Agent Orange/Dioxin

BY MAYNARD KADERLIK, CHAIR

Now that the National Convention is over we must concentrate on issues that affect veterans and families. Only one of the Agent Orange Committee resolutions came to the floor: adding a sentence to AO-6, Dioxin Disposal Methods.

I want to thank John Rowan for asking me to continue to chair this committee. Much work is yet to be accomplished before the good Lord calls us home.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine is having its annual meeting in Minnesota. We are very busy getting veterans, their children, and knowledgeable people to come to this meeting to testify on the effects of Agent Orange. I’m sure all will go well.

We continue having Faces of Agent Orange town hall meetings all across the country. We must continue doing more, because many veterans and their families are unaware that many of the health problems faced by their children and grandchildren may be caused by the veteran’s toxic exposure. In the Midwest we just completed our thirty-ninth Faces of Agent Orange town hall meeting.

Let’s not stop because legislation for our children has passed. We owe it to all those exposed.

VVA will hold a call-in day for the Blue Water Navy bill. I believe it helped when we did a call-in day for our kids’ legislation.

We, as a team, have accomplished much and will do more in the future. Thank you all for your hard work.

Credentials

BY RICHARD LINDBECK, CHAIR

VVA’s 18th National Convention is in the books. Although 828 pre-registered, 818 delegates actually attended. This was the largest group for a VVA Convention.

I want to thank Tracie Houston and Frankie Pressley, as well as the other staff at the national office for their outstanding work credentialing delegates. They also provided weekly notices on the delegate count before the Convention, which helped me keep track. Also I want to thank AVVA for help in setting up the hall prior to the Convention.

There were some small glitches, easily rectified, that won’t happen in future Conventions.

Pre-registration made the process much simpler. The delegates got through the registration lines quickly.

We may have a seminar at the 2018 Leadership Conference in Palm Springs that concentrates on further improving the registration process. I hope it will be put on the agenda.

Thanks to all delegates who pre-registered for the New Orleans Convention. I look forward to seeing you in Spokane in 2019.

Economic Opportunities

BY FRANK BARRY, CHAIR

Many committee members attended the VVA National Convention in New Orleans. EOC-proposed resolutions concerned veterans in business.

Veterans have tried to secure assistance to enter into their own businesses for decades. It is important that we keep up the pressure on the Small Business Administration to help veterans. If veterans are not explicitly written into every provision of law that affects the service and opportunities available to business, they will be expressly read out.

The EOC resolved that VVA take the following positions:

VVA, in the strongest language possible, recommends the expansion of the Veterans Federal Procurement Program to include economically disadvantaged Service Disabled Veteran Owned Businesses (SDVOBs); and the expansion of the Department of Transportation’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise to include veteran-owned businesses and SDVOBs; and a new implementation strategy of VA’s Vets First Contracting Program following the recent Supreme Court decision in favor of a SDVOB. Federal agency managers must be held responsible for its implementation. Such means of accountability and ramification of breech must be published, widely distributed, and implemented throughout all federal agencies.

VVA calls on the organized business community and individual businesses to work closely with VVA and other veterans organizations to enhance the possibilities and opportunities for veterans to succeed in business. A special effort must be made to help disabled veterans who have the skills and attributes that would suit them to business careers.

The delegates at the Convention unanimously approved the resolution.

The EOC will continue to work on behalf of veterans in businesses to ensure they receive the preferences to which they are entitled.

Membership

BY CHARLIE HOBBS, CHAIR

At the New Orleans Convention ten chapters were recognized for their exceptional efforts in expanding their membership bases. There were nine chapters of different sizes, and a special recognition of Cumberland, Md., Chapter 172. Here are the Membership Growth awardees:

Jennings, Louisiana, Chapter 1058 (25-50 members)
Harrisonburg, Virginia, Chapter 1061 (51-100 members)
Knoxville, Tennessee, Chapter 1078 (101-200 members)
Clermont County, Ohio, Chapter 649 (201-300 members)
Huntsville, Alabama, Chapter 1067 (301-400 members)
The Villages, Florida, Chapter 1036 (401-500 members)
Sonora, California, Chapter 391 (501-600 members)
Western New York Chapter 77 (601-700 members)
Chattanooga, Tennessee, Chapter 203 (701-800 members)

Cumberland, Maryland, Chapter 172 received special recognition for maintaining the highest membership totals in the nation for the last decade.

Minority Affairs

BY JERRY YAMAMOTO, OUTGOING CHAIR

Gumersindo Gomez has been appointed the next Minority Affairs Committee Chair and has been elected as an At-Large Director. I’ve very much appreciated his support and friendship during my twelve years as committee chair. He’ll do a great job.

