Iraq veteran overcomes war injury to race in Wilmington Grand Prix
WHYY
ByMark Eichmann
May 18, 2018
“The doctors of course were trying to figure out what’s going on, they’re telling me, ‘Just be prepared to never walk or run again, you’re probably looking at a career-ending type of injury.’ And that was really hard to digest,” Tibbits said.
His bike tires slipped as Brian Tibbits made a practice run up the steep, cobblestoned incline of Wilmington’s Monkey Hill Friday morning. After a week of rain and a forecast for more storms this weekend, Tibbits said he expects the weather to offer a more challenging race course than usual.
“I just don’t feel like I’m going to push it as hard and as fast as I can … I just want to stay safe,” he said after assessing the conditions.
But even riding his bike — let alone riding competitively — is something Tibbits’s doctors thought he might never do.
He had just become a Wilmington Police officer when he was called up to serve in Iraq with the 8th Marine Regiment out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
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Sickened veterans, families, Congress wait on VA to release findings on Agent Orange exposure
WFLA Mews
By: Steve Andrews
Updated: May 18, 2018
HOLIDAY, FLA(WFLA) - For years, the family of Lonnie Kilpatrick suspected Agent Orange sickened not only Lonnie, but his children and grandchildren too.
While stationed in Guam, the Navy veteran, who died earlier this month, was exposed to the toxic herbicide, which the military used throughout the Vietnam war to wipe out jungle vegetation the enemy was hiding in.
"I know my kids they have, this thing that's caused by Agent Orange," Lonnie said in an interview in April. "I got a granddaughter that's already had brain surgery."
"They say it can be passed down for three generations," he added.
Betty Medkeci, the executive director of Birth Defect Research for Children, Inc. thinks its too early to say whether the grandchildren of veterans exposed to Agent Orange are experiencing health issues. It is her contention that neither the Department of Veterans Affairs nor private industry really wants to go there.
"We don't know, but we're not going to find out unless we do the research," Ms. Medkeci said.
Congress is still waiting to hear from the Department of Veterans Affairs whether birth defects and other health concerns showing up in the children and grandchildren of veterans are tied to the toxic defoliant.
In 2016, Congress passed legislation directing the V.A. to partner with the National Academy of Medicine "to assess the scientific research regarding descendants of individuals and veterans with toxic exposure," but Medkeci said the department failed to follow through on the directive.
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Lost key ring
PTSD Patrol
Kathie Costos
May 20, 2018
You are ready to go on a journey. You gather up everything you need. Ready to head out the door, you discover your keys are not where you thought they were. Frantically, you search the clothes you had on the day before. You look all over, and then as your heart begins to race, you look again.
When you do not find them, you start to wonder if you left them someplace else. Well, considering you got back home with them, they have to be where you are, but must be hiding.
Sooner or later, you decide it is best to retrace your steps. Best place for that to start is at the beginning...in your car.
You soon discover your keys are still in the ignition.
It is the same as with your life. All too often, we forget to turn the key and turn our imagination on.
For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11 New International Version (NIV)
If you spent your time risking your life for others, that desire had to have come from somewhere. Right? After all, it is not "normal" for humans to rush toward danger instead of running from it. It is not what the majority of the other humans do. It is what the people we call heroes do.
Thinking about what it takes to do that, you should also understand that other than courage and a fast thinking brain, you are also equipped with what it takes to heal from doing it.
This weeks empowerment message comes from OEF-OIF veteran helicopter pilot Bob Roebuck served seven full tours. He spent time showing me around to see the huge vehicles at Spikes Tactical earlier this week.
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Harry kept the beard and yes, wore his uniform!
Markle becomes a princess automatically by marrying Harry. As she was not born a royal, her title as princess becomes her husband's name so she'll formally be known as Her Royal Highness Princess Harry of Wales.
NBC News
WINDSOR, England — America has a new princess.
