Tag Archive for: veterans

Themes – a Very Special Military One

/in /by

Themes – a Very Special Military One by Debra H. Goldstein

Themes.  Historical themes.  Plotlines.  These words are running through my head as I lie in my bed, laptop in hand, writing today’s blog (too much information?).  My intent was to describe how, when an idea comes to me, I never know if what I write will turn out to be long or short. The piece only works if I follow the theme to its natural end.  The blog I thought you would be reading won’t work because themes related to Veteran’s Day and visiting the John F. Kennedy Library keep intruding.

Tuesday was Veteran’s Day.  Birmingham, Alabama is known for the large parade it has to honor the men who protect our right to be free.  I exercise at Lakeshore, a gym and facility that offers Lima Foxtrot, a comprehensive sports, fitness and recreation program for members of our Armed Forces who were injured after 9/11.  The program, which was begun in 2006, has served over 1,800 servicemen and women injured in the line of duty and their families.  Alabama isn’t the home of most of these wounded warriors. So far, they have come from thirty-six states and territories to utilize the Lima Foxtrot programs that meld sports, recreation, and the way their lives will be forever changed post their injuries.

Themes of survival are apparent whenever I glance from the able-bodied machines that I am working out on to an individual next to me exercising at a far higher level of intensity on the same type of machine, albeit one that is adaptive.  On Veteran’s Day, I joined in honoring and thanking the men and women of the Armed Services, but because happenstance brought me to work out at Lakeshore, with its integrated facilities, the theme of gratitude to members of the military is brought home to me daily.

Last Friday, when I was in Boston to attend the Crime Bake mystery conference, I had a few free hours so I went to the John F. Kennedy Library.  Kennedy is the first president I personally remember.  He was ruggedly handsome, his wife beautiful, and their children kids like me.  Walking through the library brought back the memories that the public now refers to as our country’s days of Camelot.  In many of the pictures and displays, the themes of youth and hope are juxtaposed against those of civil rights, possible nuclear war, and poverty.  I don’t usually buy souvenirs, but after watching a tape of JFK’s inauguration speech, I bought a mug to remind me every morning of his famous “…ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country” charge to the American public.

I will save talking about how social issue themes form my writing until another day.  I will hold off telling you how redemption and what happened during Hurricane Katrina was the theme behind the writing of Who Dat? Dat the Indian Chief! or how family dynamics is behind Thanksgiving in Moderation because the faces of each of the young veterans striving to move forward with their lives after doing all they can for our country are truly the themes and plotlines to be thought of on Veteran’s Day and everyday of the year.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Thanksgiving in Moderation recently was published in the short story anthology The Killer Wore Cranberry: a Fourth Meal of Mayhem.  Although it is available from many sources, until November 30, Untreed Reads Publishing is discounting it and an extra 10% off of orders over $10
can be obtained by using Code:  Thankful at checkout.  http://store.untreedreads.com/ 
Who Dat? Dat the Indian Chief! is included in the Mardi Gras Murder anthology edited by Sarah Glenn. 

Veteran’s Day from a Veteran Wife of a 21-yr. Navy Man

/in /by

Lousy title, I know–but it more or less sums up what I have to say.

Though my husband was in the Seabees for 21 years and proud of his duty served all over the world, Spain, Cuba, Greenland, Alaska, and three tours in Vietnam during the war, he never goes to Veteran’s Days Parades–nor does he talk much about his service except to other vets. No, he doesn’t belong to the VFW or other veteran’s organizations and hang out. He does belong to the Fleet Reserve but again, goes to no meetings.

Being a wife of a Seabee was difficult at times–mainly when he was gone, and downright scary when he was in Vietnam. By the time his 21 years was up, we had five kids and guess who did most of the raising?

During the war, we lived near enough to the Pt. Hueneme Seabee base to do our shopping on base and use the hospital facilities–great savings for families who hardly made any money at all. Usually I had some kind of job to help out, either full or part-time, and divided whatever pay I got with the babysitter.

The pay then was so poor that we could have received welfare, though we never did. I bet there are places today where service families qualify for welfare.

And of course, the country wasn’t nice to the men when they came home from Vietnam. (Thank goodness, that’s changed.) No one ever thanked my husband back then–more apt to spit on him–now if he happens to be wearing his Seabee hat, strangers thank him for his service.

It was tough being a service wife–I had to make all the decisions when hubby was gone, then when he came home, he expected to be the boss. Being me, I told him once he might be the Chief in the Seabees, but I was the Admiral at home. Helped a bit.

All the crises happened while he was gone–of course. He wanted to stay in for thirty years, but by that time we had a houseful of teenagers and I said, “Nope, I’m not doing this alone anymore.”

In his retirement, things have gotten better. We no longer live near a base so we don’t go shopping or to the doctors there. However, we have great medical through hubby’s retirement and can go to the doctor of our choice. Something the government finally did right.

I have a granddaughter who is married to a Sergeant in the Army, getting ready to go to Iraq. She has two little kids. She came home to be near her mom in order to have some support. I feel sorry for her. The separation is not good for marriages or for kids.

Make an old vet feel good–thank him or her for his service and while you’re at it, thank his or her spouse.

