning for 27-year-old Chris Headrick.
Officials said he left his home along Sulphur Springs Road at about 11 p.m. Thursday.
His family apparently told police they were planning to take him to the VA Hospital in Murfreesboro. At that point, he grabbed a military-issued backpack and helmet and left in a van.
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Missing Marine Located In Rutherford County
War Vet Suddenly Left Home Thursday Night
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. -- Police in Rutherford County on Friday afternoon located a Marine Corps combat veteran who had been missing since Thursday night. Crews began their search early Friday morning for 27-year-old Chris Headrick.
Officials said he left his home along Sulphur Springs Road at about 11 p.m. Thursday.
His family apparently told police they were planning to take him to the VA Hospital in Murfreesboro. At that point, he grabbed a military-issued backpack and helmet and left in a van.
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Missing Marine Located In Rutherford County
Marine, Iraq Veteran, saves 4-year-old's life
Local Marine saves 4-year-old's life
Bruce Brown
A 4-year-old boy was pulled from a swimming pool at a local apartment complex, and he was not breathing.
His lips were blue.
Providence was on his side, though, as U.S. Marine Corps Cpl. Robby Buckles was near enough Tuesday night to help.
"I was with a group of friends, and I had gone inside," Buckles said. "Then I heard people yelling my name, saying there was a kid by the pool who wasn't breathing.
"I performed CPR until he started breathing, and then Acadian Ambulance showed up to take him to the hospital. I've been in the Marines for five years, and had EMS training with the Red Cross for three years, so I knew what to do."
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Local Marine Saves 4 year old boy
Bruce Brown
Buckles, a squad leader of a mortar platoon with the USMC 323 Weapons Company in Baton Rouge, is a veteran of a 2007-2008 deployment to Iraq. But he didn't get the chance to save a life there.
A 4-year-old boy was pulled from a swimming pool at a local apartment complex, and he was not breathing.
His lips were blue.
Providence was on his side, though, as U.S. Marine Corps Cpl. Robby Buckles was near enough Tuesday night to help.
"I was with a group of friends, and I had gone inside," Buckles said. "Then I heard people yelling my name, saying there was a kid by the pool who wasn't breathing.
"I performed CPR until he started breathing, and then Acadian Ambulance showed up to take him to the hospital. I've been in the Marines for five years, and had EMS training with the Red Cross for three years, so I knew what to do."
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Local Marine Saves 4 year old boy
Alleged bank robber took cab to bank with friends
Driver 'furious' about use of taxi by alleged bank robber
By Nok-Noi Ricker
BDN Staff
BANGOR, Maine - There was nothing unusual about the three women Ace Taxi owner-operator Yehoshua "Josh" Mizrachi picked up Tuesday morning for a ride to a downtown bank. In fact, the cab driver said the trio were regular customers, and he already had transported them once that morning.
Mizrachi wasn’t even concerned when one of the women, later identified as Matisha Pitts, 25, of Bangor, asked him to park in front of Bangor Savings Bank on State Street while she ran inside at around 9:30 a.m.
"That's not unusual," he said Wednesday morning at a local coffee shop.
He said the first sign of a problem was when "one of her friends gets out of the car and goes and looks for her [Pitts] and when Pitts returns from the bank a minute later she said, 'Let's go.'"
"My little yellow flags went up because she was preparing to leave without her friend," Mizrachi said. "She said, 'Never mind, never mind [about the friend]. Let's go.'"
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http://www.bangordailynews.com/detail/148229.html
By Nok-Noi Ricker
BDN Staff
BANGOR, Maine - There was nothing unusual about the three women Ace Taxi owner-operator Yehoshua "Josh" Mizrachi picked up Tuesday morning for a ride to a downtown bank. In fact, the cab driver said the trio were regular customers, and he already had transported them once that morning.
Mizrachi wasn’t even concerned when one of the women, later identified as Matisha Pitts, 25, of Bangor, asked him to park in front of Bangor Savings Bank on State Street while she ran inside at around 9:30 a.m.
"That's not unusual," he said Wednesday morning at a local coffee shop.
He said the first sign of a problem was when "one of her friends gets out of the car and goes and looks for her [Pitts] and when Pitts returns from the bank a minute later she said, 'Let's go.'"
"My little yellow flags went up because she was preparing to leave without her friend," Mizrachi said. "She said, 'Never mind, never mind [about the friend]. Let's go.'"
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http://www.bangordailynews.com/detail/148229.html
Friends recall life of ex-Marine killed at Togus
Friends recall life of ex-Marine killed at Togus
By Nick Sambides Jr.
BDN Staff
An ailing Grindstone man and former U.S. Marine fatally shot by law enforcement officers near a veterans hospital Thursday was remembered by friends Friday as a generous, considerate man who struggled heroically to overcome a rare form of cancer and believed strongly in his right to carry a gun.
An autopsy of James F. Popkowski, 37, on Friday determined that he died from a gunshot wound to the neck and was killed in a homicide. The term denotes that he was killed by someone else, not that his death was necessarily caused by or came during a crime, a medical examiner's office spokeswoman said.
“I wished I could write that this was all a bad dream. … I can’t, so I instead will pray for the [lieutenant’s] family. Bing was a great boy and greater man. … He grew up with my boys and he never was nothing but a great kid,” wrote Galen Hale, a friend of Popkowski’s, on a Facebook page dedicated to Popkowski.
The Maine State Attorney General’s Office is investigating whether the two officers believed to have fired their weapons, VA police Officer Thomas Park and Maine Warden Service Sgt. Ron Dunham, were justified in using deadly force.
The investigation likely will take 60 to 90 days.
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Friends recall life of ex-Marine killed at Togus
also
Togus a city within a city
Thursday’s fatal shooting, first ever for police there, shines light on public safety
By Craig Crosby
AUGUSTA -- With thousands of people coming and going and dozens of buildings spread over hundreds of acres, all on federal land, the Togus Veterans Affairs hospital complex can accurately be described as a small city within the capital city.
And like any city, the facility comes replete with its own emergency services.
"A lot of people are surprised we're here," said Joe Stangel, a captain and emergency medical technician for the Togus Fire Department.
The Togus Police Department was cast into the public eye this week when one of its officers, along with a warden from the Maine Warden Service, reportedly shot and killed an armed Marine Corps veteran during a confrontation at the edge of the woods near Togus' Eastern Avenue entrance.
It was the first shooting involving a Togus police officer in the department's history.
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Togus a city within a city
By Nick Sambides Jr.
BDN Staff
An ailing Grindstone man and former U.S. Marine fatally shot by law enforcement officers near a veterans hospital Thursday was remembered by friends Friday as a generous, considerate man who struggled heroically to overcome a rare form of cancer and believed strongly in his right to carry a gun.
An autopsy of James F. Popkowski, 37, on Friday determined that he died from a gunshot wound to the neck and was killed in a homicide. The term denotes that he was killed by someone else, not that his death was necessarily caused by or came during a crime, a medical examiner's office spokeswoman said.
“I wished I could write that this was all a bad dream. … I can’t, so I instead will pray for the [lieutenant’s] family. Bing was a great boy and greater man. … He grew up with my boys and he never was nothing but a great kid,” wrote Galen Hale, a friend of Popkowski’s, on a Facebook page dedicated to Popkowski.
The Maine State Attorney General’s Office is investigating whether the two officers believed to have fired their weapons, VA police Officer Thomas Park and Maine Warden Service Sgt. Ron Dunham, were justified in using deadly force.
The investigation likely will take 60 to 90 days.
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Friends recall life of ex-Marine killed at Togus
also
Togus a city within a city
Thursday’s fatal shooting, first ever for police there, shines light on public safety
By Craig Crosby
AUGUSTA -- With thousands of people coming and going and dozens of buildings spread over hundreds of acres, all on federal land, the Togus Veterans Affairs hospital complex can accurately be described as a small city within the capital city.
And like any city, the facility comes replete with its own emergency services.
"A lot of people are surprised we're here," said Joe Stangel, a captain and emergency medical technician for the Togus Fire Department.
The Togus Police Department was cast into the public eye this week when one of its officers, along with a warden from the Maine Warden Service, reportedly shot and killed an armed Marine Corps veteran during a confrontation at the edge of the woods near Togus' Eastern Avenue entrance.
It was the first shooting involving a Togus police officer in the department's history.
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Togus a city within a city
Friday, July 9, 2010
Officials are investigating the Disney Wide World of Sports death
Electrician hurt at Disney's ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex dies
Officials are investigating the Disney Wide World of Sports death
By Rene Stutzman and Anthony Colarossi, Orlando Sentinel
2:03 p.m. EDT, July 9, 2010
An electrician employed with Buena Vista Construction Company was seriously injured today while installing a stage at Disney's ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex and later died.
The man, who has not been identified, was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at Celebration Hospital.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has been notified and Osceola County Sheriff's detectives are investigating.
"Today, we are grieving with his family, friends and co-workers and extend our deepest sympathies to them," said Disney spokeswoman Andrea Finger. "We are reaching out to his family to offer our support during this difficult time. We're working closely with authorities to gather facts."
In a news release, the Osceola County Sheriff's office said it responded to a call at ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex around 10:35 a.m.
read the rest here
Officials are investigating the Disney Wide World of Sports death
Officials are investigating the Disney Wide World of Sports death
By Rene Stutzman and Anthony Colarossi, Orlando Sentinel
2:03 p.m. EDT, July 9, 2010
An electrician employed with Buena Vista Construction Company was seriously injured today while installing a stage at Disney's ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex and later died.
The man, who has not been identified, was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at Celebration Hospital.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has been notified and Osceola County Sheriff's detectives are investigating.
"Today, we are grieving with his family, friends and co-workers and extend our deepest sympathies to them," said Disney spokeswoman Andrea Finger. "We are reaching out to his family to offer our support during this difficult time. We're working closely with authorities to gather facts."
In a news release, the Osceola County Sheriff's office said it responded to a call at ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex around 10:35 a.m.
read the rest here
Officials are investigating the Disney Wide World of Sports death
Rolling Stone quotes made by jr. staff
Who are we supposed to believe now?
Sources: Rolling Stone quotes made by jr. staff
Mag also accused of misrepresenting communications with McChrystal’s HQ; e-mails support claim
By Sean D. Naylor - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Jul 8, 2010 14:59:31 EDT
The impolitic comments that torpedoed Gen. Stan McChrystal’s career were “almost all” made by his most junior staff — men who “make tea, keep the principal on time and carry bags” — who had no reason to believe their words would end up in print, according to a staff member who was on the trip to Europe during which the comments were made.
Two other sources familiar with the trip, including Air Force Lt. Col. Tadd Sholtis, McChrystal’s personal spokesman, said the quotes that appeared in a Rolling Stone article that got McChrystal in trouble were made in “off-the-record” settings.