Los Angeles native Meghan Markle joined hands with Britain’s Prince Harry Saturday as they pledged to “honor and protect” each other in marriage after a 15-month romance. They later kissed on the steps outside the chapel.
You may think this is new, and will make it better for our disabled veterans,
VA inks $10 billion contract with Cerner for new electronic health record
Stars and Stripes
By NIKKI WENTLING
Published: May 17, 2018
WASHINGTON – The Department of Veterans Affairs signed a multibillion-dollar contract on Thursday to replace its antiquated electronic health record system – an action that comes as a relief to veterans and lawmakers who worried it was indefinitely stalled after former VA Secretary David Shulkin was fired in March.
The contract with Kansas City, Mo.-based Cerner Corp. sets a cost ceiling of $10 billion for the next 10 years. In a statement Thursday, acting VA Secretary Robert Wilkie described it as “one of the largest [information technology] contracts in the federal government.”
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but it is not new!
In February of 2008 this was the "new" news.
VBA's pending compensation and claims backlog stood at 816,211 as of January 2008, up 188,781 since 2004, said Kerry Baker, associate legislative director of the Disabled Veterans of America
Carl Blake, national legislative director for the Paralyzed Veterans of America, said VBA needed $121 million in its fiscal 2009 budget for its information technology. According to VA budget documents, VBA requested an IT budget of $109.6 million for its compensation and benefits programs, down $23.8 million from $133.4 million in 2008. VA requested an overall 2009 IT budget of $2.53 billion in 2009, up from $2.15 billion in fiscal 2008, with the largest portion earmarked for the Veterans Health Administration.
Then again, soon after this report, out came yet another one about VA claims being shredded and "tens of thousands of claims" were unopened. By May of 2009, the claim backlog was at 915,000
Oh, but then again, even all that was not new.
Since 1995, the number of veterans enrolled in the VA has risen from approximately 2.9 million to more than 5 million.
The inspector general for the Veterans Affairs Department says that agency managers were aware of serious problems with a $70 million project to replace its hospital appointment system several years before the VA dropped the program.
The VA announced the project in 2000 after complaints from veterans about long waits to make appointments. It was halted this year.
The inspector general says that managers didn't take timely and appropriate action to address problems, even as millions more were put into the program.
As always, this could keep going and going, but now you have a better idea of what all the money spent has produced! Do veterans matter or not? Are they more important than the businesses making money off their pain?
After all, the American people do not want to see veterans suffer, so they never look at who is prolonging their agony instead of making their lives better.
Charges: Army veteran shot 2 in downtown encounter
KTVA News
Thursday, May 17th 2018
Police say an Army veteran, accused of shooting and wounding two people in Anchorage Wednesday, claimed that he opened fire when one of them approached him with a hammer in an ongoing dispute.
Rusty Tuuaga, 34, was taken into custody on charges including attempted murder after the shooting, which left a man with life-threatening injuries and a woman with non-life-threatening injuries. Police said overnight that the incident appeared to be drug-related.
U.S. Army Alaska officials said Thursday that Tuuaga had left the Army last week on May 6, as a specialist with Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson’s 725th Support Battalion.
A charging document in the case, written by Assistant District Attorney Arne Soldwedel, said the wounded man said Tuuaga’s first name “several times” when police reached the 600 block of East 5th Avenue shortly after 8:45 p.m. The victims were taken to separate Anchorage hospitals with torso wounds, with the man arriving in critical condition.
Surveillance video from the shooting showed the victims getting out of a Jeep Grand Cherokee, then approaching a sport-utility vehicle they had blocked in; one of them had “an item that may have been a hammer” in his hand.
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After 3 suicide attempts, Marine veteran turns life around and graduates from veterans court
WDRB News
Fallon Glick
Posted: May 17, 2018
“Two overdoses and a car accident that I tried," Reidinger said. "The overdoses didn't work. I don't know how. They should have ... big time. And then on I-65, I drove into a median."
NEW ALBANY, Ind. (WDRB) -- A Marine Corps veteran from southern Indiana tried committing suicide three times before finally getting the help he desperately needed.
