From health care to finances, protect those who protected us

A soldier’s money
From health care to finances, we should protect those who protected us

Sergeant Jared Doohen, left, and Staff Sergeant Thomas Stanley return home to Vermont last year after nine months in Afghanistan. (Associated Press)

By Juliette Kayyem
July 25, 2011

LAST WEEK, 650 troops quietly left Afghanistan, beginning the long slog home as part of President Obama’s drawdown. At the same time, General David Petraeus, the architect of the surges in both Iraq and Afghanistan, formally resigned from the military to take over as director of the CIA. The timing was coincidental, but not without meaning: The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now simultaneously moving to a close.

Petraeus handed his Afghanistan command to Marine Lieutenant General John Allen, who will oversee further troop departures. He also symbolically handed over some measure of responsibility for those troops’ future well-being to his wife, Holly Petraeus, who represents a rare growth industry in government: protecting and providing to our returning service members and veterans.

As a nation, we are simply unprepared for the numbers of returning troops we now face. The wars of the last ten years have created over 1.1 million veterans; another 2.4 million men and women are on active, National Guard, or reserve duty. This class includes soldiers who have served in combat longer than any in US history. Of the nearly 400,000 who have seen combat duty, more than 13,000 have spent at least 45 months - nearly four cumulative years - in combat.

We know so little about the magnitude and the depth of the issues they will be facing in health care, employment, and education. All they want is to go back to normal lives. And that too is a challenge.
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From health care to finances

Vietnam MIA's body laid to rest after 40 years

Local soldier's body laid to rest 40 years after he disappeared
BY MIKE FITZGERALD - News-Democrat

GLEN CARBON -- Randy Dalton's family, after waiting 40 years to the day, finally laid him to rest Sunday.

An Army honor guard, in white gloves and dress uniforms, carried Dalton's flag-draped coffin the last few yards to his resting place on the gentle slope of a hill at Sunset Hill Cemetery.

A man dressed as a Union soldier from the Civil War played "Taps." More than 400 people stood silently as seven volunteers aimed their rifles skyward and fired three volleys.

An then the honor guard commander, an Army sergeant, presented each of Dalton's three sisters a tightly folded American flag -- a final gesture to honor the 20-year-old Collinsville man whose body disappeared on July 24, 1971.

That's when the helicopter on which Dalton served as a door gunner was shot down during a reconnaissance mission over Cambodia. Although Dalton was due to return home in a few weeks, he volunteered for the mission to take the place of a friend who'd fallen sick.


Read more: Local soldier body laid to rest

Iraq Vet, Lowell police officer's body found in Merrimack River

Body found in Merrimack River identified as Lowell police officer
July 24, 2011 8:12 PM

“He was there to take care of people,” his mother said. “Whether it was on the police force or in Iraq or where he was going in Afghanistan, he believed what he was doing was helping people.”

By Stewart Bishop, Globe Correspondent

Two men were killed -- one of them a decorated Lowell police officer and former Marine -- in separate incidents in two Massachusetts rivers during the weekend, authorities said.

While riding in a motor boat with his brother and another friend on the Merrimack River Saturday evening, Lowell patrol officer Charles Panek told his companions he was going to jump into the water and asked them to turn around and pick him up, according to Tyngsborough police.

He jumped off while the 18-foot vessel was traveling about 20 miles per hour, police said. When the boat circled back seconds later, he did not surface.

According to the Lowell police department and family members, Panek was a decorated police officer and former Marine, who had served in the Iraq War. He also served in the Rhode Island Army National Guard, and was scheduled to be deployed soon to Afghanistan, police said.

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Body found in Merrimack River

Marine killed in motorcycle crash

Man dead after motorcycle crash
July 23, 2011 12:19 PM
HOPE HODGE
Updated at 6:07 p.m. to provide additional details, correct time of crash.

An early morning single-motorcycle crash left a young Marine dead, highway patrol officials said Saturday.

Officials with the N.C. Highway Patrol in Jacksonville said the wreck took place not far from Piney Green Road, on Lake Cole Road near Woodbrook Drive, just after 3:30 a.m.