All three sources also accused Rolling Stone of publicly misrepresenting its communications with McChrystal’s headquarters after the story had been reported but before it went to print. E-mails obtained by Army Times appear to support the McChrystal side’s version of events.
Rolling Stone did not return a call seeking comment for this story.
go here for more
Rolling Stone quotes made by jr staff
Bills would help low-income vets on VA pensions
Bills would help low-income vets on VA pensions
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Jul 9, 2010 12:24:20 EDT
A Navy veteran whose VA pension was canceled because he received an insurance settlement after he and his service dog were hit by a truck is the poster child for legislation to change eligibility rules regarding pensions for low-income veterans.
Kerry Scriber of West Palm Beach, Fla., said in an interview that he and his dog were injured and his VA-provided wheelchair damaged when he was struck while crossing the street in March 2008. Scriber, a former petty officer second class who served from 1974 to 1979, said the dog received minor injuries and quickly recovered, but he suffered broken bones in his face and pelvis. The wheelchair he needed to get around because of his muscular dystrophy was destroyed.
Scriber said he received two checks from the driver’s insurance company, one covering the cost of the wheelchair and a second for $10,000 that covered pain and suffering and miscellaneous expenses.
He turned over the check for the wheelchair to the Veterans Affairs Department, which provided him with another chair. He also reported receiving the $10,000 settlement, as he was required to do as a recipient of a pension provided to low-income veterans. Although his disability is not connected to his military service, he was receiving the pension because he is totally disabled and his income was less than $11,000 a year.
go here for more
Bills would help low income vets on VA pensions
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Jul 9, 2010 12:24:20 EDT
A Navy veteran whose VA pension was canceled because he received an insurance settlement after he and his service dog were hit by a truck is the poster child for legislation to change eligibility rules regarding pensions for low-income veterans.
Kerry Scriber of West Palm Beach, Fla., said in an interview that he and his dog were injured and his VA-provided wheelchair damaged when he was struck while crossing the street in March 2008. Scriber, a former petty officer second class who served from 1974 to 1979, said the dog received minor injuries and quickly recovered, but he suffered broken bones in his face and pelvis. The wheelchair he needed to get around because of his muscular dystrophy was destroyed.
Scriber said he received two checks from the driver’s insurance company, one covering the cost of the wheelchair and a second for $10,000 that covered pain and suffering and miscellaneous expenses.
He turned over the check for the wheelchair to the Veterans Affairs Department, which provided him with another chair. He also reported receiving the $10,000 settlement, as he was required to do as a recipient of a pension provided to low-income veterans. Although his disability is not connected to his military service, he was receiving the pension because he is totally disabled and his income was less than $11,000 a year.
go here for more
Bills would help low income vets on VA pensions
Fort Lee jump site inspected following death of Pvt. Anthony R. Milo
Fort Lee jump site inspected following death
The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Jul 9, 2010 10:42:42 EDT
PETERSBURG, Va. — A team of Army investigators is inspecting a parachute jump training site at Fort Lee where a 24-year-old private was killed during a practice jump.
Pvt. Anthony R. Milo died in March when the Colorado native became tangled in power lines after jumping from a Black Hawk helicopter.
The Petersburg-area base suspended training at the drop zone after the death and shifted its activities to Fort Pickett.
Fort Lee officials and a team from Fort Benning, Ga., are evaluating the site.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/07/ap_lee_parachute_death_070910/
The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Jul 9, 2010 10:42:42 EDT
PETERSBURG, Va. — A team of Army investigators is inspecting a parachute jump training site at Fort Lee where a 24-year-old private was killed during a practice jump.
Pvt. Anthony R. Milo died in March when the Colorado native became tangled in power lines after jumping from a Black Hawk helicopter.
The Petersburg-area base suspended training at the drop zone after the death and shifted its activities to Fort Pickett.
Fort Lee officials and a team from Fort Benning, Ga., are evaluating the site.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/07/ap_lee_parachute_death_070910/
Call Congress Today - Our Veterans Need Treatment
You've read the reports on burn pits on this blog since they were first reported. You know how serious this is. You've read about Gulf War veterans suffering and waiting for help. If you didn't care about these issues, didn't care about our veterans, you wouldn't be reading this blog. Since you care so much, please do what you can to help by making the calls to help our veterans.
Call Congress Today - Our Veterans Need Treatment !
Issue: Call Congress and voice your support for full funding for the Gulf War illness research program of the Department of Defense. The military program is called the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program, or CDMRP. Veterans for Common Sense urges funding at the full $25 million level.
Background: Earlier this year, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recognized the chronic multisymptom illness suffered by 250,000 Gulf War veterans due are to toxic exposures during Desert Shield and Desert Storm. The Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illness (RAC) reached the same scientific conclusion in 2008. The IOM and RAC support research programs to develop treatments and hopefully preventions for both our veterans and our troops deployed overseas now.
Why is this important? Many of these toxic exposures exist today. By calling both the Washington and local offices of the senior Democratic and Republican members of the Appropriations Subcommittee deciding CPMR funding, you let them know that this illness is a huge problem suffered by real people who served our country.
You've heard of the Iraq War Burn Pits? We can't let another generation of veterans wait a decade for medical care. Tell Congress to do the right thing for our veterans so we can have medical treatments for toxic exposures.
Who do I call? Please call two important Congressmen who will decide if Gulf War, Afghanistan War, and Iraq War veterans get the research and treatment they urgently need.
1. Chairman Norm Dicks, Washington, DC 202-225-5916; Tacoma, WA 253-593-6536.
2. Congressman Bill Young, ranking member, Washington 202-225-5961; St. Petersburg, FL 727-893-3191.
Thank you for calling today !
Veterans For Common Sense
Agent Orange still killing veterans
Shelia over at www.agentorangequiltoftears.com sent this
Sailors suffer illness, disability as VA denies Agent Orange benefits to an entire class of Vietnam veterans.
By Ken Olsen
Sailors suffer illness, disability as VA denies Agent Orange benefits to an entire class of Vietnam veterans.
Robert Ross heard the low-flying plane heading his direction as he stood on the signal bridge of USS Vega on a late-summer day in 1966. Bathed in Southeast Asian sunshine, he was listening to Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons when he looked up just in time to get a face full of spray.
“The officer on deck was panicking,” Ross recalls. “They hollered, ‘Everybody inside! Agent Orange!’ But it was too late.”
Forty-three years later, time is running out for Ross and tens of thousands of other sailors suffering from various cancers, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes and heart conditions caused by Agent Orange exposure during the Vietnam War. For nearly a decade, VA, acting on a Bush administration directive and a punitive court decision, has severed their benefits or denied their claims. Under these new VA rules, so-called “Blue Water” and “Blue Sky” veterans are deemed not to have suffered any ill effects from the millions of gallons of toxic defoliant spread across the jungles during the war, regardless of any contact they may have had with it. The government’s rationale: they did not set foot on land or couldn’t meet VA’s stringent requirements for proof that they were exposed.
read more here
Blue Water Battle
Are veterans being discriminated over PTSD or just because they are veterans?
This would be easy to consider as a factor behind the high rate of unemployment with combat veterans, if there has not been a long history of it. When Vietnam veterans came home, work was hard to come by. Employers hired non-veterans over Vietnam veterans all the time and when they did hire a veteran, they were usually lousy jobs beneath what they would have been hired for without being deployed. PTSD was not even discussed until 1978 and not even acknowledged until the 80's by the VA.
Honestly when we consider the fact there are only 23 million veterans left in this nation and even less combat veterans, the simple fact is, they are an unprotected minority. Few employers even consider veteran's status when hiring. Maybe in the back of the mind of the HR interviewers they could be thinking about PTSD but considering how few in this country even know what PTSD is, that is highly unlikely.
Employers look for education and training but they do not consider how these men and women have been trained to do whatever it takes to get the job done, to think fast on their feet, to be mission focused and know what it is like to work as a team to get the job done. They don't consider they are used to working in unpleasant working conditions, long hours, lousy food and little sleep. While they are usually readily hired for law enforcement and fire departments, few other employers understand how much the veterans can bring to the company along with loyalty.
When it comes to hiring a veteran, employers just don't know what they're missing.
Honestly when we consider the fact there are only 23 million veterans left in this nation and even less combat veterans, the simple fact is, they are an unprotected minority. Few employers even consider veteran's status when hiring. Maybe in the back of the mind of the HR interviewers they could be thinking about PTSD but considering how few in this country even know what PTSD is, that is highly unlikely.
Employers look for education and training but they do not consider how these men and women have been trained to do whatever it takes to get the job done, to think fast on their feet, to be mission focused and know what it is like to work as a team to get the job done. They don't consider they are used to working in unpleasant working conditions, long hours, lousy food and little sleep. While they are usually readily hired for law enforcement and fire departments, few other employers understand how much the veterans can bring to the company along with loyalty.
When it comes to hiring a veteran, employers just don't know what they're missing.
Vets Discriminated Against Over PTSD?
Some Say Employers May Assume Vets Have PTSD
BALTIMORE -- Some Marylanders have said there's invisible discrimination over post traumatic stress disorder that may be keeping veterans -- even those who don't have the illness -- from getting hired.
PTSD is an emotional illness that can follow combat duty or any life-threatening event.
Richard Day calls himself mentally wounded after having lived with PTSD for nearly 30 years.
"I've had a panic attack on a bus, and people are trying to talk to me and I can't relate to them because I feel I am trying to keep myself alive," Day said.
read more here
Vets Discriminated Against Over PTSD
Maine Armed Veteran Shot Dead at VA Hospital
The question not addressed in this report is, why he did it.
Maine Armed Veteran Shot Dead
By: Rob Adams
Staff Writer
Published: Jul 8, 2010
Armed man with a veteran license place is shot dead.
Armed veteran shot dead by police at the entrance of a VA hospital in Maine. Police shot and killed the armed veteran after he refused to drop his weapon. The veteran was armed and opened fire from the woods near the hospital where police fired back and shot the man.
A witness stated that officers fired on a man armed with what looked like a rifle.
He says about eight shots were fired, and the man fell to the ground in the woods.
The victim's name has not been released, but officials say he was not a resident or a member of the VA hospital staff.
read more here
Maine Armed Veteran Shot Dead
Missing in America making sure veterans have military funerals
Non-profit identifies, buries veterans' remains
By Judy Keen, USA TODAY
HIGGINSVILLE, Mo. — Gervis and Mary Adney were finally laid to rest in the Missouri Veterans Cemetery on a cloudless morning. A bagpiper played Amazing Grace, a bugler played taps and a three-shot volley echoed across the hills.