It was the darkest time in Brian Reidinger's life.
But those times were a stark difference from just years earlier when he proudly served in the United States Marine Corps.
“I fell in love," Reidinger said. "I was good at it. I succeeded in it."
Within a year of joining, he was deployed to combat in Iraq.
“I excelled in it. I was really good at it," he said. "I was good under pressure. I was good at making decisions, I was good at protecting my marines, and they were good at protecting me."
After Reidinger got out of the Marines, he moved back home and felt lost.
“One of the worst things you can tell a Marine, a combat Marine, is that you're not the same," he said. "Because we know we're not the same. It sucks being reminded of it, and I was just depressed."
He developed a drinking problem that turned into an opioid pill problem, which later turned into a heroin problem.
“It ruined my life," he said. "It took over everything."
Reidinger was in and out of jail. But then he finally accepted help through Veteran's Treatment Court of Southern Indiana.
“Which was one of the best things to ever happen to me," he said. "If it wasn't for them, I'd be dead today."
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Veteran Volunteer Firefighter Accused Of Embezzling Thousands From VFD
CBS Pittsburg
By Paul Martino
May 17, 2018
CASTLE SHANNON (KDKA) — A veteran volunteer firefighter in Castle Shannon was charged Thursday with embezzling nearly $140,000 from the department’s death benefit fund, but the state auditor general says even more money is unaccounted for.
The Allegheny County District Attorney took over the investigation after the state auditor general uncovered tens of thousands of dollars in unaccounted for money.
Castle Shannon volunteer firefighters learned they were swindled when they confronted 76-year-old John Montgomery last month. They say Montgomery told them, “Yeah, I stole it.”
“What’s sad is that this was a member of the fire department who had worked with his fellow firefighters for over 40 years and had achieved a position of trust,” attorney John Zagari said.
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Veterans fear Congress has forgotten about the military’s burn pit problems
Military Times
By: Leo Shane III
5 hours ago
Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Nathanial Fink, left, and Lance Cpl. Garrett Camacho dispose of trash in a burn pit in the Khan Neshin district of Afghanistan in March 2012. (Cpl. Alfred V. Lopez/Marine Corps)
WASHINGTON — For years, Veterans Affairs leaders and administration officials have promised they won’t let health issues surrounding burn pit exposure in Iraq and Afghanistan become another “Agent Orange” in the community.
Now, advocates and a handful of lawmakers are worried it already has.
“The level of awareness among members of Congress on the problems from burn pits is abysmally low,” said Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii and an Army National Guard soldier who served in Iraq in 2004-2005. “Too few understand the urgency of the issue.”
Gabbard and Afghanistan war veteran Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., recently introduced new legislation dubbed the Burn Pits Accountability Act to require more in-depth monitoring of servicemembers’ health for signs of illnesses connected to toxic exposure in combat zones.
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Veteran kicked out of home by city, says he could be homeless
NBC 2 Tulsa
Travis Guillory
6:17 PM, May 17, 2018
Now, the retired veteran is left in limbo, trying to figure out his next move in life.
He said, "I bought the place so I could retire here and work in my garage to do my piddling and my projects and all that. So, if I have to move this thing out, I really have no other home."
HARTSHORNE, Okla. – A veteran is getting kicked out of his home by the City of Hartshorne.
William Smith has called a camper home for the last eight years on property that he owns. Now, the City of Hartshorne is telling him to pack it all up and find somewhere else to live.
William Smith said, "The hookups were here: water, sewer, and electric. Everything was here. I just figured since I had already been living in my RV and it was mine and it was paid for and I got my property paid for, I thought I was good to go for many many years."
Smith was a Navy radar engineer, constantly moving around. He explained, "To get all of my equipment on an airplane was not a thing that you could really do."
He tinkers in his garage on the property, which is the main reason he bought the land, and generally keeps to himself. So, the veteran was surprised when he got a visit from the cops.
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