A 25-year-old man driving a blue Yamaha motorcycle came out of a slight curve and ran off the roadway to the right, striking a drain culvert in a driveway, officials said. The motorcyclist was thrown off the bike about 100 feet into a nearby yard and died at the scene. Troopers said Saturday the man was taken to Onslow Memorial Hospital and the cause of death was blunt trauma from the crash.
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Man dead after motorcycle crash

Veterans fought for us then ended up home-less

by
Chaplain Kathie

It is bad enough when an active duty soldier has to worry about losing their home while they are deployed but when it comes to the National Guards and Reservists, it is even worse.

Think about how they live. They have jobs, most of the time working for police and fire departments. They are the people we count on everyday in our own communities. They base their budgets on the pay from their jobs, even when they are the boss of their own business. When they deploy, while the law is supposed to protect their jobs while they're gone, the pay stops. They get paid by the government leaving them to live off of a financial loss.

Military veterans have a hard time finding work when they are discharged but citizen soldiers have a harder time finding work. The risk of them being redeployed hangs over their heads. Human Resources directors think of the possibility of having to have the job done by a temp or making others fill in the gaps if they are redeployed. Even if they are more qualified, someone else gets the job.

Then there is the worry about PTSD along with the false impression it makes them unstable. With PTSD there are different levels. Higher levels of PTSD make it impossible for them to work in the first place, so they are very unlikely to even look for work. Low levels of PTSD are not a problem for employers. According to the latest numbers, half of National Guards/Reservists have PTSD, but the data does not separate them by levels.

They are losing their homes and their families end up wondering what all the suffering was worth. The constant worry about making ends meet while one of them is gone along with having to worry about them overseas drains them. Just when they should be able to relax with the homecoming, they are faced with bills that cannot be paid.

Veterans' homes slip away

Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele

"Just how many veterans fall into this category isn't clear. The Department of Veterans Affairs assisted 66,000 who defaulted last year alone on VA loans. But that number did not include the tens of thousands of other veterans who faced foreclosure on FHA or conventional mortgages that many took out to survive. And of course the number does not include reservists or National Guard personnel who fell behind on payments when they were called up for multiple tours in Iraq, Afghanistan, or both."

After the Second World War, returning veterans were welcomed home to two of the most successful government initiatives ever - the FHA and VA housing programs - which put millions of them into their own homes for the first time.

Today, later generations of veterans are being confronted by much different housing policies - ones that can toss them out of homes they've bought with their life savings.

John Aguiar is a veteran of the Gulf War, a former intelligence analyst for the Army who took part in Operation Desert Storm in 1990 when U.S. forces brought Saddam Hussein to heel after he invaded Kuwait.

Aguiar and his wife, Syrena, built a house in Cape Coral, Fla., after relocating from Chicago to be nearer her parents. Using proceeds from the sale of their Chicago house, they bought a lot in a new subdivision in the Cape, a middle-class suburb across from Fort Myers in southwest Florida.

The house they built reflected their values and way of life. It was nothing fancy: a one-story Cape rancher with three bedrooms, two baths, and a two-car garage. There were no granite countertops, no Jacuzzi - just the basics, in keeping with what they could afford. "We always lived within our means," said Syrena. Nor did they see it as a stepping-stone to something larger.

"It was all we wanted, a place to raise our kids," said John. "We wanted to retire there."
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Veterans homes slip away

This country doesn't notice them.

Study Finds Mental Resilience In Deployed Combat Troops

This is why the crap of telling them to train their brains to be "tough" does not work. They already are tough!

Texas A M Study Finds Mental Resilience In Deployed Combat Troops
July 20, 2011 Featured Topics No Comments

COLLEGE STATION, July 20, 2011 — Deployed soldiers in units that are facing high-risk combat situations show extraordinary tolerance for their stressful environment, found a Texas A&M University study published in the scholarly journal Psychological Assessment.

Even more remarkable, adds psychology professor Leslie Morey, is the study reveals that deployed troops have nearly identical reports of potential emotional or psychological problems when compared to their civilian counterparts back in the U.S., a finding that may point to potential adaptive mechanisms in place to sustain deployed troops that are not present once they return stateside.