Since Mary Adney's death in 1992 and her husband's in 1989, their cremated remains had been in a funeral home's storage facility, unclaimed. He had served in the Army in World War I. The Missing in America Project, a national non-profit organization that locates, identifies and inters veterans' cremains, researched the dates of her birth and death and helped ensure that both received belated military burials.
In all, 16 veterans and two spouses, including Mary and Gervis, were honored in a single ceremony and interred here. Their cremains had all been in storage, sometimes for decades. A Missouri law proposed by the Missing in America Project and passed last year made it possible for them to be laid to rest. The law eliminated liability for funeral homes that turn over veterans' ashes that have been abandoned for at least a year to veterans' service groups.
"They are home now," said Higginsville cemetery director Jess Rasmussen at the brief service, which was not attended by relatives of any of the 18 deceased. "They're not forgotten anymore on a dusty shelf."
read more here
Non profit identifies buries veterans remains
By Judy Keen, USA TODAY
HIGGINSVILLE, Mo. — Gervis and Mary Adney were finally laid to rest in the Missouri Veterans Cemetery on a cloudless morning. A bagpiper played Amazing Grace, a bugler played taps and a three-shot volley echoed across the hills.
Since Mary Adney's death in 1992 and her husband's in 1989, their cremated remains had been in a funeral home's storage facility, unclaimed. He had served in the Army in World War I. The Missing in America Project, a national non-profit organization that locates, identifies and inters veterans' cremains, researched the dates of her birth and death and helped ensure that both received belated military burials.
In all, 16 veterans and two spouses, including Mary and Gervis, were honored in a single ceremony and interred here. Their cremains had all been in storage, sometimes for decades. A Missouri law proposed by the Missing in America Project and passed last year made it possible for them to be laid to rest. The law eliminated liability for funeral homes that turn over veterans' ashes that have been abandoned for at least a year to veterans' service groups.
"They are home now," said Higginsville cemetery director Jess Rasmussen at the brief service, which was not attended by relatives of any of the 18 deceased. "They're not forgotten anymore on a dusty shelf."
read more here
Non profit identifies buries veterans remains
Service for Marine 'rights a wrong' for family
Service for Marine 'rights a wrong' for family
By Jim McNally
Statesville R&L
Published: July 8, 2010
Next to his family and his country, Tommy Padgett loved the Marine Corps more than anything on earth.
"The Marines were everything to him," said his son, Thomas Padgett.
"And being a Marine," added Thomas' wife Amy, "just meant the world to him. He loved his country and he loved fighting for his country."
Indeed, Padgett pulled three tours of combat duty in Vietnam. And then, long after he retired from the Marine Corps, the former master gunnery sergeant requested to be placed back on active duty status after the terrorist events of Sept. 11, 2001, occurred.
"He was nearly 70 years old then," Thomas recalled. "But he still wanted to serve. They sent him a letter telling him he was too old."
But when Tommy Padgett died of natural causes two years ago in Mississippi, those who knew him best, and knew how profoundly Tommy Padgett's definition of himself was intertwined with the U.S. Marine Corps, were not able to make that fact clear enough to those overseeing his funeral.
go here for more
Service for Marine rights a wrong for family
By Jim McNally
Statesville R&L
Published: July 8, 2010
Next to his family and his country, Tommy Padgett loved the Marine Corps more than anything on earth.
"The Marines were everything to him," said his son, Thomas Padgett.
"And being a Marine," added Thomas' wife Amy, "just meant the world to him. He loved his country and he loved fighting for his country."
Indeed, Padgett pulled three tours of combat duty in Vietnam. And then, long after he retired from the Marine Corps, the former master gunnery sergeant requested to be placed back on active duty status after the terrorist events of Sept. 11, 2001, occurred.
"He was nearly 70 years old then," Thomas recalled. "But he still wanted to serve. They sent him a letter telling him he was too old."
But when Tommy Padgett died of natural causes two years ago in Mississippi, those who knew him best, and knew how profoundly Tommy Padgett's definition of himself was intertwined with the U.S. Marine Corps, were not able to make that fact clear enough to those overseeing his funeral.
go here for more
Service for Marine rights a wrong for family
New DNA evidence may exonerate Dad of murdered girl
Marine investigated in Ill. killings: Report
An ex-Marine charged in the brutal rape of a woman in Prince William County has been linked by DNA evidence to the 2005 deaths of two girls in Zion, Ill, the man's sister told the Chicago Tribune.
Jorge "George" Torrez is accused in the Feb. 27 attack on two women in northern Virginia, during which he allegedly raped and beat one of the victims within an inch of her life.
According to Sara Torrez, Jorge Torrez’s DNA has been matched with evidence found on one of the bodies of two girls -- Laura Hobbs, 8, and Krystal Tobias, 9 – who were found beaten and stabbed to death in a park in Zion, a city about 50 miles north of Chicago. Torrez is from Zion.
An Illinois state's attorney quoted by the Tribune would not confirm that Torrez's DNA was found on evidence connected to the killings.
The new evidence could mean exoneration for Laura’s father Jerry Hobbs, who has been held for five years after a confession he says was coerced by police, the Tribune reported.
read more here
Marine investigated in Ill killings
An ex-Marine charged in the brutal rape of a woman in Prince William County has been linked by DNA evidence to the 2005 deaths of two girls in Zion, Ill, the man's sister told the Chicago Tribune.
Jorge "George" Torrez is accused in the Feb. 27 attack on two women in northern Virginia, during which he allegedly raped and beat one of the victims within an inch of her life.
According to Sara Torrez, Jorge Torrez’s DNA has been matched with evidence found on one of the bodies of two girls -- Laura Hobbs, 8, and Krystal Tobias, 9 – who were found beaten and stabbed to death in a park in Zion, a city about 50 miles north of Chicago. Torrez is from Zion.
An Illinois state's attorney quoted by the Tribune would not confirm that Torrez's DNA was found on evidence connected to the killings.
The new evidence could mean exoneration for Laura’s father Jerry Hobbs, who has been held for five years after a confession he says was coerced by police, the Tribune reported.
read more here
Marine investigated in Ill killings
50 troops wounded in Iraq, Afghanistan gather in Concord firehouse
50 troops wounded in Iraq, Afghanistan gather in Concord firehouse
Vincent Barone
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Injured servicemen and women from the Walter Reed Medical Center came to Rescue Co. 5 and Engine 160's fire house today to kickoff this year's weekend stay at Breezy Point, Queens.
One hundred family members, firefighters and police officers came to welcome the troops, some of whom used wheelchairs, others with prosthetic arms or legs.
"All these guys at Rescue 5 and Engine 160 do a great job," said Acting Staten Island Borough Commander Michael Marrone. "We consider it an honor -- to show our appreciation to the troops."
Many of the troops came from all over the country and have never been to New York. At the fire house they were treated to Staten Island pizza and sandwich heroes, but most of all, to their loved ones' support.
After their luncheon at the firehouse, police vehicles and fire trucks escorted the troops on a parade down the Belt Parkway to Rockaway Beach, where they will spend a weekend with citizens of Breezy Point who have opened their homes to the troops.
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Concord firehouse
Vincent Barone
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Injured servicemen and women from the Walter Reed Medical Center came to Rescue Co. 5 and Engine 160's fire house today to kickoff this year's weekend stay at Breezy Point, Queens.
One hundred family members, firefighters and police officers came to welcome the troops, some of whom used wheelchairs, others with prosthetic arms or legs.
"All these guys at Rescue 5 and Engine 160 do a great job," said Acting Staten Island Borough Commander Michael Marrone. "We consider it an honor -- to show our appreciation to the troops."
Many of the troops came from all over the country and have never been to New York. At the fire house they were treated to Staten Island pizza and sandwich heroes, but most of all, to their loved ones' support.
After their luncheon at the firehouse, police vehicles and fire trucks escorted the troops on a parade down the Belt Parkway to Rockaway Beach, where they will spend a weekend with citizens of Breezy Point who have opened their homes to the troops.
go here for more
Concord firehouse
Vietnam Vet walking across US so PTSD veterans can stand tall
Vet crossing US barefoot for his comrades
By KELLEY KING
WORCESTER - Vietnam veteran Ron Zaleski is trying to bring attention to the need for post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) counseling for military personnel anyway he can.
Even if it means walking across the country barefoot.
"People ask me about my feet, and how hard the walk is. The walk isn't hard," Zaleski said as he passed through this area this week.
"What's hard is when I'm walking along the side of the road, and a car will do a U-turn and a woman will get out and stand there and cry," he said.
"Then she'll come to me and tell me how her son came home diagnosed with PTSD, and then he went back in and volunteered for another tour overseas."
Zaleski, a native of Hampton Bays, N.Y., and a Marine from 1970-72, started The Long Walk Home in 2006 to raise awareness for the need for mandatory PTSD counseling for all military troops prior to discharge.
go here for more
Vet crossing US barefoot for his comrades
By KELLEY KING
WORCESTER - Vietnam veteran Ron Zaleski is trying to bring attention to the need for post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) counseling for military personnel anyway he can.
Even if it means walking across the country barefoot.
"People ask me about my feet, and how hard the walk is. The walk isn't hard," Zaleski said as he passed through this area this week.
"What's hard is when I'm walking along the side of the road, and a car will do a U-turn and a woman will get out and stand there and cry," he said.
"Then she'll come to me and tell me how her son came home diagnosed with PTSD, and then he went back in and volunteered for another tour overseas."
Zaleski, a native of Hampton Bays, N.Y., and a Marine from 1970-72, started The Long Walk Home in 2006 to raise awareness for the need for mandatory PTSD counseling for all military troops prior to discharge.
go here for more
Vet crossing US barefoot for his comrades
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Veteran Blames VA Hospital For Terminal Diagnosis
Veteran Blames VA Hospital For Terminal Diagnosis
Reported by: Will Ripley
Last Update: 7/07 11:09 pm
LA FERIA - Vietnam veteran Dave Ebbert says mistakes made by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs may have cost him his life.
"They just don't care anymore about me. About us," he said. "And what are we supposed to do? Sit here and wait?"
Ebbert, 63, has a long list of medical problems including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, skin cancer, diabetes, and terminal pancreatic cancer.
Ebbert says he cancer went undiagnosed for 9 months because VA doctros failed to perform a simple blood test. He claims doctors repeteadly ignored his complaints that his symptoms were worsening. Meanwhile the cancer had spread from his pancreas to his endocrine system, liver, and lungs.
Ebbert's wife Linda believes that 9-months will eventually cost her husband his life.
Making matters worse for the Ebberts, the VA has been processing their application for financial benefits for two years. The couple was forced to move in with their daughter Connie Bearden.
go here for more
Veteran Blames VA Hospital For Terminal Diagnosis
Reported by: Will Ripley
Last Update: 7/07 11:09 pm
LA FERIA - Vietnam veteran Dave Ebbert says mistakes made by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs may have cost him his life.
