“Contrary to what they read and were told by recruiters, joining the military as a means of showing loyalty to the United States did not make them citizens.” So in spite of service that may have resulted in commendations of valor, disability, or PTSD, some have been deported when their resident status is discovered. These veterans deserve the recognition that comes with service and full rights as veterans of the Armed Forces.

The Deported Veterans Mural Project seeks to raise awareness to this issue. Amos Gregory brought his Veterans Mural Project from San Francisco to his expatriated veterans in Mexico in April 2013.

Deported Veterans Mural Project:

Source: Deported Veterans Mural Project

We are a small, collegial staff. We seek students who are dynamic, creative, and highly motivated. We are open to pursuing post-graduate fellowship applications with interns. We have successfully received Equal Justice Works and Skadden fellowships.

Deadline: Applications are due no later than Monday, June 3, 2013.

Roles and Responsibilities

Under attorney supervision, law clerks will engage in legal and factual research, write legal memoranda, interview potential clients and assess eligibility for services, draft briefs, create and update self-help materials, and assist clients in obtaining public benefits. Opportunities may also be available to do policy work with Swords’ Institute of Veterans Policy (IVP).

Committment
Semester clerkships for academic credit run concurrently with law school calendars with a minimum of 15 hours per week required. Summer clerkships are unpaid, full-time (40 hours per week), and last for ten weeks.

The Ideal Candidate will have the following experience/aptitude -
Required:

• Demonstrated experience with or sensitivity to the needs of homeless and disabled veteran populations, particularly “hard to reach/ hard to serve” populations.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with a high degree of accuracy in all work.
• Strong research skills.
• Demonstrated ability to work independently and as part of a team.
• Commitment to the mission of Swords to Plowshares.

Preferred:

• Veteran preferred, or demonstrated familiarity with VA and veteran issues.
• Experience with administrative, military, or veterans law.
• Completion of Administrative Law course.
• Familiarity with administrative office procedures and legal case management software.

Working Conditions
This position requires extended periods of sitting at a desk/computer station, meeting with clients, and doing administrative work such as data entry, photocopying, word processing, etc. It also requires performing some tasks outside the office, such as attendance at meetings, or to the VA for hearings or file reviews. Law clerks must be able to perform all essential job requirements and responsibilities within what would be considered reasonable accommodation.

To Apply
Please send a cover letter detailing your interest in Swords to Plowshares along with a resume, legal writing sample, and list of three references to: jobs@stp-sf.org. Please be sure to include “Law Clerk” in the subject line.  You could also fill out the form below. No phone calls please.

[contact-form-7]

Swords to Plowshares is an inclusive employer and we are proud of the rich diversity among our staff. Please join us!

The expert faculty composed of judicial officers and veteran’s law specialists will share insights into the implications of certain laws and practices with consideration of veterans’ pasts and futures. This program will be particularly useful for attorneys and judicial officers who regularly encounter veterans in their practice and courtrooms. The program will focus on Penal Code 1170.9, especially with regard to the 2013 enhancements and will address other topics of interest to the trial bench and judges.

This program is co-sponsored by The State Bar of California, Office of Legal Services.

This is a free training. Please register on the PLI website.
San Francisco and Live Webcast
May 24, 2013, 8:15 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. PT

Veterans need your legal assistance, I hope you will attend this program and learn how you can help veterans in your community. All attorneys, judicial officers and court staff who regularly work with veterans and any attorney interested in providing pro bono legal services to veterans would benefit from attending this program.