Morey, who specializes in diagnosis and assessment of mental disorders, began collaborating with the U.S. Army after the Army began studying the potential development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and cognitive problems in deployed troops who had suffered from combat-related concussions. Army researchers were using the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI), a widely used measurement created by Morey in 1991, to compare troops within the same unit who had received concussions and those who had not. In first analyzing the data, Morey was surprised to see that the responses of the control group — soldiers who had not received concussions but were selected to represent the typical effects of combat stresses — were remarkably normal. This realization led to an important additional focus for the study.

“Nobody had ever done a comprehensive study of the psychological effects of being in a combat unit, attempting to distinguish what might be PTSD versus what is the normative response in these situations,” Morey says.

“British troops appear to have much less lower PTSD rates than U.S. troops,” he says. “The British keep each returning unit intact and have them go through a sort of decompression out of the combat zone before they return to the UK. When you’re in the field and something happens to the unit, everyone experiences it. There is a sense of collective experience that becomes normalized, but then you return stateside to a group that doesn’t have those same experiences. The answer may lie in better handling that transition.”

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Texas AM Study Finds Mental Resilience In Deployed Combat Troops

The last part could explain why National Guards and Reservists are coming in with higher rates of PTSD as well.

Canadian family still seeking answers after soldier's suicide

Family still seeking answers after soldier's suicide

CTV News.ca Staff
Date: Wed. Jul. 20 2011 6:24 PM ET
More than three years after a soldier committed suicide following a struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder, his family is still fighting for answers about what went wrong.

Corp. Stuart Langridge, 29, was a promising young soldier who dedicated his life to the military. But on March 15, 2008, he took his own life by hanging himself in his barracks at CFB Edmonton.

Langridge, who served in Bosnia and Afghanistan, had been suffering from post-traumatic stress, alcohol and substance abuse upon his return from a six-month tour in Afghanistan in 2005.

Though his family didn't know it at the time, he had attempted suicide on six occasions.

"We had no idea how seriously ill Stuart was. We only knew parts of what was going on; we didn't understand the full extent of it," his father Shaun Fynes told CTV's Canada AM Wednesday from Victoria.
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Family still seeking answers after soldier's suicide

Vietnam veteran found dead after fire

Vietnam veteran found dead after fire
Updated: Wednesday, 20 Jul 2011, 6:10 PM EDT
Published : Wednesday, 20 Jul 2011, 10:06 AM EDT

Nalina Shapiro
Posted by: Eli George
KENMORE, N.Y. (WIVB) - A Vietnam veteran was found dead inside a burning apartment in Kenmore. It's still unclear what killed 62-year-old Donald Dake.

Kenmore Police and fire officials responded to a fire inside Dake's Ken-Dev studio apartment around 12:30 a.m. Wednesday morning and found heavy smoke inside the unit. At the time, many residents were sleeping and thought it was a false alarm.

Tammy Fisher said, "We've had false alarms, several of them in the recent past. This one was real, and I'm glad I got out because I was contemplating whether to just stay in bed or not."

Neighbors say it was tough for many people to get out quickly.
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Vietnam veteran found dead after fire

Silver Star, Purple Heart Vietnam Homeless Vet buried with honor

Funeral home gives homeless veteran proper burial service

By GEORGE H. NEWMAN | The Tampa Tribune
Published: July 20, 2011

PLANT CITY --
For the third time in two years, a Plant City funeral home held services for a homeless military veteran.

John F. Booth of Tampa, who served as an Army sergeant during the Vietnam War, was honored on July 5 at Wells Memorial Funeral Home. The service was followed by his burial at the Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell.

"Booth, 69, is a veteran with no home, no money and no legal next of kin to make his funeral arrangements," said Jessica S. McDunn, a spokeswoman for the Dignity Memorial Homeless Veterans Burial Program, a cooperative effort among 1,800 funeral, cremation and cemetery service providers across the country.