"They just don't care anymore about me. About us," he said. "And what are we supposed to do? Sit here and wait?"
Ebbert, 63, has a long list of medical problems including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, skin cancer, diabetes, and terminal pancreatic cancer.
Ebbert says he cancer went undiagnosed for 9 months because VA doctros failed to perform a simple blood test. He claims doctors repeteadly ignored his complaints that his symptoms were worsening. Meanwhile the cancer had spread from his pancreas to his endocrine system, liver, and lungs.
Ebbert's wife Linda believes that 9-months will eventually cost her husband his life.
Making matters worse for the Ebberts, the VA has been processing their application for financial benefits for two years. The couple was forced to move in with their daughter Connie Bearden.
go here for more
Veteran Blames VA Hospital For Terminal Diagnosis
Registration Opens for VA Forum on Women Veterans
Registration Opens for VA Forum on Women Veterans
VA to Help Build Women Veterans Communities and Networks
WASHINGTON (July 8, 2010) - The Department of Veterans Affairs opened
registration on July 8 for a women Veterans forum that will address the
quality of VA health care, the provision of benefits for women, and ways
for VA to continue improving access to the care and benefits for women
Veterans.
"The VA forum will bring advocates for women Veterans together to learn
about VA services and to share valuable information with each other,"
said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki. "The forum will
also give Veterans' advocates the tools they need to help build women
Veterans networks and communities throughout VA."
Shinseki and VA department heads will attend the forum on July 28 at the
Women's Memorial in Arlington, Va.
Because of anticipated demand, available seats will be filled on a
first-come, first-served basis, and confirmed registrants will be
notified by email once registration is filled. Registration-through the
Center for Women Veterans by e-mail at 00W@va.gov -- closes when either
all seats are filled or no later than July 16.
The Forum will run from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., with morning presentations and
an afternoon information marketplace in which participants are invited
to move through the gallery and gather resources and materials provided
by VA program offices, Veterans Service Organizations and advocacy
organizations. There will also be an afternoon screening of the updated
"Lioness" documentary film.
VA's women Veterans health conference held earlier in the month will
help inform the Forum with the most up-to-date information available
from VA's health care system.
Presentations from the event will be made available online. Feedback
about this event and announcements on future events will be available to
Forum participants. For more information contact the Center for Women
Veterans at (202) 461-6193 or by e-mail at 00W@va.gov.
VA has undertaken major initiatives to transform the department to meet
the unique health care needs of women Veterans and provide the best
quality care at every VA medical center. In addition, the agency is
working to shorten the delays for claims processing, improve access to
VA health services for minority and rural Veterans, end Veteran
homelessness, and ease the transition back to civilian life.
There are about 1.8 million women Veterans among the nation's total of
23 million living Veterans. VA estimates women Veterans will comprise
10.5 percent of the Veteran population by 2020.
VA to Help Build Women Veterans Communities and Networks
WASHINGTON (July 8, 2010) - The Department of Veterans Affairs opened
registration on July 8 for a women Veterans forum that will address the
quality of VA health care, the provision of benefits for women, and ways
for VA to continue improving access to the care and benefits for women
Veterans.
"The VA forum will bring advocates for women Veterans together to learn
about VA services and to share valuable information with each other,"
said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki. "The forum will
also give Veterans' advocates the tools they need to help build women
Veterans networks and communities throughout VA."
Shinseki and VA department heads will attend the forum on July 28 at the
Women's Memorial in Arlington, Va.
Because of anticipated demand, available seats will be filled on a
first-come, first-served basis, and confirmed registrants will be
notified by email once registration is filled. Registration-through the
Center for Women Veterans by e-mail at 00W@va.gov -- closes when either
all seats are filled or no later than July 16.
The Forum will run from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., with morning presentations and
an afternoon information marketplace in which participants are invited
to move through the gallery and gather resources and materials provided
by VA program offices, Veterans Service Organizations and advocacy
organizations. There will also be an afternoon screening of the updated
"Lioness" documentary film.
VA's women Veterans health conference held earlier in the month will
help inform the Forum with the most up-to-date information available
from VA's health care system.
Presentations from the event will be made available online. Feedback
about this event and announcements on future events will be available to
Forum participants. For more information contact the Center for Women
Veterans at (202) 461-6193 or by e-mail at 00W@va.gov.
VA has undertaken major initiatives to transform the department to meet
the unique health care needs of women Veterans and provide the best
quality care at every VA medical center. In addition, the agency is
working to shorten the delays for claims processing, improve access to
VA health services for minority and rural Veterans, end Veteran
homelessness, and ease the transition back to civilian life.
There are about 1.8 million women Veterans among the nation's total of
23 million living Veterans. VA estimates women Veterans will comprise
10.5 percent of the Veteran population by 2020.
Fort Hood victim's family fighting for grave marker
Fort Hood victim's family fighting for grave marker
by JASON WHITELY
WFAA
Posted on July 7, 2010 at 11:32 PM
DALLAS — The family of a Fort Hood soldier who was murdered in the massacre on post last November is now fighting to place a headstone on his unmarked grave.
"When I drive up and see nothing there, it breaks my heart every time," Leila Hunt-Willingham said.
Her little brother was Army Specialist J.D. Hunt, 22. Eight months after he was killed at Fort Hood, his grave remains without a permanent headstone — an unmarked patch of grass.
"To continue to dishonor him by not allowing a headstone for people to pay respects to him is just unfathomable," Hunt-Willingham added.
She and her mother, Gale Hunt, who live in North Texas, are frustrated at Hunt's widow.The couple married two months before his death, and legally it is her decision whether to mark his grave at a cemetery just outside Oklahoma City.
"I am legally his sister," Hunt-Willingham said. "I have been his sister for 22 years, and she's been his mother for 22 years. To put all the power and decision in a wife who was married to him for two months — I don't think that's right."
In e-mails to friends last March, Hunt's widow, Jennifer Hunt, said it is her headstone, too. She wrote that she would get it taken care of, but she's not rushing it.
"I am trying my hardest to get it done, but it's hard with everything I have going on," Jennifer Hunt told News 8 in an e-mail from her Oklahoma home on Wednesday. "Despite what most people think, my life did not stand still that day — only my marriage. I still have kids, I am a single mom, I have activities for them and unpacking in our new home. I am doing my best, but no one is ever happy. I will get the headstone as soon as I can, it isn't something to rush!"
read more here
Fort Hood victims family fighting for grave marker
by JASON WHITELY
WFAA
Posted on July 7, 2010 at 11:32 PM
DALLAS — The family of a Fort Hood soldier who was murdered in the massacre on post last November is now fighting to place a headstone on his unmarked grave.
"When I drive up and see nothing there, it breaks my heart every time," Leila Hunt-Willingham said.
Her little brother was Army Specialist J.D. Hunt, 22. Eight months after he was killed at Fort Hood, his grave remains without a permanent headstone — an unmarked patch of grass.
"To continue to dishonor him by not allowing a headstone for people to pay respects to him is just unfathomable," Hunt-Willingham added.
She and her mother, Gale Hunt, who live in North Texas, are frustrated at Hunt's widow.The couple married two months before his death, and legally it is her decision whether to mark his grave at a cemetery just outside Oklahoma City.
"I am legally his sister," Hunt-Willingham said. "I have been his sister for 22 years, and she's been his mother for 22 years. To put all the power and decision in a wife who was married to him for two months — I don't think that's right."
In e-mails to friends last March, Hunt's widow, Jennifer Hunt, said it is her headstone, too. She wrote that she would get it taken care of, but she's not rushing it.
"I am trying my hardest to get it done, but it's hard with everything I have going on," Jennifer Hunt told News 8 in an e-mail from her Oklahoma home on Wednesday. "Despite what most people think, my life did not stand still that day — only my marriage. I still have kids, I am a single mom, I have activities for them and unpacking in our new home. I am doing my best, but no one is ever happy. I will get the headstone as soon as I can, it isn't something to rush!"
read more here
Fort Hood victims family fighting for grave marker
Homeless veterans in San Antonio have "brothers" honor them with funerals
Brothers Of Fallen Heroes On Patriotic Mission
Final Farewells for Homeless Veterans
Jessie Degollado, KSAT 12 News Reporter
POSTED: Sunday, July 4, 2010
UPDATED: 12:31 pm CDT July 5, 2010
SAN ANTONIO, Texas -- Almost every Wednesday, members of Brothers of Fallen Heroes gather at Fort Sam Houston Cemetery to bid their farewells to homeless veterans, who had no one else in their lives.
"You're not alone. We're here by your side," said Bert Hernandez, the group's president and co-founder, a U.S. Marine veteran.
A new member, U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Miguel Verdinez will never forget the sadness of his first such funeral.
"There was nobody there that could actually claim our brother," said Verdinez.
Last week, 49-year-old Calvin Thomas, who served in the U.S. Army from 1979 to 1982, became the 108th funeral for a homeless veteran that they have attended since the group's inception three years ago.
The services are usually organized by local funeral homes, the federal government or the American G.I. Forum, a long-standing veterans organization that reaches out to those who are homeless.
The ceremony now involves veterans groups that accept the U.S. flag taken from the casket and folded by members of the homeless veteran's branch of service, a three-volley salute and taps by National Cemetery volunteers, and even a bagpipe playing in the distance.
read more here
http://www.ksat.com/news/24142195/detail.html
Final Farewells for Homeless Veterans
Jessie Degollado, KSAT 12 News Reporter
POSTED: Sunday, July 4, 2010
UPDATED: 12:31 pm CDT July 5, 2010
SAN ANTONIO, Texas -- Almost every Wednesday, members of Brothers of Fallen Heroes gather at Fort Sam Houston Cemetery to bid their farewells to homeless veterans, who had no one else in their lives.
"You're not alone. We're here by your side," said Bert Hernandez, the group's president and co-founder, a U.S. Marine veteran.
A new member, U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Miguel Verdinez will never forget the sadness of his first such funeral.
"There was nobody there that could actually claim our brother," said Verdinez.
Last week, 49-year-old Calvin Thomas, who served in the U.S. Army from 1979 to 1982, became the 108th funeral for a homeless veteran that they have attended since the group's inception three years ago.
The services are usually organized by local funeral homes, the federal government or the American G.I. Forum, a long-standing veterans organization that reaches out to those who are homeless.
The ceremony now involves veterans groups that accept the U.S. flag taken from the casket and folded by members of the homeless veteran's branch of service, a three-volley salute and taps by National Cemetery volunteers, and even a bagpipe playing in the distance.
read more here
http://www.ksat.com/news/24142195/detail.html
Chevrolet puts out call for 'Cell Phones for Soldiers'
Chevrolet puts out call for 'Cell Phones for Soldiers'
Got a used cell phone that still works? Chevrolet wants to put it in the hands of a U.S. armed service member far from home to help them stay in touch with loved ones.
