Free Republic

John P. Gaffaney, 56, lobbied for 3 years to return to active duty. John P. Gaffaney already had retired from the Army as a major, already had won his 20-year service award in the San Diego county government as a supervisor in a program that helps elderly people through abuse and mental health crises. But at 56, trained as a psychiatric nurse, he longed to return to active duty in the Army National Guard. For three years, a board kept rejecting him because he had a hearing problem, according to Ellen Schmeding, an administrator in the county agency for which...