Wells Memorial and the Gonzalez funeral homes stepped in to make sure Booth received a burial befitting all honorable veterans, McDunn said. Gonzalez provided Booth's casket.

"Booth was a recipient of the Purple Heart for wounds he received in action on Jan. 20, 1969," McDunn said. "He also earned a Silver Star for gallantry in action on Jan. 20, 1969. Booth also earned a Bronze Star for meritorious achievement in ground operations against hostile forces in Vietnam during the period of April 1968 to April 1969."

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Funeral home gives homeless veteran proper burial service

Adaptive wheelchair gives wounded warriors chance to play golf

Adaptive wheelchair gives wounded warriors chance to play golf
Green2Green is a nonprofit working to bring the game of golf to wounded warriors, and now they're not letting a handicap or injury get in the way.
Posted: 6:27 PM Jul 22, 2011
Reporter: Katie Beasley

News 12 at 6 o'clock / Friday July 22, 2011

EVANS, Ga. -- Most people take the simple use of healthy, working legs for granted, but many wounded warriors come home with injuries that take away the use of one or both legs.

ADVERTISEMENT

Now, one local group is trying to give those men and women a little hope in the form of a unique wheelchair.

Green2Green is a nonprofit working to bring the game of golf to wounded warriors, and now they're not letting a handicap or injury get in the way.

Specialist Danny McGowan was injured last year in Afghanistan. He's confined to a wheelchair and says playing golf hasn't been much of a priority.

"We were hit by an IED and it damaged my truck. I sustained multiple injuries to my back and to my legs," McGowan said.

But thanks to a special wheelchair, McGowan can hit the greens again.

"It's been a long time for me, and doing it today, it felt great, it really felt great," he said.

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Adaptive wheelchair gives wounded warriors chance to play golf

Fort Carson soldier uses Army skills to save man's life

Kingman soldier uses Army skills to save man's life
Gonzales first on the scene of accident at Fort Carson

Erin Taylor
Miner Staff Reporter


KINGMAN - Spc. Raymond Gonzales recently got back from a yearlong tour of duty in Iraq, but it was only after his return stateside that he got a chance to put his military medical training into use to save a life.

Gonzales, 24, is currently stationed at Fort Carson in Colorado where he lives with his wife, Jennifer, and their three girls. Both Raymond and Jennifer grew up in Kingman and still visit several times a year.

Raymond was on his way to work on the morning of July 15 when he came upon a man lying in the street who only seconds before had been hit by a car.

Gonzales was the first person on scene and automatically reverted to his medical training.

"We call it 'muscle memory,'" he said. "You just go back to your training. You don't even realize what you're doing while you're doing it."

Gonzales used his uniform shirt to compress a wound on the man's neck that was pouring blood from the jugular vein. At the same time, he quickly assessed the man's double compound fracture to his right arm and used the waistband from a passersby's sweatpants to stem the bleeding from a wound there.
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Kingman soldier uses Army skills to save man life

Vets face shortage of therapists that understand them

The need for therapists is high but according to the data coming in, it is only going to get higher instead of lower. More and more come home from multiple deployments carrying all they went through with them. Stressful enough but when you consider they are returning to families and friends with very little understanding of the changes they see in someone they love, it adds to the stress. Then consider the men and women discharged, facing the rest of their lives with the weight of the world on their shoulders, suffering from PTSD, TBI or physical wounds making it impossible to hold a job even if they could find one, and you see how the price of war does not expire when they come home.

Medication helps but numbing them is not healing them. Therapy in whatever form works best for the individual veteran, is a must but few do it and the majority of the therapist have no clue what makes a veteran different from a civilian.

Vets face shortage of therapists
New program training clinicians in psychology of combat is an attempt to help fill the gap

By Peter Cameron, Special to the Tribune
July 20, 2011

When Daniel Brautigam tried to tell therapists how he felt having urine thrown in his face at Guantanamo Bay, he experienced the same frustration as thousands of other returning veterans who have sought counseling.

"They had no idea how to respond to that. It looked like to me that they were grossed out, and they're supposed to be helping me," said Brautigam, 31, who was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression following his return to Hoffman Estates from tours with the Navy in the Northern Arabian Gulf and Cuba.