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com

To Honor those Who Serve

/in /by

Tomorrow is Veterans Day. My Dad was a vet, so was my father-in-law. Neither liked to talk about their wartime experiences, but from what I could gather, they were transformative. What they saw in battle left lifetime scars, despite the fact that neither had any visible injuries.

We know that is true for the young men and women who are returning home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers tell of the horrors they’ve seen, and the emotional scars of carrying those memories. No one is unscathed from their service. It is their courage, selfless commitment, and determination, in the face of dangers seen and unseen, that we must honor.

In the current economic crisis, the new administration will have to make some brutal budget decisions. Programs will be cut; services will be reduced. But let me add my voice to the call for honoring the debt we owe to our vets. We must invest in our VA system to fulfill our promise “to care for him who shall have borne the battle and his widow and orphan.”

Here are four critical veteran issues that demand immediate attention.

1. Allocate the necessary funds to provide the healthcare that our veterans have earned. More than 5 million vets receive healthcare from the VA — but the system is stretched beyond capacity and the wait for care is intolerable.
2. Reduce the backlog of VA disability claims. There’s more than a six month backlog of claims. Veterans shouldn’t have to wage another battle to get the benefits they’ve earned.
3. Support Advanced Funding for the VA medical budget. Currently, the VA budget is approved annually — but in 13 of the past 14 years, political bickering has delayed approval. Advanced Funding for the medical budget would mean the VA would know its funding a year in advance and could plan personnel, equipment, and services.
4. Support diagnosis and treatment of traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression. VA must continue to improve accessibility to mental health care services for all veterans and that takes adequate funding for research and treatment.

Parades are nice; stirring speeches make us proud. But let’s make sure that our veterans receive, in a timely fashion, the benefits they’ve earned.

With love and gratitude to Captain Carol Edelman, Major Melvin Borden, and all the brave men and women who have served our country.

Evelyn David

A Call to Arms: Parades Just Aren’t Enough

/in /by

Full Disclosure: Next month, For Service to Your Country, my book on veterans benefits, will be published. But this blog isn’t about selling books. Instead it’s about honoring those who have risked their lives to serve our country in the armed forces of the United States of America. This blog is a call to action in support of the Webb-Hagel-Lautenberg-Warner G.I. Bill, the “Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act.”

George Washington said: The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their nation.

Two weeks ago the Senate, in a bi-partisan effort, passed a bill to expand the educational benefits provided to veterans who served at least three years in the military following September 11, 2001. The bill closely resembles the educational benefits provided to veterans returning from World War II. President Bush has promised to veto the bill, warning that it’s too expensive and would affect the military’s retention rate, e.g., soldiers will opt out of the armed forces to go to college rather than re-enlist. Last week, Senator Webb added a provision to the bill that would permit servicemembers to transfer their educational benefits under the GI Bill to their spouses and/or their children. President Bush, in his State of the Union address, also insisted that any improvement in the GI Bill must include transferability of benefits.

Many of us have parents or grandparents who directly benefited from the original G.I. Bill (called the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act of 1944), signed by President Roosevelt just two weeks after D-Day. Historian Stephen Ambrose said of the G.I. Bill, it was “the best piece of legislation ever passed by the U.S. Congress, and it made modern America.” This comprehensive bill, besides providing healthcare for returning veterans, had a landmark feature that transformed this nation, socially and economically. As historian Doris Kearns Goodwin explained, the education component of the G.I. Bill meant that “a whole generation of blue collar workers were enabled to go to college, become doctors, lawyers, and engineers, and that their children would grow up in a middle class family…In 1940, the average GI was 26 years old and had an average of one year of high school as his only education, and now, suddenly, the college doors were open.” In its first year, the VA processed more than 83,000 applications for educational benefits. Eventually 7.8 million WWII vets used these benefits in some form.

Historian Michael Beschloss believes that the G.I Bill of 1944 “linked the idea of service to education. You serve your country; the government pays you back by allowing you educational opportunities you otherwise wouldn’t have had, and that in turn helps to improve this society.”

America got its money back. For every dollar invested in World War II veterans, seven dollars were generated.

Today’s vets receive benefits administered under the Montgomery G.I. Bill. It was a program designed for peacetime, not wartime, service. The current benefits often don’t even cover the cost of community college tuition. Because the benefits are so inadequate, many returning veterans take jobs to support their families, rather than pursue higher education.

But under Webb’s bill, veterans in an approved program of education would receive payments up to the cost of the most expensive in-state public school, plus a monthly stipend equivalent to housing costs in their area.

The Defense Department argues that the Webb bill will adversely affect retention rates, by as much as 16 percent. But another government study reveals that better benefits will attract new recruits, by about 16 percent.

Three former Presidents, a dozen U.S. Senators, three Supreme Court Justices, fourteen Nobel Prize winners went to school on the G.I. Bill. Don’t we owe it to the next generation of soldiers to provide them with the education they need to lead our nation?

For more information, visit Senator Webb’s website. You can also go to the American Legion web site to find out how you can help insure a brighter future for our nation’s veterans.

Marian Edelman Borden aka the Northern half of Evelyn David
www.forservicetoyourcountry.com
www.evelyndavid.com