I want to thank all who served on the committee and attended our meetings and those who weren’t able to attend but supported us from home. Yourinput made us very productive and stronger in our outreach and work. Our committee couldn’t have succeeded without all of you.

My thanks to those who worked in our committee booths across the country spreading the word about VVA. My thanks to Bernie Edelman and Sharon Hodge for their counsel and support.

One of our most productive programs was presenting Minority Affairs Committee Diversity Awards to those who supported and served minority veterans’ communities in an exceptional manner. A plaque bearing the awardees’ names will be displayed in the national office.

Thanks are in order to hardworking Vice Chair Dave Simmons; Stephen Bowers, the Vice Chair for Native Americans; and Gumersindo Gomez, Vice Chair for Hispanics. I wish especially to thank President John Rowan for allowing me to chair the Minority Affairs Committee since 2005. It has been an honor to serve all veterans.

POW/MIA Affairs

BY GRANT COATES, CHAIR

According to the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Agency (DPAA), as of August 14 there are 1,606 still missing from the Vietnam War. Of these, 90 percent were lost in Vietnam or in areas of Cambodia or Laos under Vietnam’s wartime control: Vietnam—1,256 (VN-461, VS-795); Laos—295; Cambodia—48; PRC territorial waters—7.

Since March DPAA has released this list identifying ten U.S. servicemen missing from the Vietnam War.

For various reasons, including wishes of the families, DPAA announcements are often delayed or not made.

On September 5 retired Maj. Gen. Kelly McKeague was sworn in as director of DPAA at a ceremony at the Pentagon, thus ending a more-than-yearlong vacancy at the agency since the resignation of Michael Linnington. McKeague had served as DPAA deputy director before his 2016 retirement from the Air Force.

Due to budget constraints, field operations in Vietnam and Cambodia were reduced during Fiscal Year 2017, but operations in Laos were not affected as much. Vietnam has requested an increase in activities, but DPAA did not have the funding required for operations. To reach the necessary FY2017 budget total of $132 million for planned operational requirements, an additional $20 million was needed but could not be requested until 45 days after a budget was approved. That did not occur. As a result, it was deemed too late to receive, contract, and utilize additional funds for the third and fourth quarters of FY2017. 

Your help is urgently needed. Write your elected officials to seek full funding for DPAA operations and personnel in FY2018 to handle worldwide accounting and recovery efforts.

PTSD & Substance Abuse

BY THOMAS C. HALL, Ph.D.

During the last two years the PTSD/SA Committee has worked on many issues critical to helping all veterans come all the way home: military sexual trauma, suicide prevention, PTSD, secondary PTSD, and substance abuse to name a few. The committee has collaborated with VVA chapters and state councils to host PTSD, Secondary PTSD, and Suicide Prevention town halls in Illinois, Kentucky, Arizona, and Missouri, with more scheduled. The committee encourages you to sponsor a town hall.

One of the most heartening events in the last six months is the new directive by the Veterans Health Administration (1601A.02). This allows former service members with other-than-honorable discharges to receive behavioral health crisis care at any VA or Vet Center.

Extending behavioral health crisis support goes a long way toward helping further another committee goal to the families as well as the veterans. Extending crisis support also is a good step in the ongoing efforts to stem homelessness and suicides among veterans.

The committee encourages each member of VVA to stay in contact. While there has been some progress in VA service to all veterans, the ongoing challenge will be to see that policy changes are honored at the local level. The committee wants to know about any areas in which the VA is not following through on the promise to support those who have served. This diligence is especially important for active-duty military transitioning to the VA for their care.

Working with our staff liaison, Tom Berger, the committee has supported the development of legal resources for veterans, through the Yale Law School Veterans Clinic, for example. These resources include a class-action lawsuit naming the Secretary of the Army regarding less-than-honorable discharges unlawfully given to soldiers suffering from PTSD. The committee continues to work with Yale and other law schools around the country to disseminate forms and resources for veterans seeking discharge upgrades. An example can be found on the Yale Law School Veterans Clinic website, https://law.yale.edu/clinics/vlsc Click on “Forms & Resources for Veterans Seeking Discharge Upgrade” at the bottom of the page.

The committee continues to advocate strongly for evaluation, through rigorous scientific methods, of complementary and alternative medicines and other potential treatments for PTSD and substance abuse. As Dr. Charles Hoge wrote in Once a Warrior, Always a Warrior: “The bottom line is that there is no ‘magic bullet’ for PTSD, and claims to the contrary should be taken with more than a grain of salt.”

Public Affairs

BY DENNIS HOWLAND, CHAIR

Sometimes public affairs tools land in our laps unexpectedly, and it is up to us to use them to the fullest. One such tool came to the Utah State Council and Chapter 1079 a couple months ago in the form of seven-year-old German Shepherd Contract War Dog named Mazzie. He served in Kuwait for five years as a narcotics detection dog. He’s gentle and is learning to trust everyone he meets, which wasn’t easy for him at first.