The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that 11 percent to 20 percent of veterans from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are suffering from PTSD. Others think the number is higher.

When vets seek therapy, they want a professional who can relate to soldiers in combat, and that usually means a therapist who has military experience. Without such empathy, therapy often is doomed, vets say.

Because most psychologists and mental health care professionals don't have a military background, there's a void in the safety net for vets. Some veterans' organizations have stepped up, training members to help their peers, and the Soldiers Project provides free counseling from licensed professionals and veterans by phone to newly returned vets.
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Vets face shortage of therapists

You don't have to go to war to be able to understand but you can't gain the knowledge from a class text book. You have to be with them, talk to them and invest a lot of time in discovering what makes them all so different. You can't treat them for combat traumas if you never even looked at a picture of what is left of a body after a bomb has blown up. You can't help them get past their haunting nightmares if you don't have a clue what happened in combat. Most of the therapy they need comes with common sense but if you have nothing in common with them, it makes no sense to them.

In 2005, after too many years of researching PTSD as well as living with it, I began to create videos to make it easier for the veterans to understand and come to terms with PTSD. When I searched for pictures, there were thousands of them. Many of them were graphic images of what comes with war but many were of the sadness when someone from their unit was killed. Tracking all these reports across the country, I know what happened there as much as I do about what is happening here. Looking back at almost 30 years of doing this, the greatest knowledge came from listening to them but had I not invested the time in researching "their combat lives" I wouldn't have a clue how to really help them.

I tend to their spiritual needs and I can help them to a point but I need therapists to send them too. What they need more is someone with a specialized training on trauma as well as combat but there are not enough of them.

If you are considering psychology please think about taking care of them. I can assure you that it will be a recession proof job with the numbers I'm seeing. I can also assure you that you will not come into contact with a finer group of people to help than our veterans. If you do decide to treat them then please find out where they've been and what went on there so that you at least know the difference between an IED and RPG. War in Iraq is not the same as war in Afghanistan. Know the difference as much as you learn the difference between the branches of service, regular military and reserves. The more you know, the more you'll be able to help them heal and while they will tug at your heart, you won't regret a single day of it.

Bill would test competency of VA claims workers

Bill would test competency of VA claims workers
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Jul 22, 2011 13:58:17 EDT
A House subcommittee postponed on Friday passage of a bill that would require an annual competency test for veterans’ claims processors after some lawmakers worried this would only add to the already considerable backlog of claims.

The bill, HR 2349, would require an annual assessment of the skills of employees and managers at the Veterans Affairs Department who are involved in processing benefits and pension claims.
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Bill would test competency of VA claims workers

Army deserter arrested in Orlando

Army deserter arrested in Orlando, accused of attempted murder

By Anika Myers Palm, Orlando Sentinel
2:05 p.m. EDT, July 21, 2011

A U.S. Army sergeant accused of both deserting the military and an attempted murder in Tennessee was arrested Thursday morning in Orlando.

Sgt. First Class Andres Betancourt, 32, of Clermont, is in custody and under guard in a Central Florida hospital, according to the Orange County jail. Officials at the jail have refused to identify his exact location, citing safety concerns.

Betancourt, a native of Cali, Colombia, deserted a unit based at Fort Campbell, Ky., according to an Army affidavit for his arrest.

He also is facing charges of aggravated assault and attempted second-degree murder in connection with an alleged attempt to run over his girlfriend in May 2010 in Clarksville, Tenn.
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Army deserter arrested in Orlando

Iraq vet gets 4 years for shooting at deputies

His brother, also served in Iraq and came home with the war inside of him. He committed suicide in 2003 when no one was talking about any of this.

Iraq vet gets 4 years for shooting at deputies
The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Jul 21, 2011 7:21:51 EDT
WINCHESTER, Ind. — A Marine veteran of the Iraq war has been sentenced to four years in prison for firing a shotgun at three sheriff's deputies in eastern Indiana.

