The Start Of Something Big:
VVA’s Renewed Commitment To Puerto Rico

BY MARY BRUZZESE

Some 150,000 veterans, including 20,000 Vietnam veterans, live in Puerto Rico. But, as Region 4 Director Bob Barry put it, “Puerto Rico is like a forgotten battalion—out of sight, out of mind. With no representation in Washington, nobody fights for them. We wanted to show them that they are not forgotten.”

Barry, along with Marc McCabe, the VVA bureau chief/regional director of the St. Petersburg, Florida, VARO, and VVA Board Member Pat Toro, visited Puerto Rico in mid-May to get a firsthand look at the operation and status of the VA Regional Office and the VA Medical Center in San Juan. VVA Puerto Rico State Council President Jorge Pedroza accompanied them to the sites.

Operating in conjunction with two satellite clinics, the San Juan VA Medical Center is the only one in Puerto Rico. It also oversees a few Community Based Outpatient Clinics. It is very difficult for veterans outside San Juan to get to the city for care, and the quality of care at the small CBOCs is not good.

Among other problems, including a severely understaffed mental health clinic and a lack of parking facilities, the claims backlog at the San Juan VA is enormous—nearly five thousand appeals. The BVA has only one traveling board judge to conduct hearings at the regional office for one week once a year. In addition, Puerto Rico doesn’t have a VVA service officer. Many Puerto Rican veterans have become so disillusioned with the VA there that they have established residency in Florida and New York to get into VA treatment programs there.

“This is completely unacceptable,” Toro, a Puerto Rican American, said. “I told many veterans I spoke to, ‘I am American, but my blood is Puerto Rican.’ I am going to do something about this.”

After the VA site visits Pedroza escorted the group outside San Juan to visit remote VVA chapters in the mountains. They drove two hours from San Juan to Juaco and attended a state council meeting and a town hall meeting hosted by Juaco Chapter 483. Problems at the VA were discussed.

During the meeting, chapter member George Fernandez labored to walk into the room with the help of a walker, his wife, and Chapter 483 President Jose Vallentin. Fernandez was in the final stages of multiple Agent Orange-related cancers and other illnesses. He had tried for nearly seven years to get benefits from the VA with little success. His request for a wheelchair was refused. His claim was in the appeal process, but due to the backlog, “Fernandez would have passed before his appeal was ever heard,” McCabe said.

“McCabe, Toro, and I said, ‘We’ve got to do something.’ Looking Fernandez and his wife in the eye,” Barry said, “we promised we would do something to ease his discomfort.”

McCabe met with Fernandez and his wife to review his case. He then went to VHA to see about getting him a scooter or motorized wheelchair, but to no avail.

The following month Barry and McCabe were sitting at the bar in the VFW post in Barry’s hometown of Inverness, Florida, lamenting about the situation at the Puerto Rico VA and Fernandez’s case. Tom Brown, a World War II veteran sitting next to Barry, overheard the conversation and said, “I can get you a chair.” He told them the West Citrus Elks had a nearly new motorized wheelchair that had been donated by a member.

The next day Barry went to see the chair. He called President Pete Wagner of The Villages Chapter 1036. Wagner sent the chapter’s trailer to pick up the chair. The chapter, which has a program to refurbish wheelchairs, tested it, cleaned it, and provided the necessary batteries.

“Then the problem was, ‘How are we going to get the chair to Puerto Rico?’ ” Barry said. “That sucker was heavy.”

McCabe contacted the AirTran station manager of Tampa Airport, Elwood Nolen, who arranged for him and the chair to go to San Juan at the airline’s expense.

McCabe was unable to make the trip, and asked Barry to go. On July 26 a handful of Chapter 1036 members brought the chair to meet Barry at the Tampa Airport. Barry had a first-class round-trip ticket from Tampa to San Juan and a baggage receipt for the chair, all donated by AirTran. Barry had to drive the wheelchair through the airport, through TSA, and to the gate, where he was met by the grounds crew who took him and the chair to the tarmac, where they had to secure the chair and load it into the plane.

“All the people involved from AirTran were vets, so they were really excited to be a part of this,” Barry said. “What they did for us was amazing.”

Barry and the chair flew to San Juan, where he was met at the airport by Vallentin and a few other Chapter 483 members who delivered the chair to Fernandez.

George Fernandez died in early October. “The chair tremendously changed his quality of life,” McCabe said. “There was a great deal of teamwork that made this happen, from the Elks in Inverness, the VVA Chapter of The Villages, all the individuals who worked behind the scenes to make this a reality, and especially the professionals at AirTran.”

Getting the chair for Fernandez was only the beginning. “We hoped that this would be the beginning of something bigger. And it was,” Barry said.

After the visit to Puerto Rico, VVA briefed several members of Congress on the situation in Puerto Rico, including Reps. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) and Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.). After Toro and VVA President John Rowan discussed the problems with Crowley, Puerto Rico’s Resident Commissioner met with the Hispanic Congressional Delegation from Queens in July at Crowley’s office in Washington.

Puerto Rico has not had a VVA field service officer in ten years. However, McCabe is in the process of interviewing candidates for the role, and there should be one on the island by Christmas. In the meantime, McCabe has taken over all appeals from Puerto Rico under VVA’s power of attorney.

McCabe returned to Puerto Rico in mid-October with three attorneys from Bergmann and Moore. They worked pro bono to review nearly fifty cases at the San Juan VA.

“The members of the Puerto Rico VVA chapters were electrified by the compassion and response from our visit,” Barry said. “They had felt abandoned.”