Topics:

• Penal Code 1170.9: Overview and Updates
• Military/Veterans Culture — What You Should Know When Representing Veterans
• Child Custody & Restraining Orders: Implications for Veterans
• Upgrading Military Discharge

Featured faculty:

• Honorable Eileen C. Moore – Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal, 4th District Court of Appeal
• Bradford Adams – Skadden Fellow, Swords to Plowshares
• Becca von Behren – Staff Attorney, Swords to Plowshares
• Honorable Richard M King – Judge, Superior Court of California, County of Orange
• Starlyn Lara – Women Veterans Coordinator, Program Associate, Swords to Plowshares
• Honorable Michael J Naughton – Judge, Superior Court of California, County of Orange
• Katie Weber – Facilitator; Advocacy Committee Member, Tri County Collaborative for Military, Veterans and Families; Protect our Defenders
• Christina Thompson – Program Attorney, Practising Law Institute

For more information, visit the PLI website: 
Approaching Veterans Issues: A Legal Overview Including an Update of California Penal Code Section 1170.9

To register by phone, please call PLI’s Customer Service Department at (800) 260-4754. Be sure to mention your priority code: YFC3-8AEM2 and customer ID Number when registering: 1004351.

Most importantly, this will provide desperately needed funding to construct and/or rehabilitate permanent supportive housing for veterans which may provide case management, mental health counseling, substance abuse treatment, and other assistance for disabled and at-risk veterans.

AB 639 passed unanimously out of the Veterans Affairs and Appropriations Committees. The next step will be to put it to the voters in November 2014. If you would like to get involved, send a letter of support to your California Congress persons and come November 2014, be sure to vote.

Under current law, Proposition 12 funds may be used for single-family homes and farms only, and do not meet the needs of California’s homeless and low income veterans. California is home to the highest population of veterans and homeless veterans in the country. While the intent of the voters was to provide homes for our veterans; in practice, single-family home ownership is not within reach for homeless veterans and veterans with limited income. AB 639 will allow voters to repurpose the bonds approved in 2008 through the Proposition to truly meet the intent of that bond measure: to house as many veterans as possible.

Most importantly, this will provide desperately needed funding to construct and/or rehabilitate permanent supportive housing for veterans which may provide case management, mental health counseling, substance abuse treatment and other assistance for disabled and at-risk veterans. Swords to Plowshares provides transitional and permanent supportive housing, employment and training, mental health and legal assistance for accessing benefits to thousands of veterans each year.

Center for Investigative Reporting - A state program designed to help California veterans buy homes granted just 83 loans last year, despite more than $1.1 billion in available funding.

The California Department of Veterans Affairs employed 87 staff members to run the loan program, spending $10.6 million on overhead to originate $10.5 million in loans, according to the state Department of Finance.

During a recent visit to the agency’s headquarters in Sacramento, the home loan call center was largely silent. Critics, including Democratic Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez, say the program is an anachronism and the money should be redeployed to meet other veteran needs.

Agency officials say they know they need to do better and have used the economic downturn to revamp the program, originally launched in 1921 to help World War I veterans buy homes and farms. The overhead costs, they said, include servicing on the approximately 8,000 loans made in the past three decades.

“We are now staged and poised and ready to go as the housing market comes back,” said Theresa Gunn, the newly appointed deputy secretary in charge of the program.

Part of the issue in recent years has been the low interest rates available on the open market, which often made the program’s rates unattractive.

In October 2011, when it was possible to get a private home loan with an interest rate approaching 2 percent, the state offered loans to veterans at 5.5 percent. That gap apparently outweighed the program’s benefits, which include the ability to buy a house with little or no money down.

The agency lowered its interest rate this month to 3.9 percent. Gunn predicted the number of loans issued would grow this year but, when pressed, would not give an estimate, saying, “I’m not in a position right now to share something with you.”

The agency is budgeted for $13 million in overhead costs this fiscal year and so far has granted 59 home loans, valued at $5.5 million.

Since 1998, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office has recommended that the agency phase out the program. In a report that year, the analyst’s office said use of the program, which that year made 1,600 loans, was likely to “continue to dwindle” as credit-worthy veterans turned to the private sector and other government programs.

“Veterans do have other growing needs,” the report said.

Today, the state Department of Veterans Affairs has $230 million in uninsured borrowing authority from a bond measure that voters passed in 2000, along with $900 million more from a 2008 initiative that the agency hasn’t yet touched.