A Randolph County judge accepted an agreement under which 27-year-old Andrew Ward of Farmland pleaded guilty to a felony charge of criminal recklessness and a misdemeanor battery charge.
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Iraq vet gets 4 years for shooting at deputies

In January, Andrew was getting help to heal.

PTSD on trial, Iraq veteran gets treatment

Iraq War veteran opens fire on police in Indiana
Associated Press
Posted on October 11, 2009 at 5:34 PM

LYNN, Ind. (AP) — An ex-Marine who served in Iraq has been charged with three counts of attempted murder of a police officer after firing on police.

Authorities say 26-year-old Andrew Ward of rural Lynn fired four shotgun blasts at three officers Friday night at a rural farm house. No officers were hurt.

After that weapon and another malfunctioned, officers used a stun gun to subdue Ward. He was being held without bond Sunday. He also faces preliminary charges of criminal recklessness, battery and intimidation.

Relatives say Ward was discharged from the Marines last month and is seeking disability veterans benefits for anxiety and post-traumatic-stress disorder. An older brother who also served in Iraq killed himself in 2003.

Lynn is about 65 miles east of Indianapolis.

So the headline reads he gets four years in prison but when other people have mental health problems, they don't go on trial and they don't go to jail. They get sent to get help because their troubled minds were not right at the time of the crime. Why was there only justice part way for this veteran?

After tour, Reservists' mental health may suffer

After tour, Reservists' mental health may suffer
By Amy Norton
NEW YORK | Thu Jul 21, 2011 4:03pm EDT
(Reuters Health) - Reservists returning from Iraq or Afghanistan may have more trouble adjusting to life at home than full-time soldiers do -- and that can take a toll on their mental well-being, a UK study finds.

Past studies in both the UK and U.S. have found that, compared with regular troops, Reservists and National Guard members have more mental health issues -- including more symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) -- after returning home from Iraq or Afghanistan.

The latest findings, researchers say, suggest that difficulty readjusting to civilian life may account for some of that extra risk.

Of the nearly 5,000 UK troops they surveyed, Reservists were more likely to say they'd had problems getting back to their normal social activities in the weeks after coming home.

A majority -- 69 percent -- also felt like other people did not understand what they had gone through during deployment. And they were less likely than regular troops to feel supported by the military.
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After tour Reservists mental health may suffer

DOD supports military families? Not this one

You'd think that the DOD understands the struggles military families have by now, especially with all the reports we've been reading, but then read this and know when it came to needing support, this growing family didn't have any.

Metro Detroit Family Says Solider's Discharge Unfair
Updated: Thursday, 21 Jul 2011, 10:58 AM EDT
Published : Wednesday, 20 Jul 2011, 7:55 PM EDT

By AMY LANGE
WJBK | myFOXDetroit.com

SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (WJBK) - "How (are we) going to take care of our family because it affects us a lot," said Krystal Jones.

She is worried. Her husband is 22-year-old Darnell Jones -- a private serving with the 101st Airborne Division in Afghanistan. It has been his dream since he was 15 years old. He had just re-enlisted in the Army. They were supposed to move to Germany, but now he's being kicked out instead.

"They always promote family, and it's like they're going against everything they stand for," Krystal Jones said.

You see, Jones was home on leave in metro Detroit back in February when doctors told his pregnant wife she needed to have an emergency delivery. FOX 2 was shown a letter requesting that Jones be there. This was serious so the soldier asked for additional time at home, but was denied.

"My son made a decision to stay home until his son was born safely and with all intentions to return and they're calling it AWOL," said concerned mother Ericka Jones.
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Metro Detroit Family Says Solider's Discharge Unfair

Metro Detroit Family Says Solider's Discharge Unfair: MyFoxDETROIT.com

Medal of Honor Cpl. Larry Smedley Vietnam War Museum

This has to be one of the best kept secrets in Orlando. Too many people have no clue a museum like this is here for everyone, not just Vietnam Veterans or today's veterans, but for everyone.

