Top 10 Veterans News from Around the Country 5-26-09

What’s Inside Today’s Local News for Veterans

1. Actor Urges More Funding For Disabled Vets, Mental Health Counseling.
2. World War II Vet Honored For Volunteering At VA.
3. VA Canteens In Nebraska Named Tops In Country.
4. Congress Considering Advance Appropriations For VA.
5. State Lawmakers In California Propose Change To New GI Bill.  
6. Money Allocated For Veterans Clinic In Nevada.  
7. Human, Financial Cost Of Post-9/11 Deployments Described.  
8. Rolling Thunder Bikers Draw Attention To Vets’ Issues.  
9. US Armed Forces Learning From Injuries Sustained By War Dead.    
10. Mobile Health Unit Honors Memory Of Iraq Veteran.

1.      Actor Urges More Funding For Disabled Vets, Mental Health Counseling.   The Washington Times (5/26, Hudson) reports, "Actor Gary Sinise, an advocate for American troops, urged the government and private sector on Memorial Day to spend more money on disabled veterans and to provide more counseling for those who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or become suicidal." Sinise, who made his comments during and "interview with reporters and editors at The Washington Times," was "in the nation’s capital this week to serve as honorary marshal in the National Memorial Day Parade."

2.      World War II Vet Honored For Volunteering At VA.   The Saginaw (MI) News (5/25, Armentrout) said, "Everyone knows" 86-year-old World War II veteran "Charles H. Wilson at the Lutz Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Saginaw. He’s the ‘popcorn man’ who delivers bags of snacks and records around the hospital…on his Amigo, always with a smile." Wilson "recently earned a national" VA "award in recognition of the 22,000 volunteer hours he’s contributed over the past 25 years." Lutz’ director, Gabriel Perez, commented on Wilson, saying, "To get to 10,000 hours is monumental; 22,000 is miraculous.’"

3.      VA Canteens In Nebraska Named Tops In Country.   The Grand Island (NE) Independent (5/26, Pore) reports the canteen at the Veterans Affairs medical center "in Grand Island, along with one in Omaha, has won an award as National Canteen of the Year. Elizabeth Painter, canteen manager in Grand Island, said Grand Island and Omaha canteens were chosen tops among all" the VA medical centers in the US. She "said the Grand Island and Omaha canteens (Western Iowa and Nebraska Veterans Hospital) are considered joint canteens." Painter also "said the award was based on the number of sales during the year at the canteen."

4.      Congress Considering Advance Appropriations For VA.   In continuing coverage, CQ (5/26, Johnson) reports, "Congress would be able this year to write veterans’" healthcare "appropriations for fiscal 2011 as well as for fiscal 2010 under a bill approved" by the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee on May 21st. After noting that a "companion bill…has been introduced" in the House, CQ points out that veterans’ "service organizations say advance funding is the key to alleviating long waits for treatment, personnel shortages and construction delays that they say can result when lawmakers fail to pass appropriations bills by the Oct. 1 start of each fiscal year." CQ adds, "In its budget documents, the White House included a statement indicating it intends to work with Congress to make advance appropriations available to the VA," whose secretary, Eric Shinseki "has said that advance appropriations is a way to ensure that there is no interruption in veterans’" healthcare.

5.      State Lawmakers In California Propose Change To New GI Bill.   In continuing coverage, the Lake County (CA) News (5/26, Larson) reports, "Late last week, as the nation was preparing for the Memorial Day celebration, lawmakers were trying to fix a glitch in the new GI Bill which is leaving many California veterans hoping to attend private universities in the cold. Republican Congressman Howard ‘Buck’ McKeon and North Coast Congressman Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) worked together …to introduce the Veterans Educational Equity Act, HR 2474, which has since won overwhelming support from the California delegation." The "Post-9/11 GI Bill…requires that the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) pay each veteran’s private university tuition based on the highest in-state undergraduate tuition rate at a state operated school in the state of enrollment." But the "issue, as Thompson explained in a letter to VA Secretary Eric Shinseki – which McKeon co-signed – is that California is constitutionally barred from using the word ‘tuition’ and instead uses the word ‘fees’ to describe the cost of matriculation at public universities."

6.      Money Allocated For Veterans Clinic In Nevada.   The Mohave (AZ) Daily News (5/25, Maniaci) said US Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) "announced on Thursday that $1.1 million has been allocated for a part-time military veterans outreach clinic in Laughlin." The facility "will serve not only veterans in southern-most Nevada, but also those in northwestern Arizona." In a "letter to Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki," Titus "urged him to have the department quickly build the clinic."