Chevy's drive began over the past two days at the big NASCAR race at Daytona. Fans were urged to donate unwanted, gently used cell phones for recycling. It will continue at local Chevrolet dealers. And is will work in companion with a program to provide pre-paid calling cards to troops serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.
"We feel 'Cell Phones for Soldiers' is a worthy cause that fits well with GM's long-standing commitment to support the men and women serving our country," said Mark Degnan, GM director of local advertising, marketing and training. "Personally, with a brother and a nephew in active duty in Iraq, I know how important every call home can be for soldiers overseas, and their families at home."
read more here
Chevrolet puts out call for Cell Phones for Soldiers
Got a used cell phone that still works? Chevrolet wants to put it in the hands of a U.S. armed service member far from home to help them stay in touch with loved ones.
Chevy's drive began over the past two days at the big NASCAR race at Daytona. Fans were urged to donate unwanted, gently used cell phones for recycling. It will continue at local Chevrolet dealers. And is will work in companion with a program to provide pre-paid calling cards to troops serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.
"We feel 'Cell Phones for Soldiers' is a worthy cause that fits well with GM's long-standing commitment to support the men and women serving our country," said Mark Degnan, GM director of local advertising, marketing and training. "Personally, with a brother and a nephew in active duty in Iraq, I know how important every call home can be for soldiers overseas, and their families at home."
read more here
Chevrolet puts out call for Cell Phones for Soldiers
Vt. National Guard Mourn Soldier's Loss
Fellow Guardsman Remembers Fallen Soldier
Vt. National Guard Mourn Soldier's Loss
BRADFORD, Vt. -- A small town closely tied to the Vermont National Guard spent the Fourth of July mourning a lost soldier whose friends called him compassionate and kind.
Guardsman Ryan Pero shared more than just his first name with his friend, Spc. Ryan Grady, he also shared memories.
"Both of us had the first name Ryan, and there's a lot of Ryan's in this unit so all the Ryan's liked to hang out together, (and) him and I struck up a friendship," Pero said.
Grady was killed Friday outside Bagram Air Force Base when his convoy hit a very large IED.
Also with him were four other guardsman, all from the same Bradford unit and all injured in the attack.
Pero was supposed to be deployed with that unit, but a surgery held him back.
read more here
http://www.wptz.com/news/24141279/detail.html
Vt. National Guard Mourn Soldier's Loss
BRADFORD, Vt. -- A small town closely tied to the Vermont National Guard spent the Fourth of July mourning a lost soldier whose friends called him compassionate and kind.
Guardsman Ryan Pero shared more than just his first name with his friend, Spc. Ryan Grady, he also shared memories.
"Both of us had the first name Ryan, and there's a lot of Ryan's in this unit so all the Ryan's liked to hang out together, (and) him and I struck up a friendship," Pero said.
Grady was killed Friday outside Bagram Air Force Base when his convoy hit a very large IED.
Also with him were four other guardsman, all from the same Bradford unit and all injured in the attack.
Pero was supposed to be deployed with that unit, but a surgery held him back.
read more here
http://www.wptz.com/news/24141279/detail.html
Activist group Orlando Food Not Bombs to appeal
You can understand what business owners have to say considering they don't want their customers reminded that while they have money in their pockets and credit cards to use to buy things, there are people right here in Orlando without food or for many, even a place to go home to. After all, would you want to spend over $20.00 for lunch when you know right around the corner there are people thanking God for one good meal to eat all day long?
That really is the point to all of this. The people of Orlando have a conscience and it breaks their hearts to be reminded of so many with so little. It is heartwarming to know there are caring people out there trying to make a difference in the lives of others who have fallen on hard times. Most of us are one pay check away from joining them. Seeing other people doing good makes others feel guilty over what they have to enjoy. Yet instead of businesses encouraging the spirit of generosity and helping people to feel good about themselves, they want to hide the poor away from the shoppers. You'd think that they would welcome the opportunity to have goodwill reputations instead of pulling something like this when they actually want to stop feeding the hungry.
People think twice about spending money in places that are all about themselves instead of customers and yes, even the most needy in the communities they do business in.
That really is the point to all of this. The people of Orlando have a conscience and it breaks their hearts to be reminded of so many with so little. It is heartwarming to know there are caring people out there trying to make a difference in the lives of others who have fallen on hard times. Most of us are one pay check away from joining them. Seeing other people doing good makes others feel guilty over what they have to enjoy. Yet instead of businesses encouraging the spirit of generosity and helping people to feel good about themselves, they want to hide the poor away from the shoppers. You'd think that they would welcome the opportunity to have goodwill reputations instead of pulling something like this when they actually want to stop feeding the hungry.
People think twice about spending money in places that are all about themselves instead of customers and yes, even the most needy in the communities they do business in.
Homeless advocates decry court ruling restricting feedings in parks
Activist group Orlando Food Not Bombs will ask full appeals court to rehear the case
By Kate Santich, Orlando Sentinel
10:51 p.m. EDT, July 7, 2010
Orlando's homeless community and its advocates expressed outrage Wednesday over a federal appeals-court ruling that allows the city to severely restrict large group feedings in downtown parks — a restriction that has primarily targeted those who feed the homeless.
Orlando Food Not Bombs, a plaintiff in the original lawsuit disputing the constitutionality of the city's feeding law, decided late Wednesday to challenge the ruling by asking the full 11th Circuit U.S. District Court of Appeals to rehear the case. Tuesday's ruling came from a panel of three judges, two of whom ruled in favor of the restrictions.
Eric Montanez, a member of Orlando Food Not Bombs, helped carry on the group's regular Wednesday night feeding at Lake Eola Park as scheduled — and pledged to continue doing so regardless of what happens.
"The city is criminalizing homelessness and poverty and criminalizing individuals and organizations in the community that are trying to address those problems," Montanez said.
read more here
Activist group Orlando Food Not Bombs
Crash splits motorcycle, kills biker
Crash splits motorcycle, kills biker
By Amy L. Edwards and Bianca Prieto, Orlando Sentinel
11:30 a.m. EDT, July 8, 2010
A motorcyclist is dead this morning after crashing into the side of a car on Goldenrod Road about a mile north of State Road 408, according to Florida Highway Patrol.
Only one lane of traffic in each direction is open while troopers investigate.
The victim, an Hispanic male, was driving northbound on Goldenrod around 9 a.m. when a woman driving a Geo Prism pulled out in front of him, troopers said.
Crash splits motorcycle, kills biker
By Amy L. Edwards and Bianca Prieto, Orlando Sentinel
11:30 a.m. EDT, July 8, 2010
A motorcyclist is dead this morning after crashing into the side of a car on Goldenrod Road about a mile north of State Road 408, according to Florida Highway Patrol.
Only one lane of traffic in each direction is open while troopers investigate.
The victim, an Hispanic male, was driving northbound on Goldenrod around 9 a.m. when a woman driving a Geo Prism pulled out in front of him, troopers said.
Crash splits motorcycle, kills biker
PTSD: VCS In the New York Times
PTSD: VCS In the New York Times
Today's New York Times features Veterans for Common Sense discussing VA's new (and hopefully better) PTSD benefit regulations. VCS advocated for this science-based change starting in 2007. VCS encourages veterans with mental health conditions to seek VA care and benefits. Earlier treatment, we believe, can mitigate long-term adverse social consequences such as unemployment, drug and alcohol abuse, divorce, homelesness, and suicide.
VCS thanks President Barack Obama and VA Secretary Shinseki for their leadership on this vital issue. We thank our members for your support for our advocacy. VCS advocacy hopes to ensure VA is ready, willing, and able to provide prompt and high-quality care and benefits.
However . . .
Here is very distressing news about VA's continuing failure to handle PTSD claims properly and quickly.
St. Petersburg Times reporter William Levesque tells the story of a World War II veteran who has been waiting for proper PTSD benefits from VA for more than 65 years now.
No veteran should ever fight for 65 years for a valid claim ! Times have changed since 1945. Today, veterans discharged from active duty with PTSD automatically receive a 50 percent VA disability rating. VCS plans to closely review VA's new PTSD regulations, and we plan to monitor how VA implements the new regulations.
VCS Urges You to Attend Two VCS Events
On July 27, VCS will testify before Congress about Gulf War Illness. Based on your input, we will be demanding action from VA so our veterans obtain the healthcare and benefits we need based on scientific research. Please attend and show Congress you support our Gulf War veterans.
On August 5 - 8, VCS will be attending at the Gulf War Health Fair in Dallas, Texas, sponsored by the National Gulf War Resource Center. Key speakers include VA Chief of Staff John Gingrich, Texas philanthropist Ross Perot, and Gulf War illness Researcher Robert Haley. VCS strongly urges you to attend both events. These are our rare public opportunities to raise our voices to Congress, top VA officials, top researchers, and the press.
The more voices calling for improvements in research, healthcare, and benefits, then the more VA must listen and act for our veterans.
National Security News - Military Suicides Remain a Crisis
Kelly Kennedy of Army Times reports that despite prevention efforts, the suicide rate among troops and veterans continues to rise.
The sad failure of the military to prevent soldier suicide is reflected in the tragic account of a young army veteran, as reported by Hal Bernton for the Seattle Times.
Fighting two wars with no end in sight and with repeated re-deployments undermines soldier morale. A biting op-ed piece by Bob Herbert for the New York Times puts into words the feelings many of us have about the hopeless Afghanistan war:
The difference between [the Afghanistan War] and a nightmare is that when you wake up from a nightmare it's over. This is all too tragically real.
Today's New York Times features Veterans for Common Sense discussing VA's new (and hopefully better) PTSD benefit regulations. VCS advocated for this science-based change starting in 2007. VCS encourages veterans with mental health conditions to seek VA care and benefits. Earlier treatment, we believe, can mitigate long-term adverse social consequences such as unemployment, drug and alcohol abuse, divorce, homelesness, and suicide.
VCS thanks President Barack Obama and VA Secretary Shinseki for their leadership on this vital issue. We thank our members for your support for our advocacy. VCS advocacy hopes to ensure VA is ready, willing, and able to provide prompt and high-quality care and benefits.
However . . .
Here is very distressing news about VA's continuing failure to handle PTSD claims properly and quickly.
St. Petersburg Times reporter William Levesque tells the story of a World War II veteran who has been waiting for proper PTSD benefits from VA for more than 65 years now.
No veteran should ever fight for 65 years for a valid claim ! Times have changed since 1945. Today, veterans discharged from active duty with PTSD automatically receive a 50 percent VA disability rating. VCS plans to closely review VA's new PTSD regulations, and we plan to monitor how VA implements the new regulations.