Pérez has proposed reallocating $600 million of the agency’s bond funding to build affordable housing for homeless veterans. On April 30, a bill to put that change before voters in 2014 passed unanimously out of its first legislative committee, backed by a host of veterans groups, trade unions and law enforcement.

Gunn said the California Department of Veterans Affairs is not opposed to the bill and would welcome the reappropriation of some of its unused funding to build affordable housing.

California has about 16,000 homeless veterans, according to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. Los Angeles, with about 6,400 homeless vets, has the most in the nation.

“We want to do something to eliminate the suffering right now,” said Michael Blecker, executive director of Swords to Plowshares, a veterans service organization in San Francisco, where the most recent HUD-mandated homeless count identified 344 veterans in shelters and 430 on the streets.

In interviews, homeless veterans said the tight rental market has made private landlords so choosy that it’s nearly impossible to find housing – even after vets have found work and gotten off drugs.

“I have back child support and horrible credit,” said John Robinson, a Marine Corps veteran.

Robinson makes minimum wage working for a subcontractor of SamTrans, the transportation agency serving San Mateo County. But he continues to live at a SoMa drug rehab center run by the Salvation Army – his home for the past 21 months – because he can’t find private housing.

“If a veteran has a place to start, then he has a chance,” he said.

Source: Center for Investigative Reporting, May 16, 2013, by Aaron Glantz

Earlier research had already drawn a link between brain injuries and increased suicide risk, but the study published Wednesday by the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests the risk increases even further in personnel who’ve had more than one brain injury. However, the majority of those with multiple TBIs were not suicidal, the study found.

Study author Craig J. Bryan, a psychologist and former Air Force captain who is now associate director of the National Center for Veterans Studies at the University of Utah, said his findings, gleaned from data on 161 patients who came into his clinic in Balad, Iraq, in 2009, were somewhat surprising.

While the increase in suicidal thoughts among those who’d suffered multiple brain injuries was expected, it was interesting, he said, that the “dose effect” of multiple injuries appeared to level out after two injuries.

“I really was expecting guys who had been blown up or had sustained five or six concussions in their lives, they would probably look even worse or be at greater risk than the guys who had only sustained two TBIs,” Bryan said Tuesday in a phone interview, “but that was not the case.”

Personnel who visited Bryan’s clinic in Iraq after sustaining a suspected head injury, each completed a standardized assessment in which they reported feelings of depression, post-traumatic stress and suicidal thoughts and behaviors, as well as their lifetime history of traumatic brain injury, including concussions they had had as children.

Those who’d never had a TBI reported having no suicidal thoughts or behaviors, while 6.9 percent of those who’d had one TBI reported such feelings. Among those who’d had two or more injuries, 21.7 percent expressed suicidal thoughts or behaviors.

“I think these numbers could be disturbing to some of our servicemembers who know they’ve had brain injuries,” said John D. Corrigan, director of the Division of Rehabilitation Psychology and a professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Ohio State University. He was not involved in the study.

But he cautioned those who’ve had an injury to keep in mind that the study only shows a relationship between TBI and suicidal thoughts and doesn’t consider factors that could mitigate suicide risk.

Like previous research, Corrigan said, the study doesn’t prove that traumatic brain injuries cause suicidal thoughts, but it “inches us there.”

The most interesting finding, Corrigan said, is that, of those who’d never had a TBI, none reported suicidal thoughts. “I’ll be interested in looking a little closer at that.”

Bryan said his best guess for why none of the 18 servicemembers in the zero TBI group reported suicidal thoughts is that there weren’t enough people in the group to render an accurate result. In general, 2 percent to 3 percent of people will report having suicidal thoughts in the past year, he said, which equates to roughly 1 person in 40.

While those with multiple TBIs were “significantly more likely to be suicidal,” Bryan said, “the vast majority, 75 to 80 percent, of those who had multiple TBIs were not suicidal.”