7.      Human, Financial Cost Of Post-9/11 Deployments Described.  Under the headline "Families Affected By Suicide Feel Sting On Memorial Day," the Washington Post (5/25, Vogel, 652K) reported "1,200 military family members…gathered at National Harbor during the Memorial Day weekend for the National Military Survivor Seminar, sponsored by the nonprofit Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, or TAPS." The Post added, "Mirroring a rise in suicides in the military, many of those participating in the 15th annual TAPS seminar are families of service members who took their own lives."
      A separate Washington Post (5/25, Wan, 652K) story profiled Kyle Harper, who "for the longest time…kept" a "diamond engagement ring on her finger. It proved what the world at times refused to acknowledge: that she had mattered to Sgt. Michael Hullender," her fiancée, who was killed in Iraq. The Post noted that after Hullender died, Harper "found herself floating in legal limbo, with no rights to his effects or his name. … All the Army could offer were condolences. There would be no grief counseling, no casualty pay," and "no say in his burial."
      The Washington Post (5/25, 652K) also discussed veterans in an editorial, saying "’fallen’ is a word for inscriptions and oratory — it doesn’t really convey what happens to those caught up in the ghastly business of warfare and subject to all the horrors inflicted by flying metal, high explosives and machines made for destruction. Nor does it quite encompass what happened to many of those who served day after day in constant danger and surrounded by death." Those soldiers "lost something in the country’s wars — but not a limb or eyesight or the ability to walk or any essential physical capability. What was lost was a view of life as having meaning, order, security, purpose. … The military and those who work with the nation’s veterans are pledging themselves to a more serious effort to learn about the difficulties faced by men and women who have served and suffered in this way; it is acting to treat them just as it treats those who have suffered physical injury and trying, to the extent it can, to make them whole again."
      Melissa Seligman, author and host of "Her War," a podcast for military wives, also wrote about veterans in the New York Times (5/25, A19, 1.06M), saying, "I know I’m not the first military spouse who has struggled to communicate with a loved one on deployment — and I know I won’t be the last. For those who came before me, the burden to overcome was communicating without technology — waiting months for letters to arrive. For me and those still to come, it’s learning to communicate despite technology." Seligman added that her "husband is packing again, for another deployment to Iraq. The
only balm is that this time we can count on our letters to help heal our broken hearts."

8.      Rolling Thunder Bikers Draw Attention To Vets’ Issues.  
      The Washington Post (5/25, Ruane, 652K) reported, "Many participants and spectators seemed too young to have been veterans of the Vietnam War, which inspired the first Rolling Thunder rally. The name comes from that of a bombing campaign over North Vietnam in 1965, according to rally organizers." The Post added that "some of the veterans expressed dismay over the celebratory nature of the event. ‘The problem with this event is there are so many people that come here and don’t understand the real meaning of Memorial Day,’ said a Vietnam veteran who had ridden to the rally from Harrisburg, Pa."
      The New York Times (5/25) editorialized, ‘We drive or walk past the cemetery and its poplars, feeling the tug of the season ahead, the resistance of the season behind. At first we may not feel a visceral connection to those somber gravesides or the people standing there. But their loss is ours, and always will be. That is the meaning of Memorial Day."
 9.      US Armed Forces Learning From Injuries Sustained By War Dead.   In a front page story, the New York Times (5/26, A1, Grady) reports, "Since 2004, every" US "service man and woman killed in Iraq or Afghanistan has been given a CT scan, and since 2001, when the fighting began in Afghanistan, all have had autopsies, performed by pathologists" in the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System (AFMES). In "previous wars, autopsies" on those "killed in combat were uncommon, and scans were never done." Now, however, the "combined procedures have yielded a wealth of details about injuries from bullets, blasts, shrapnel and burns – information that has revealed deficiencies in body armor and vehicle shielding and led to improvements in helmets and medical equipment used on the battlefield." The Times notes that Capt. Craig T. Mallak, chief of AFMES, commented on the situation, saying, "We’ve created a huge database that’s never existed before."

10.    Mobile Health Unit Honors Memory Of Iraq Veteran.   The Opelika-Auburn (AL) News (5/24, Harvey) reported, "Years after his untimely death" from suicide in 2006, Iraq veteran Douglas Barber "and his fight to get the attention and mental health services he needed" for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) "have not been forgotten. A framed certificate in memory of Barber and honoring his service has been displayed in the mental health exam room of a new mobile health unit that was recently unveiled by the Cincinnati Veterans Administration Medical Center." The certificate "will serve to memorialize Barber and for ‘remembering we need to pay close attention to all those (veterans) coming back from serving in Iraq,’ Cincinnati VAMC Public Affairs Officer Todd Sledge said."
      Dead, Injured US Contractors Said To Deserve Remembrance, Thanks.   Steven Schooner, co-director of the Government Procurement Law program at George Washington University and White House procurement policy official from 1996 to 1998, writes in the Washington Post (5/25, 652K), "Despite the light that Memorial Day will shine, briefly, on the US death tolls in Iraq and Afghanistan, don’t expect an accurate accounting of the real human cost of our military actions abroad. The numbers you’ll see — mostly likely just under 5,000 fatalities – won’t tell the whole story." Schooner adds that "as of June 2008 (the most recent reliable numbers available publicly), more than 1,350 civilian contractor personnel had died in Iraq and Afghanistan supporting our efforts. About 29,000 contractors had been injured, more than 8,300 seriously." President Obama will not "remember or thank the contractor personnel who died supporting our troops or diplomatic missions. Instead, expect to see contractor personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to be portrayed as expendable profiteers, adventure seekers or marginalized members of society who are not entitled to the same respect or value given to members of the military. That portrayal, of course, is neither accurate nor fair."