Top 10 Veterans Stories in Today’s News

Top 10 Veterans Stories in Today’s News

1.      Shore Memorial Hopes To Team With VA To Aid Veterans.  According to the New Jersey-based Press Of Atlantic City (1/12, Lemongello), veterans may “soon…be able to avoid a long drive to an out-of-state Veterans Administration hospital and get important medical treatments closer to home — if health care and political leaders can convince” the US Department of Veterans Affairs “to go along. Shore Memorial Hospital is proposing to offer radiation and dialysis treatments to veterans at Medicare rates, all under the authority of the US Department of Veterans Affairs — a program that Atlantic County Veterans Services Officer Bob Frolow believes would be the first in the country to be run outside” of VA hospitals. Shore Memorial “sent a formal request” for US VA approval of the proposal to Eric Shinseki, the agency’s head, and is currently “awaiting an answer.”

2.      CAVHCS To Host Valentines For Veterans Concert, ‘The Drifters.’  On its website, WTVY-TV Dothan, AL (1/12) said the “Central Alabama Veterans Health Care System (CAVHCS) will host” a free “Department of Veterans Affairs, Valentines for Veterans (V4V) Concert, ‘The Drifters, starring Bobby Hendricks,’ in downtown Montgomery’s Davis Theater February 11, 2011, at 7 pm. ‘Due in large part to the support of the City of Montgomery and Troy University, we’re excited to announce that Montgomery is one of only 17 cities in the nation to be selected to host a Valentines for Veterans Concert,’ said” CAVHCS Director Glen E. Struchtemeyer. WTVY added, “Montgomery was also selected this year as one of only 54 National Veterans Day Regional sites” by VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.

3.      Dayton Taps National Guard General For Veterans Affairs Post.  The AP (1/13) reports, “Former Minnesota National Guard leader Larry Shellito,” who “helped shape the pioneering ‘Beyond the Yellow Ribbon’ support programs for deployed soldiers and their families,” has “been selected to head” the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs. Gov. Mark Dayton’s office “announced the appointment Wednesday morning.”

The Grand Forks (ND) Herald (1/13, Davis) notes that in commenting on the appointment, Dayton said, “While a US senator and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I worked closely with Gen. Shellito on many projects, including my picnics for the families of Minnesota National Guard members heroically serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and obtaining the first congressional funding for the Guard’s pioneering Beyond the Yellow Ribbon program.” According to the Herald, Shellito was “key to beginning Minnesota’s Beyond the Yellow Ribbon program to reintegrate Guard and Reserve military members after returning from overseas deployments.”

4.      VA Shuts Down Cloud App After Breach.  Federal News Radio (1/13) reports on its website, “The Veterans Affairs Department is immediately shutting down one of its cloud applications after information was stored without proper data security controls. The cloud application was on a Yahoo website that VA doctors used to store patients’ medical information.” Roger Baker, VA’s assistant secretary for Information and Technology, “says the incident shows the need for better, more secure IT tools for employees.”

5.      VA Urges Veterans To Sign Up For Direct Deposits.  The Muskogee (OK) Phoenix (1/13, 13K) says the Department of the Treasury has “announced a new rule that will extend the safety and convenience of electronic payments to millions of Americans and phase out paper checks for federal benefits by March 1, 2013. Officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs urge veterans to sign up for electronic payment of their benefits,” because on March 1, 2013, VA will “stop issuing paper checks.” Another “deadline affects people receiving VA’s compensation or pensions for the first time after May 1, 2011,” when “people will automatically receive the benefits electronically.”

6.      Volunteers Welcome Home Soldiers On Leave From Iraq, Afghanistan.  In continuing coverage, the Dallas Morning News (1/12, Ramirez, 257K) said that on Tuesday, the “locally based Welcome Home a Hero program…was on hand” at Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) International Airport to help the US military “commemorate the arrival of its 1 millionth soldier on break from deployments in Iraq or Afghanistan. Every day, between 150 and 275 service members fly into D/FW to begin two weeks of rest-and-recuperation leave, with others returning via Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International. The military marked its millionth returnee last month but used Tuesday’s arrival to also recognize the more than 10,000 program volunteers who’ve helped families and friends greet returning soldiers since 2004.”

7.      Campbell To Honor 14 Soldiers In Ceremony.  An AP (1/12) story run by at least 16 publications noted that on Wednesday afternoon, Fort Campbell was to “hold its monthly remembrance ceremony,” which was to honor 14 soldiers, including “five members of the 101st Airborne Division,” who “died while deployed to Afghanistan.” The AP added, “The first of 17,000 division troops began returning home to the installation on the Tennessee-Kentucky state line this month and will continue returning through summer.”  Formerly AWOL Fort Campbell Soldier Being Treated For PTSD. In continuing coverage, the Clarksville (TN) Leaf-Chronicle (1/13, Lowary) says the US Army “has sent Jeff Hanks,” a Fort Campbell 101st Airborne Division soldier who went AWOL for a time last year, to a treatment facility, “rather than deploying him” back to Afghanistan. While Hanks, “along with supporters from the Iraq Veterans Against the War and Operation Recovery advocacy groups, said the Army failed to provide proper treatment” for his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in Afghanistan and while he was in the US, a military spokesman “noted that Fort Campbell has changed its philosophy and procedures with regard to PTSD and suicide prevention in the past two years,” having “learned that mental and spiritual fitness are…fundamentally critical to the job of being a soldier.”

8.      Memorial Service Set For Maj. Dick Winters.  In continuing coverage, an AP (1/13) story appearing in at least 40 publications says a “public memorial service will be held” for the “late Maj. Richard ‘Dick’ Winters,” a World War II veteran whose “service was chronicled in the book and television miniseries ‘Band of Brothers.'” The service “will be held March 19 at 2 p.m. at the Hershey Theater” in Pennsylvania.  Columnist Notes Calverton’s Interment Of Unclaimed Remains. In his column for the Long Island-based North Shore Sun (1/13), Grant Parpan notes that Winters was buried on Saturday, the same day a military funeral was “held for 20 veterans” whose “remains went unclaimed at New York City morgues, some for several years.” The vets were “buried together” at the national cemetery in Calverton, New York, in the “largest interment of unclaimed remains at any veterans’ cemetery” in US history. Parpan adds, “Let’s hope they find themselves spending eternity together alongside Mr. Winters in that special place where all our nation’s heroes ultimately end up.”

9.      Hmong General’s Burial In Arlington Gets Congressional Support.  The Sheboygan (WI) Press (1/13, Wideman, 19K) reports, “Fulfilling the last wish of Hmong Army Gen. Vang Pao to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery is appropriate and not without precedent, said” US Rep. Thomas Petri (R- WI), who added, “The Hmong people would regard this as a fitting honor for Gen. Vang Pao.” Petri, who made his comments on Wednesday, is a “co-sponsor of federal legislation to allow all Hmong veterans of the Vietnam War to be buried in US national cemeteries.” Meanwhile, “relatives of the former Hmong general who was a key US ally in the Vietnam War say they’ve decided not to stage public viewings of his body outside California,” a point also made in an AP (1/13) story run by at least 126 publications.

10.    A Reputation For Volunteering.  In an op-ed for Coon Rapids (MN) Herald (1/13, 4K), World War II veteran Tom Ward says he joined the Veterans Affairs “medical care program six years ago” and has “been given excellent care through it,” using VA hospital in St. Cloud and Minneapolis. Ward also praised volunteers who work at the latter hospital.