Cpl. Larry E. Smedley National Vietnam War Museum
Orlando, Florida


3400 N.Tanner Rd.
Orlando, FL 32826

phone: 407-601-2864
e-mail: wminfo@nwmvocf.org
web: www.nwmvocf.org



Welcome to the Larry E. Smedley National Vietnam War Museum, a place full of knowledge, experiences, and memories. Here you will discover many unique and historical artifacts of the Vietnam Era. As you tour our facility, you will encounter exhibits that are on loan from government, as well as those that were both donated and built by members of the Vietnam and all Veterans of Central Florida.

The Larry E. Smedley National Vietnam War Museum includes the first dedicated monument to Fallen Vietnam War Veterans in the state of Florida, with 167 names of men and women from Orange County, Florida. Other static displays consists of a U.S. Navy Patrol Boat River (PBR), also known as “River Rat”, Douglas A-4B Skyhawk aircraft that is currently on loan from the National Museum of Naval Aviation, Pensacola, Florida, and a Bell UH-1 (Huey) Dustoff helicopter. The existing museum center includes numerous artifacts from the Vietnam era; a room-size, to scale, firebase recreation that took approximately eleven years to complete; and recently remodeled an educational media/research room with enhanced audiovisual capabilities.

History

The National Vietnam War Museum, Inc., established in 2000, is a Central Florida non-profit museum, recently name was changed to Larry E. Smedley National Vietnam War Museum owned and operated by the Vietnam Veterans of Central Florida, Inc., also a non-profit organization in Central Florida, founded in 1982. Corporal Larry Eugene Smedley (March 4, 1949–December 21, 1967) was a United States Marine which his name has officially been added to museum title, see his bio to the right. This organization assists the servicemen and women of all wars and branches of military service. While mainly an organization of Vietnam War Era members, the VVCF welcomes all that served with the Armed Forces of the United States.

Artifacts Collections

Static Displays: UH1 (Huey) Helicopter, A-4 Skyhawk Jet Plane, Mk II PBR Navy Patrol Boat, USMC Humvee w/Stinger Missle pods, USA APC (Tracked), jeeps, trucks, trailers

Research Collections

Weapons, clothing, medals, certificates, letters, a lending library and reading room

Educational Programs

Traveling exhibitions, museum tours, vehicle transport to parades and functions, work study programs

Iraq veteran, Niagara Deputy loses both legs in car crash

Deputy loses both legs in crash of cruiser
Fellow officers saved his life

By Nancy A. Fischer
NEWS NIAGARA REPORTER

Updated: July 21, 2011, 6:38 AM

Niagara County Sheriff Deputy Allen Gerhardt, a decorated veteran who flew combat missions in Iraq, lost both of his legs when his cruiser crashed into a guardrail Monday night in Ransomville.

Gerhardt, 36, of Newfane, was listed in stable condition Wednesday after undergoing 5 1/2 hours of surgery Tuesday night.

The deputy’s family members say the quick action of officers who first arrived at the scene saved his life. As it turned out, both officers were members of the department’s emergency response team and both knew how to tie a tourniquet.

“I owe my husband’s life to them,” said Gerhardt’s wife, Tina. “They are 100 percent my heroes.”

“I can’t express our gratitude,” added his father, Steven A. “You can imagine how much blood you can lose with both your legs ripped off. If they hadn’t had tourniqueted him, I would have been making funeral arrangements right now.”
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Deputy loses both legs in crash of cruiser

Marine identified in fatal wreck

Marine identified in fatal wreck on Interstate 8 near Ogilby Road exit

By SILVIO J. PANTA
Imperial Valley Press Staff Writer
1:14 a.m. PDT, July 21, 2011

WINTERHAVEN — A coroner’s official identified Wednesday the U.S. Marine who died during a rollover crash on westbound Interstate 8 near the Ogilby Road exit.

Cpl. Sylverson Moise, 24, was pronounced dead Tuesday at the scene of the crash, said Imperial County Supervisory Deputy Coroner Sgt. Thomas Garcia.

The crash left an unidentified second Marine with what the California Highway Patrol described as major injuries that required a flight out to St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, said Highway Patrol Officer Chris Boudreaux.
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Marine identified in fatal wreck