VCS Urges You to Attend Two VCS Events
On July 27, VCS will testify before Congress about Gulf War Illness. Based on your input, we will be demanding action from VA so our veterans obtain the healthcare and benefits we need based on scientific research. Please attend and show Congress you support our Gulf War veterans.
On August 5 - 8, VCS will be attending at the Gulf War Health Fair in Dallas, Texas, sponsored by the National Gulf War Resource Center. Key speakers include VA Chief of Staff John Gingrich, Texas philanthropist Ross Perot, and Gulf War illness Researcher Robert Haley. VCS strongly urges you to attend both events. These are our rare public opportunities to raise our voices to Congress, top VA officials, top researchers, and the press.
The more voices calling for improvements in research, healthcare, and benefits, then the more VA must listen and act for our veterans.
National Security News - Military Suicides Remain a Crisis
Kelly Kennedy of Army Times reports that despite prevention efforts, the suicide rate among troops and veterans continues to rise.
The sad failure of the military to prevent soldier suicide is reflected in the tragic account of a young army veteran, as reported by Hal Bernton for the Seattle Times.
Fighting two wars with no end in sight and with repeated re-deployments undermines soldier morale. A biting op-ed piece by Bob Herbert for the New York Times puts into words the feelings many of us have about the hopeless Afghanistan war:
The difference between [the Afghanistan War] and a nightmare is that when you wake up from a nightmare it's over. This is all too tragically real.
Former Louisiana Army National Guardsman accused of threats
Former National Guardsman accused of threats
The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Jul 8, 2010 8:38:08 EDT
BATON ROUGE, La. — A former soldier accused of threatening the president and governor denied threatening them but said he's angry that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs won't pay for his counseling and prescriptions.
After a hearing Wednesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Christine Noland said 26-year-old Abram Kane Williams, who was arrested early this month, must remain in federal custody.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Frederick A. Menner Jr. said case workers and others told an FBI agent that Williams repeatedly threatened President Barack Obama, Gov. Bobby Jindal and U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge.
The Advocate reports that Williams, a former member of the Louisiana Army National Guard, testified that the VA concluded his problems are not service-related. But he said they began after his return from Iraq.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/07/ap_guardsman_threats_070810/
The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Jul 8, 2010 8:38:08 EDT
BATON ROUGE, La. — A former soldier accused of threatening the president and governor denied threatening them but said he's angry that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs won't pay for his counseling and prescriptions.
After a hearing Wednesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Christine Noland said 26-year-old Abram Kane Williams, who was arrested early this month, must remain in federal custody.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Frederick A. Menner Jr. said case workers and others told an FBI agent that Williams repeatedly threatened President Barack Obama, Gov. Bobby Jindal and U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge.
The Advocate reports that Williams, a former member of the Louisiana Army National Guard, testified that the VA concluded his problems are not service-related. But he said they began after his return from Iraq.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/07/ap_guardsman_threats_070810/
Deputies: Stalker out on a bail kills victim
Deputies: Stalker out on a bail kills victim
LEADVILLE - Police say a man out on bail from a stalking arrest killed the woman he was stalking and then himself Wednesday night.
Yvonne Flores, a 58-year-old woman from Leadville, was coming home from the store when Anthony Medina, also 58 years old and from Leadville, met her in her driveway and apparently shot her two times and then shot himself, said the Lake County Sheriff's Office.
Medina was arrested for stalking Flores on June 22 and was out on bail.
read more here
http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=142775&catid=339
LEADVILLE - Police say a man out on bail from a stalking arrest killed the woman he was stalking and then himself Wednesday night.
Yvonne Flores, a 58-year-old woman from Leadville, was coming home from the store when Anthony Medina, also 58 years old and from Leadville, met her in her driveway and apparently shot her two times and then shot himself, said the Lake County Sheriff's Office.
Medina was arrested for stalking Flores on June 22 and was out on bail.
read more here
http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=142775&catid=339
DAV Chapter 16 Orlando Installation of Officers
Tonight is the DAV Chapter 16 installation of officers. I am the Chapter's Auxiliary Chaplain and will be delivering the invocation. These are not just the words I will say tonight, but the words I try my best to live by.
Welcome members, friends and honored guests. We gather here this night to celebrate the future, as much as we honor the past. Each one of us committed to our veterans and to the troops serving in harms way in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is fitting this night that we consider the words of Christ from John 15:13 "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."
Our veterans were not only willing to lay down their lives for the sake of their friends they served side by side with, but for their families and friends back home. For their neighbors and communities and for all generations coming after them, living in the freedom and security provided by those willing to die to insure it.
On the Lincoln Memorial we read the ending to President Lincoln's second inaugural address.
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
These words are cherished by the DAV and the Auxiliary as we strive to fulfill the promise to bind the wounds of the disabled by war and to assure the care of those who have borne the battle. To care for the widows and orphans left behind by fallen. Since the Revolutionary war many have been called to defend this nation. George Washington said that "The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." and this the DAV fought for because we believe there is no greater love than to serve this nation.
On this day as we enter into another year of working to insure the promise of care for the disabled veterans, let us be renewed in spirit as well. When we face a struggle too hard for us to fight, may God send us others to stand by our side. When we tire, may God renew our strength. May God bless us with holding our veterans in our hearts so that we never stop fighting for them, never stop learning and adapting to the needs of different generations and never forget those who had a love so great they were willing to die for it.
VA to Issue Science-Based PTSD Regulations
This woman is not a friend of veterans and has been wrong on PTSD for so long that we really need to wonder why on earth anyone asks her anything at all.
Common sense proves her wrong. Look at it this way. Would you join the military thinking that if there is a war, all you have to do is risk your life to end up with a check from the VA every month? If you survive at all? Hell no. If you are granted 100% disability from the VA you are making less money than if you were able to work. Aside from the turmoil you go through with PTSD, the ravages on your personal life with everyone you know, nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety, panic attacks, short term memory loss plus a long list of others, you also have to face being on medication that comes with their own set of problems.
This is what it breaks down to.
Would you want to go through combat to end up with $192.50 a week with a 50% disability rating? How about $668.25 for 100%? If you end up with 100% you have to be suffering a lot and watch your life fall apart. Some may say that kind of money a week is good but they forget that a lot of people make more than that, especially trades people, and the VA doesn't pay overtime or give merit raises. Take a heavy equipment operator in a state where it snows. They make most of their yearly income plowing snow for days on end and they make overtime. Take them off their jobs because of medications they have to be on and there goes that money, plus the difference they would have made just on a regular paycheck alone.
But we're not talking about 100% disability rating for the most part because the percentages awarded at usually 50% or lower. Would you risk your life and end up with PTSD to make less than you could make at your local grocery store?
This ruling does not make it easier to live with PTSD but only takes out having to prove which time your life was on the line ended up being the straw that broke your life.
When work finally started to happen on PTSD, veterans were sent to the VA because they had the best programs and resources. Veterans had to file a claim just to be able to have PTSD covered so they wouldn't have to pay for it.
Private health insurance companies refused to cover the treatments because the diagnosis was connected to military service. Once this happened, mental health care coverage would not cover anything to do with PTSD. If the veteran still had an income, they had to pay for their care without a disability rating from the VA. So they filed claims. A service connected disability rating assured them of being taken care of. Medications and therapy were taken care of.
This will also encourage a combat veteran to seek help in healing PTSD. That is what the goal is supposed to be. Isn't it? We want them to recover from what happened to them while they were risking their lives. Right? We want them to seek help as soon as they show signs of PTSD so they get better. Right? Isn't that the part that is missing from all this debate?
Look at all the different programs going on across the country. Are they trying them to heal? Yoga? Martial Arts? Group therapy? Reaching out on their computers to find support and help to heal? If given a choice between recovering their lives or getting a check worth less than $200 a week, the would take healing any day. The goal has not been reached because too many have had their claims denied, which is like a knife in their backs after being told by a VA psychologist their condition is related to their service in combat but the claim has been denied over paperwork issues.
Do we want to stop them from ending up homeless? This helps in that area because when you have a veteran with PTSD and they cannot work, with no income at all, they can't pay to keep that roof over their heads. We talk a lot about homeless veterans but we hardly ever mention the "couch homeless" sleeping on the couch in a friend's home because they have nowhere else to go. Families have kicked them out of the house they used to live in, usually because they just didn't understand what was going on. When the VA is denying their claim, the family ends up doubting the suffering of the veteran. After all, the American public has been conditioned to believe the VA takes care of veterans injured in combat. They don't want to believe any veteran is being turned away.
Bing search Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and you get 5,190,000 results. Bing PTSD and you find 1,840,000 results. Google Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and you find 2,400,000. For PTSD the result is 1,110,000. These results are there for a reason. People want to learn so they understand but above that, they want to heal.
Encouraging them to seek help leads them to healing. Making them fight to prove a claim, adding more stress to their lives, discourages them allowing mild cases of PTSD to get progressively worse to the point where when they are finally helped, they are only stabilized instead of healed.
PTSD still has to be proven but this is a step in the right direction.
“I can’t imagine anyone more worthy of public largess than a veteran,” said Dr. Sally Satel, a psychiatrist and fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative policy group, who has written on P.T.S.D. “But as a clinician, it is destructive to give someone total and permanent disability when they are in fact capable of working, even if it is not at full capacity. A job is the most therapeutic thing there is.”
Common sense proves her wrong. Look at it this way. Would you join the military thinking that if there is a war, all you have to do is risk your life to end up with a check from the VA every month? If you survive at all? Hell no. If you are granted 100% disability from the VA you are making less money than if you were able to work. Aside from the turmoil you go through with PTSD, the ravages on your personal life with everyone you know, nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety, panic attacks, short term memory loss plus a long list of others, you also have to face being on medication that comes with their own set of problems.
This is what it breaks down to.
Dependent Status
Veteran Alone (Per Month)
30% $376
40% $541
50% $770
60% $974
70% $1,228
80% $1,427
90% $1,604
100% $2,673
go here for more
Dependent Status
Would you want to go through combat to end up with $192.50 a week with a 50% disability rating? How about $668.25 for 100%? If you end up with 100% you have to be suffering a lot and watch your life fall apart. Some may say that kind of money a week is good but they forget that a lot of people make more than that, especially trades people, and the VA doesn't pay overtime or give merit raises. Take a heavy equipment operator in a state where it snows. They make most of their yearly income plowing snow for days on end and they make overtime. Take them off their jobs because of medications they have to be on and there goes that money, plus the difference they would have made just on a regular paycheck alone.
But we're not talking about 100% disability rating for the most part because the percentages awarded at usually 50% or lower. Would you risk your life and end up with PTSD to make less than you could make at your local grocery store?