Mazzie participates in all Northern Utah VVA information booths—during all kinds of weather—and rides on VVA floats in parades. He attracts and welcomes the public—especially children and their parents—to the booths where they find out about VVA, AVVA, and our programs. He has a handshake for anyone who wants to learn his story.

The Military Dog Retirement Act passed in 2015 was specific to military dogs. The legislation does not protect contract war dogs that often work with our military, perform the same service, but have fewer rights than military war dogs serving in the same theaters. If Mazzie hadn’t been rescued and adopted by Jim and Linda Crismer, he and the eight contract dogs he was rescued with could have been destroyed like too many retired CWDs.

For information on rescuing U.S. Working Dogs—Contract War Dogs—contact Mission K-9 Rescue in Houston or Mazzie’s adopted family at lcrismer@comcast.net During the Vietnam War, seventy-three K-9 handlers and forty-three military war dogs were killed.

Another tool the Public Affairs Committee is researching is a VVA JROTC medal and ribbon to be authorized for wear on cadet uniforms. More than twenty organizations have a national award. There is no reason for VVA not to have one to help in our classroom programs.

One idea is to present the award at chapter, state council, and national levels, along with a scholarship of some amount. Some chapters already have programs. Please email information about them to dennishowland @msn.com Thanks to VVA in Nevada and Michigan for responding to my request for information. I need your ideas for medal and ribbon styles.

Still another very good public affairs program comes from the Lynchburg Area Veterans Council, home of Virginia Chapter 196. This council is comprised of VVA and a handful of other veterans’ organizations, motorcycle groups, area businesses, and members of the community. That’s where the financing part of this program comes from. More than 1,500 active members of the community help 25,000 veterans in their area. They help local disabled veterans get the medical care they need. They help veterans of all wars with benefits, counseling, and other essential services to help them rebuild their lives after wartime service. This is a program that could be duplicated easily. Go to www.lynchburgareaveteranscouncil.org for details.

A final note: The Utah State Council and Chapter 1079 will once again host the state’s largest veterans parade on Veterans Day. At the parade’s completion we will break ground for our 80 percent replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Public Affairs is a very successful tool for recruiting, disseminating information to veterans, and staying visible in our communities. There is a lot of talk about our legacy. Everything we do to leave our impact, our memory, our work, and our VVA brand enhances what people think of us after we are gone.

Vietnam War veterans have had to go after everything we have received: benefits, honor, acceptance, and even thanks and appreciation for our service. We are fortunate to be an aggressive, hard-working, and passionate organization. Our legacy will not be any different. We will be remembered if we make ourselves memorable.

Veterans Incarcerated and
in the Justice System

BY DOMINICK YEZZO, CHAIR

The process works: The Veterans Incarcerated and in the Justice System Committee was born on the floor of the 2017 Convention in New Orleans. It was a loud delivery, but a healthy committee took shape in debate. The committee has a new name and a broader mission: to continue to serve veterans in- carcerated and to serve veterans who face incarceration.

The wounds of war cause collateral damage that results in post-traumatic stress and, in some, traumatic brain injury. Both conditions create an inability to reason. Many Vietnam veterans suffer from PTSD and TBI, which caused some of us to make bad decisions—decisions which resulted in arrest. Veteran Treatment Courts propose to determine whether the arrested veteran suffers from PTSD or TBI before it adjudicates the case. Veterans found to suffer from an inability to reason because of PTSD or TBI are diverted to special veteran courts that try to avoid incarceration. The offender is treated as a soldier rather than a perpetrator.

Had there been Veterans Treatment Courts when we returned home from Vietnam, hundreds of veterans in prison today would not have been there.

We returned home to a divided country. We did not know what we needed because we were young and inarticulate. The politicians and the Veterans Administration failed us. They could not understand our suffering. We were a generation of veterans left behind. Only our families and spouses who loved us bore the lasting burdens of our war.

Vietnam Veterans of America grew out of the turmoil in America. No one gave us anything. We developed a style, a look, an attitude uniquely our own. VVA, from its earliest days, took up the challenges of returning veterans: POW/MIA, Agent Orange, in-country illnesses, PTSD, drug and alcohol use, readjustment issues, and veterans incarcerated. We concentrated on the needs of the returning servicemember and became a powerful and savvy advocate. I will honor that mandate.

The Veterans Incarcerated and in the Justice System Committee will honor and encourage VVA chapters to become engaged with their brothers in municipal, state, and federal institutions; advocate for the formation of veteran treatment courts; and advocate for the review and repeal of mandatory forfeiture of a disabled incarcerated veterans benefits, Title 38 USC.