Dear Santa,
My wish for Christmas is for the Veterans Administration to adjudicate the claims filed by veterans for disability benefits resulting from service connected injuries. The Veterans Administration has the resources to adjudicate claims promptly and does so for those whose claims are notsupported by the medical evidence and are therefore denied.
For veterans with claims supported by medical evidence, delay in the adjudication of those claims is standard practice. My three-year-old claim of disability is fully supported by the evidence but has yet to be adjudicated. I am only one of hundreds, if not thousands, of veterans who are crippled by our military service but not eligible for benefits solely because the Veterans Administration will not process our claims.
Social Security processes disability claims within a few months while veterans wait years without a decision of denial or affirmation. While we wait, our conditions worsen, our suffering increases, and we are left without recourse except to plead with you, Santa, because the Veterans Administration is not ``Semper Fi'' to those whom have served their country and have been injured while doing so.
ROY DOWNEY
FREEDOM, CA
Editor:
I meet him, pass him on the street and have to avert my eyes. Like me, he has a cane. Unlike me, he moves slowly. He is perhaps older and in worse health. His clothes cry poverty, his face is tragic. I feel guilty at just being in better shape, able to walk into the pharmacy I'm headed for and buy supplies for the weeks ahead.
I get my purchases, listening to the chatter of the clerks as I wait in line, leaning against a display because it's hard to stand. And as I leave, I see the pretty bows, tiny bows, something new to make the little packages festive and to encourage you to buy, buy, buy. 'Tis the season.
As I leave the store, my mind returns to the poor old guy I passed on my way in, and I wonder, one week after Veterans' Day, if he is a vet, and if so, if that is why he is so poor and so disabled and sad. And I wonder who they died for, those buddies he must have had. Some came back revved for graduate school, their due under the G.I. Bill of Rights. They had their careers in medicine or what-have-you, their families: wives, children and grandchildren, whom they spoiled (unfortunately). Others came back sick or wounded, hooked on cigarettes or alcohol, the recreational drugs of World War II soldiers. Some died of illnesses related to these addictions. Some lost their families, their self-respect, their ability to adjust to and function in a very changed and changing civilian society that mocked mercilessly what they had believed in, fought and died for (or at least their buddies did). Put simply, they got flushed.
Thinking about such things, and about how guys like that will be spending the holidays, just sickens me. And there is nothing I can do about it. I have little money, and I'm not well myself, but even so, I am more comfortable than he. And I understand how it feels to be excluded, to be a family "black sheep," as he might be. So Merry Christmas Veterans and remember that there is a God, and He cares. Perhaps a little more for the excluded, the sick and the poor than for those who already have too much of a good thing and are in less need of cheer. God bless you all.
- Eleanor Newton