Corrigan said he doesn’t know if this study alone is reason enough for the U.S. military to change its handling of traumatic brain injuries.

Its policy in Afghanistan of requiring personnel caught in vehicle rollovers and bombings to be pulled from the fight to undergo testing for brain injuries “appears to have had a very positive effect in terms of folks being able to heal quickly from the most minor of the traumatic brain injuries.”

“Probably what this does say,” Bryan said, “is that immediately following a head injury, whether from an explosion, a motor-vehicle accident, whatever the case may be, we definitely do need to take people out and give them a break.”

Source: Stars and Stripes, May 15, 2013, by Matthew Millham

Forbes – Imagine that you are twenty years old and you have just been deployed to Uzbekistan at a staging area for military incursions into Afghanistan.  You are in the most alien environment imaginable and still trying to get your bearings. You have been trained by the Air Force to maintain military aircraft and your knowledge is about to be tested. A pilot comes up to you as you are struggling to install a part and informs you that if he can’t get the plane off the ground in the next five minutes, there is a Seal team down range that may not make it out.  “Holy s#!t”, you think. “This is real. Somebody else’s life is in my hands.”

That was Derek Blumke’s first job experience and it shaped his world view about the nature of work and entrepreneurship. When he returned to the states he was determined to go to school and eventually enrolled at the University of Michigan. A college campus was a jarring contrast to a remote Air Force base on a war footing. The other students were young, mostly affluent and generally had no connection to military life.  They were mystified by the presence of a 26 year old man in their sophomore psych class and when Derek offered his resume, he was asked how many people he killed.

Derek knew he wasn’t the only veteran to face a challenging transition into civilian life which prompted him to form his first organization, Student Veterans of America (SVA). This thrust Derek onto the national stage. The organization lobbied for a new GI bill and former Senator Jim Webb, who wrote the bill, credited SVA for playing a major role in its passage. Student Veterans of America has since expanded to almost 800 campuses across the country.

After school Derek joined up with Zack Iscol, a Marine Captain who fought in Phantom Fury, the infamous and costly battle for Fallujah. Zack observed the same phenomenon Derek experienced in school. He saw the guys he was responsible for in Iraq struggle when they came home, trying to translate their military experience into civilian careers. He wanted to help them bridge the gap.

Another issue is that the culture in the military is very humble. Veterans are generally uncomfortable selling themselves and an employer may not realize their value. But Derek points out that the perception changes when you put a qualified veteran in an operational role, particularly in a young company or start-up where the future is uncertain. Every entrepreneur has experienced the feeling of things spinning out of control. The awful fear that failure is just around the corner. A veteran is likely to see things much differently and exude confidence when those around him are riddled with doubt.

Says Derek, “I think vets have an advantage because they have gone through such difficult experiences in the past. They have that perspective of this isn’t loss of life, no one is going to get killed over this.  They carry determination and a no such thing as fail attitude.  I got myself into this, I got other people into this, I’ve put my name on this, and I won’t let it fail.”

Source: Forbes, May 15, 2013, by Katie Drummond

We are honored to have Bay Area artists Quinn DeVeaux and Benjamin Brown bring their acclaimed musical talents to support our programs and bring attention to the plight of veterans here and throughout our country.

Party Corps is a San Francisco-based non-profit organization whose mission is to support important causes by connecting people to those causes through good music. We are proud and grateful to have their support. They make good things happen in our communities.

About the event:
Doors 7:30
Show 8:00
$10 presale | $20 at the door
Cafe du Nord is located at 2170 Market Street in San Francisco

Concert and conversation moderated by Party Corps Executive Director Leslie Monroe

Buy presale tickets here

About the artists:
Quinn DeVeaux
 Quinn DeVeaux has packed houses and astounded audiences in the bay area for years with his smooth and dirty spank you voice and cool melodic songwriting. First he started an early Chicago Blues band and then a New Orleans soul and gospel band. Both groups had audiences clamoring for more. Now he has combined it all in the Blue Beat Review a self-styled crossroads of his many musical roots. Quinn harnesses the likes of Ray Charles, John Hurt, Fats Domino and Bo Diddley. His songwriting is the classic influence made fresh. With all the style and subtlety of the great soul/blues singers of the earth bound golden days, his band keeps audiences in a state of joy.