This ruling does not make it easier to live with PTSD but only takes out having to prove which time your life was on the line ended up being the straw that broke your life.
When work finally started to happen on PTSD, veterans were sent to the VA because they had the best programs and resources. Veterans had to file a claim just to be able to have PTSD covered so they wouldn't have to pay for it.
But Rick Weidman, executive director for policy and government affairs at Vietnam Veterans of America, said most veterans applied for disability not for the monthly checks but because they wanted access to free health care.
“I know guys who are rated 100 percent disabled who keep coming back for treatment not because they are worried about losing their compensation, but because they want their life back,” Mr. Weidman said.
Private health insurance companies refused to cover the treatments because the diagnosis was connected to military service. Once this happened, mental health care coverage would not cover anything to do with PTSD. If the veteran still had an income, they had to pay for their care without a disability rating from the VA. So they filed claims. A service connected disability rating assured them of being taken care of. Medications and therapy were taken care of.
More than two million service members have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan since 2001, and by some estimates 20 percent or more of them will develop P.T.S.D.
More than 150,000 cases of P.T.S.D. have been diagnosed by the veterans health system among veterans of the two wars, while thousands more have received diagnoses from private doctors, said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, an advocacy group.
But Mr. Sullivan said records showed that the veterans department had approved P.T.S.D. disability claims for only 78,000 veterans. That suggests, he said, that many veterans with the disorder are having their compensation claims rejected by claims processors. “Those statistics show a very serious problem in how V.A. handles P.T.S.D. claims,” Mr. Sullivan said.
This will also encourage a combat veteran to seek help in healing PTSD. That is what the goal is supposed to be. Isn't it? We want them to recover from what happened to them while they were risking their lives. Right? We want them to seek help as soon as they show signs of PTSD so they get better. Right? Isn't that the part that is missing from all this debate?
Look at all the different programs going on across the country. Are they trying them to heal? Yoga? Martial Arts? Group therapy? Reaching out on their computers to find support and help to heal? If given a choice between recovering their lives or getting a check worth less than $200 a week, the would take healing any day. The goal has not been reached because too many have had their claims denied, which is like a knife in their backs after being told by a VA psychologist their condition is related to their service in combat but the claim has been denied over paperwork issues.
Do we want to stop them from ending up homeless? This helps in that area because when you have a veteran with PTSD and they cannot work, with no income at all, they can't pay to keep that roof over their heads. We talk a lot about homeless veterans but we hardly ever mention the "couch homeless" sleeping on the couch in a friend's home because they have nowhere else to go. Families have kicked them out of the house they used to live in, usually because they just didn't understand what was going on. When the VA is denying their claim, the family ends up doubting the suffering of the veteran. After all, the American public has been conditioned to believe the VA takes care of veterans injured in combat. They don't want to believe any veteran is being turned away.
Bing search Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and you get 5,190,000 results. Bing PTSD and you find 1,840,000 results. Google Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and you find 2,400,000. For PTSD the result is 1,110,000. These results are there for a reason. People want to learn so they understand but above that, they want to heal.
Encouraging them to seek help leads them to healing. Making them fight to prove a claim, adding more stress to their lives, discourages them allowing mild cases of PTSD to get progressively worse to the point where when they are finally helped, they are only stabilized instead of healed.
PTSD still has to be proven but this is a step in the right direction.
VCS in the New York Times: VA to Issue Science Based PTSD Regulations
Written by James Dao
Wednesday, 07 July 2010 20:01
Veterans Affairs to Ease Claim Process for Disability
July 7, 2010 (New York Times) - The Federal government is preparing to issue new rules that will make it substantially easier for veterans who have been found to have post-traumatic stress disorder to receive disability benefits for the illness, a change [based on scientific research] that could affect hundreds of thousands of veterans from the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam.
The regulations from the Department of Veterans Affairs, which will take effect as early as Monday and cost as much as $5 billion over several years according to Congressional analysts, will essentially eliminate a requirement that veterans document specific events like bomb blasts, firefights or mortar attacks that might have caused P.T.S.D., an illness characterized by emotional numbness, irritability and flashbacks.
For decades, veterans have complained that finding such records was extremely time consuming and sometimes impossible. And in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, veterans groups assert that the current rules discriminate against tens of thousands of service members — many of them women — who did not serve in combat roles but nevertheless suffered traumatic experiences.
Under the new rule, which applies to veterans of all wars, the department will grant compensation to those with P.T.S.D. if they can simply show that they served in a war zone and in a job consistent with the events that they say caused their conditions. They would not have to prove, for instance, that they came under fire, served in a front-line unit or saw a friend killed.
The new rule would also allow compensation for service members who had good reason to fear traumatic events, known as stressors, even if they did not actually experience them.
There are concerns that the change will open the door to a flood of fraudulent claims. But supporters of the rule say the veterans department will still review all claims and thus be able to weed out the baseless ones.
“This nation has a solemn obligation to the men and women who have honorably served this country and suffer from the emotional and often devastating hidden wounds of war,” the secretary of veterans affairs, Eric K. Shinseki, said in a statement to The New York Times. “This final regulation goes a long way to ensure that veterans receive the benefits and services they need.”
read more here
VA to Issue Science Based PTSD Regulations
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
VA not approving enough service dogs, IG says
VA not approving enough service dogs, IG says
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Jul 7, 2010 17:19:44 EDT
A new report by the Veterans Affairs Department Inspector General says VA should be doing more for veterans whose lives could be improved with help from service dogs.
Eight years after receiving approval to help pay for dogs to assist veterans with mobility problems, seizure disorders or other disabilities, a report released Wednesday says VA has approved only eight requests.
VA officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said VA supports providing service dogs for veterans with physical and hearing issues, and does so on a case-by-case basis.
Relaxed policies that might make service dogs more widely available are under review, but rule changes take time, officials said.
“It is unacceptable not to exercise the authority given to them to improve the quality of veterans’ lives,” said Christina Roof of AmVets, a group that has been pushing the issue for years.
When service dog benefits are provided, VA does not pay for the dog nor its training, but veterinary bills, vaccinations and treatments for fleas and ticks are covered by VA. In some cases, a veteran can be reimbursed for food if a dog is on a medically ordered diet.
go here for more
VA not approving enough service dogs IG says
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Jul 7, 2010 17:19:44 EDT
A new report by the Veterans Affairs Department Inspector General says VA should be doing more for veterans whose lives could be improved with help from service dogs.
Eight years after receiving approval to help pay for dogs to assist veterans with mobility problems, seizure disorders or other disabilities, a report released Wednesday says VA has approved only eight requests.
VA officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said VA supports providing service dogs for veterans with physical and hearing issues, and does so on a case-by-case basis.
Relaxed policies that might make service dogs more widely available are under review, but rule changes take time, officials said.
“It is unacceptable not to exercise the authority given to them to improve the quality of veterans’ lives,” said Christina Roof of AmVets, a group that has been pushing the issue for years.
When service dog benefits are provided, VA does not pay for the dog nor its training, but veterinary bills, vaccinations and treatments for fleas and ticks are covered by VA. In some cases, a veteran can be reimbursed for food if a dog is on a medically ordered diet.
go here for more
VA not approving enough service dogs IG says
Soldier's house burns after homecoming, 4 firefighters hurt
Soldier's house burns after homecoming
The Associated Press
Posted : Wednesday Jul 7, 2010 9:15:26 EDT
NATICK, Mass. — The home of an Army officer who had just returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan hours earlier has been destroyed by fire.
Banners saying "Welcome Home" still hung nearby the military-owned house in Natick where Chief Warrant Officer Michael Doe and his family lived as firefighters battled Tuesday's blaze.
Four firefighters were injured at the fire at the Soldier Systems Center.
go here for more
Soldiers house burns after homecoming
The Associated Press
Posted : Wednesday Jul 7, 2010 9:15:26 EDT
NATICK, Mass. — The home of an Army officer who had just returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan hours earlier has been destroyed by fire.
Banners saying "Welcome Home" still hung nearby the military-owned house in Natick where Chief Warrant Officer Michael Doe and his family lived as firefighters battled Tuesday's blaze.
Four firefighters were injured at the fire at the Soldier Systems Center.
go here for more
Soldiers house burns after homecoming
Louisiana National Guard member dies in Iraq
Louisiana National Guard member dies in Iraq
Published: Wednesday, July 07, 2010
The Department of Defense Tuesday night identified a member of the Louisiana National Guard killed in Iraq on Friday.
Sgt. Jordan E. Tuttle , 22, of West Monroe, La., died July 2 at Baghdad, Iraq, of injuries suffered in a non-combat related incident.
Finish reading here
Louisiana National Guard member dies in Iraq
Published: Wednesday, July 07, 2010
The Department of Defense Tuesday night identified a member of the Louisiana National Guard killed in Iraq on Friday.
Sgt. Jordan E. Tuttle , 22, of West Monroe, La., died July 2 at Baghdad, Iraq, of injuries suffered in a non-combat related incident.
Finish reading here
Louisiana National Guard member dies in Iraq
Kidnapped 4-Year-Old Found Safe in Missouri
UPDATE
Missouri Man Eyed in Abduction Case Dies
Updated: 10 minutes ago
Lauren Frayer
Contributor
(July 8) -- A Missouri sex offender who shot himself as police approached to question him about the kidnapping of 4-year-old Alisa Maier has died.
The man died Wednesday night at a hospital in St. Charles, Missouri Highway Patrol Sgt. Al Nothum told The Associated Press.
The Lincoln County sheriff's department earlier told AOL News it could not confirm the report.
Alisa's 6-year-old brother, Blake, was the only witness to her abduction. He told police a man driving a dark four-door sedan pulled up in front of their house Monday night and ordered her into the car. She was found a day later wandering around a car wash parking lot in a St. Louis suburb more than 80 miles from her home. Details were reported by several news agencies.
read more here
Missouri Man Eyed in Abduction Case Dies
Miracles can happen and it looks like one just did
Kidnapped 4-Year-Old Found Safe in Missouri
Lauren Frayer
Contributor
(July 7) -- A 4-year-old Missouri girl believed to have been kidnapped while playing with her older brother in their front yard has been found wandering around a strip mall parking lot more than 80 miles from her home, and a relative said this morning that she was unharmed.
Police say they got a call just before 10 p.m. Tuesday reporting a young child wandering around the parking lot of a closed car wash in Fenton, a suburb of St. Louis. They confirmed her identity as Alisa Maier and then took her to a hospital as a precaution, according to several St. Louis-area TV stations.
Her parents traveled to the hospital overnight for a happy reunion, NBC News reported.
"They were just so happy," Alisa's grandfather Roy Harrison told NBC's "Today" show this morning. "There was a lot of smiling."
read more here
Kidnapped 4 Year Old Found Safe in Missouri
Orrin McClellan Was "Only Halfway Home" from War
There are very few reporters whose words can enter into a heart and pull someone into a world of pain but Lily can. When you read this know that she deeply cares and you can tell by what she writes, but I know her well enough to know this made her very sad. Lily is a true gift to all of our veterans.
This is by Lily Casura over at Healing Combat Trauma
This is by Lily Casura over at Healing Combat Trauma
July 07, 2010
Anatomy of a PTSD Suicide: Orrin McClellan Was "Only Halfway Home" from War
"Happy families are all alike," wrote Leo Tolstoy, the famous Russian novelist (and combat veteran), in the opening lines of "Anna Karenina," adding, "every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." And certainly few families are unhappier than those who've lost someone they love deeply to suicide, as Orrin McClellan's parents have, who've recently lost their Airborne soldier son to the aftermath of PTSD.
We wrote about Orrin McCllelan yesterday, the 25-year-old OEF veteran who took his own life in May of this year. The article, "Anatomy of a Suicide: OEF Veteran Orrin McClellan, RIP from PTSD," is linked here. The underlying Seattle Times article, also from yesterday's paper, is very good, and combines multimedia with the telling the story of McClellan's all-too-short life and struggle. It also documents the pain and suffering McClellan's parents are going through.
There is no "purple heart" for PTSD. There is no "war memorial" that lists those who died by suicide from PTSD, even when combat was the most likely explanation. And maybe there should be... But in the meantime, all we can do is try to reconstruct what we can find about who Orrin McClellan was in the 25 short years he was here.
Digging around on the Web, we can find out much about who McClellan was. The exercise becomes less macabre, or voyeuristic, than the assembling of an online shrine to the memory of someone we never knew, who's now too soon gone. There are the two online journals that McClellan kept, at MySpace and LiveJournal. There is his photo stream on Flickr. There is an obituary by a caring friend, who attended his memorial service. There is McClellan's listing at an online dating service, "Hot or Not," which he set up when he was in Afghanistan, and elsewhere pans with the single word, "whatever." There are some videos that a friend shot of him, who mourns his passing and wishes he had captured a few more shots of McClellan while he was still alive. There are the photos and the poems that his family shared with the Seattle Times, that are part of the original article. And there is a truly beautiful video about his deployment to Afghanistan, called "They Carry," that McClellan himself pieced together, shown on YouTube, and set to music: not heavy metal, but classical...He uploaded it in late September, 2007, after he got back from Afghanistan, and it carries the interesting descriptor: "this generation's wars from eyes on the ground...the faces and names are placeholders. those who were there remember. the rest can only watch." WELL worth viewing...
read more here
Anatomy of a PTSD Suicide
Twilight of Glory
Twilight of Glory
by
Chaplain Kathie
While most people in their 20's are talking about movies in the Twilight series about vampires, there is another meaning to the word "twilight" and they live it everyday.
twilight
1.
a. The diffused light from the sky during the early evening or early morning when the sun is below the horizon and its light is refracted by the earth's atmosphere.
b. The time of the day when the sun is just below the horizon, especially the period between sunset and dark.
2. Dim or diffused illumination.
3. A period or condition of decline following growth, glory, or success: in the twilight of his life.
4. A state of ambiguity or obscurity
Young men and women go off to other nations serving in the military everyday. They are sent off with people lining the roadways of military bases waving flags and praying God brings them home safely. In communities around the country we send off citizen soldiers leaving their jobs, families and friends to join the regular military in combat. Our neighbors going away from police, fire departments, offices, hospitals and yes, even unemployment lines, while we cheer for the sake of their devotion to duty.
Many of these men and women die while fighting the battles the nation decides need to be fought. They don't bother themselves with worrying about the politics involved. They have enough to worry about like staying alive and trying to keep their friends alive. They worry about being wounded and what will happen to them the day after they return with their lives changed. When they are deployed, all is taken care of for them. They are fed, given clothes and have a family surrounding them. We call them heroes and glorify their devotion. Yet when they are wounded, by body or mind, they enter into the twilight of glory, when they are in need of someone taking care of them. But we don't want to talk about them.
Thousands of Soldiers Unfit for War Duty
David Wood
Chief Military Correspondent
More than 13,000 active-duty Army soldiers -- the equivalent of four combat brigades -- are sidelined as unfit for war because of injury, illness or mental stress.
In an unmistakable sign that the Army is struggling with exhaustion after nine years of fighting, combat commanders whose units are headed to Afghanistan increasingly choose to leave behind soldiers who can no longer perform, putting additional strain on those who still can.
The growing pool of "non-deployable'' soldiers make up roughly 10 percent of the 116,423 active-duty soldiers currently in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thousands more Army reservists and National Guard soldiers are also considered unfit to deploy, a growing burden on an Army that has sworn to care for them as long as needed.
"These 13,000 soldiers, that number's not going to go away," said Brig. Gen. Gary Cheek, who heads the Army's Warrior Transition Command, which oversees the treatment and disposition of unfit soldiers. "If anything, it's going to get larger as the Army continues the tempo it's on.
"This is an Army at war.''
Among these "non-deployable'' soldiers are those recuperating from combat wounds, some severe, and various forms of brain injury. Far more numerous are soldiers with non-battle conditions, including cases of coronary disease, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, acute anxiety, kidney disease, leukemia, chronic back pain and dozens of other maladies. Sometimes, these cases are complicated by drug or alcohol abuse, according to senior Army officers and internal Pentagon documents.
read more here
Thousands of Soldiers Unfit for War Duty
We don't want to talk about those in need. We honor glory for however long it lasts when we can feel as if we were a part of success simply by offering words of support or showing up to give the impression of really caring. The wounded are past their glory days in our minds. There is no longer a reason to cheer that same devotion to the nation that caused them to be wounded. If they bleed, well we give them a Purple Heart and then send them off to the abyss of the VA. A few communities band together at the urging of some charity to renovate a house to accommodate wheel chairs when they no longer have their legs. Some people really do care but we as a nation on the whole care more about TV shows, celebrity gossip and our own lives as we glorify our own sacrifices for the sake of our own families. While we know what it's like to be unemployed and worry about paying the bills, we forget they end up with the same problems the rest of us have but unlike us, they are suffering for being unselfish.
When what they have to go through is brought to our minds, we get angry but that fades as soon as the DOD or the VA says they will take care of filling the need. We go back to our own lives without every thinking of them again until a news report comes out that one more of them have taken their own life. We fail to understand few families are willing to talk about the circumstances of the death when suicide is involved, so there are many, many more we will never know about. We know the reported number of 18 veteran suicides a day but they represent the number of veterans in the VA system. We know about the reported number of suicides in the active military but we don't know about the deaths "still under investigation" or any of the deaths by their own hands after they leave military duty. We can try to count the number of attempted suicides, arriving at about 12,000 per year, but there are many more we will never know about.
Suicide hotlines report numbers of callers and the "rescues" they arranged, but no one is talking about the fact these men and women feel so hopeless they reach the point when they have to reach out for someone to talk to on a suicide prevention hotline.
Twenty-something year olds fill the beds at Walter Reed and Bethesda but few in this country, other than family members, have ever seen the inside of a military hospital.
One of the perks of being a Chaplain is that I was treated to a VIP tour of Walter Reed during the Memorial Day trip to Washington. There were 5 young soldiers from the same unit, wounded at different times to different degrees. There was a young female MP feeling blessed the RPG only took off one of her legs instead of hitting her higher. Another young soldier talked about how the people of Afghanistan were mostly good people with very little to live with and how he believe he was helping them to live better lives in their future. He wanted to go back as soon as possible. All of them are the same age as my daughter. They all deal with the same problems all others at their age deal with but then they have the added burden of not only risking their lives, but risking their futures. All of the soldiers I met at Walter Reed will live with the wounds they received for the rest of their lives.
It's really hard to believe I'm sitting here after all these years still doing what I began when my Dad met my husband for the first time. I was 22 when I asked my Dad what he thought of Jack. "He's a nice guy but he's got shell shock." Coming from a Korean War vet, I took it seriously but no one knew at the time it was mild PTSD issuing a warning for him to get help. By the time we met he had been home for 11 years. To this day, young men and women are receiving the same warning about getting help now instead of later so that the ravages of PTSD can be prevented, but too few listen. For those who do listen, they end up discovering that help is something they have to not only wait for, but have to fight for in long lines and paperwork.
None of what they are going through has to happen but they are no long in their glory days of deployment when at least some in this nation want to know what's going on. They are in the twilight of their glory when few in this nation will bother to notice them at all and even fewer will feel compelled enough to try to make this right for them.
twilight
1.
a. The diffused light from the sky during the early evening or early morning when the sun is below the horizon and its light is refracted by the earth's atmosphere.
b. The time of the day when the sun is just below the horizon, especially the period between sunset and dark.
2. Dim or diffused illumination.
3. A period or condition of decline following growth, glory, or success: in the twilight of his life.
4. A state of ambiguity or obscurity
They are in the twilight of glory because when they can't risk their lives, they are no longer of use to us but need us instead.
I wrote this poem with the words of Vietnam veterans back in 1984. These are their words. I just arranged them. This was their lives. I just listened. I revised it for today's veterans.
Twilight of Glory
by
Chaplain Kathie
The things I’ve seen and done would boggle your mind.
I’ve seen the death and destruction created by mankind
in the living hell that I walked away from but could not leave behind.
It all comes back to haunt me now and makes peace impossible to find.
The ghosts of the past that find me in the night
make me wonder if my life will ever be right.
I have tried to forget what I have done,
and now there is no place left to run.
All this in the name of glory!
There is no end to this horror story.It still does not make sense even now that I am older,
why, when I was so young they made me a soldier
and why I had to be a part of that war
when I didn’t even know what we were there for.
At eighteen I should have been with my friends having fun
not patrolling through a jungle with a machine gun.
I did my part just the same, just for my country
and stood helplessly watching my friends die all around me.
I felt a surge of hate engulf my soul for people that I did not know
and saw children lose their chance to grow.
All this in the name of glory!
There is still no end to this horror story.
There was no glory for guys like me
only bitter memories that will not set me free.
I can never forget the ones who never made it home
some of them dead and others whose fate is still unknown
and the stigma that we lost what was not meant to win
most of us carry that extra burden buried deep within.
All this in the name of glory!
Will there ever be an end to this horror story?
In the twilight of glory
there is an unwritten story
each warrior keeps within.
Going back from the wars we are sent to fight
like going from sunshine to the darkness of night
we fade away from the public's mind
and wonder when glory was left behind
as we struggle to find reason to go on
back in a world where we no longer belong.
revised from IN THE NAME OF GLORY
@1984 Kathie Costos
I signed the poem W.T. Manteiv for We Trusted and Vietnam backwards.
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