Benjamin Brown
Benjamin Brown is a singer/songwriter living in Oakland, CA. He is a self-taught guitarist who is mainly inspired by the musicians from the aspiring immersion of blues artists in the early part of the 20th Century. He’s influenced by artists in the likes of Mississippi Fred McDowell, Howlin’ Wolf, Blind Willie Johnson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, The Doors and The Rolling Stones (to name a few). His lyrics suggest a sense of salvation, as he writes about triumphing a ruthless evil. However, his seemingly melancholy sound, when listened to closely, encourages an uplifting message.
Benjamin Brown’s new album “13″ can be found here: benjaminbrown.bandcamp.com

About the venue:
Cafe du Nord
Cafe du Nord is a San Francisco institution that was once a speakeasy during Prohibition. Today it hosts a wide array of musical acts in its downstairs venue. The bar and hospitality staff are seasoned professionals that provide excellent service. Cafe du Nord also hosts music and spoken word events upstairs in the Swedish American Hall from time to time.

Even the Daily Show, which has millions of viewers and an international following, has covered the issue and poked fun at the way the backlog has been handled. The segments below from last week’s episode demonstrate how dismal the situation has become for veterans who have been experiencing processing delays averaging more than one year. And they criticize the VA which plans to address the situation, but indicates that remedies will not fully go into effect until 2015.

Source: Comedy Central: Daily Show, aired May 2, 2013

Lou Gehrig’s Disease cut Masters’ military career short when he was just 32. Following a deployment in Saudi Arabia, Masters first began experiencing unusual muscle weakness in his right arm during a deployment in Kuwait.

“This was devastating for someone who was an amateur body builder, handpicked physical training leader, and overall health and fitness enthusiast,” recalls Masters.

There is no known cure and just one drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which only modestly extends survival.

“ALS is a frightening and fatal disease that slowly paralyzes the body, robbing it of its ability to walk, speak, swallow and breathe, while the mind remains sharp and alert,” says Jane H. Gilbert, president and CEO of The ALS Association – the only national nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting Lou Gehrig’s disease on every front.

“Above all, veterans need to know that they do not have to battle ALS alone,” says Gilbert. “While we are working tirelessly to find a cure and answers for our men and women in uniform, the fact remains that veterans and their families too often are not aware of the abundance of aid and support that is available to them.”

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs recognizes ALS as a service-connected disease and provides financial and medical support to those with at least 90 continuous days of military service. Veterans with questions concerning their service benefits are encouraged to visit www.alsa.org/als-care/veterans/faqs-new-veterans.html.

Services sometimes vary, but most chapters of The ALS Association loan a range of medical equipment to people with ALS, including lift devices, wheelchairs and digital communication tools. In addition, ALS Association chapters lead support groups and offer respite programs for family caregivers. A listing of local chapters can be found at www.alsa.org/community/chapters/.

Masters now has three young children and relies more and more on his wife for his daily care. He struggles to cope with his loss of freedom and knowing that one day he will no longer be able to hug his children or to speak the words, “I love you” to his family.

Like so many other veterans living with ALS, Masters is holding onto hope for a cure and to one day know why he and his fellow service members of all generations must bear this health burden. Regardless of the uniform they wear and whether they served during a time of war or peace, simply being a veteran is a known risk factor for developing ALS.

“One day, the promise of research will prevail and ALS will no longer be among the list of sacrifices our military veterans will be forced to face,” says Gilbert. “Until then, we are working to do everything possible to ease the burden of ALS for America’s military families.”

Source: Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, April 23, 2013

When his wife, Hinton Mayor Sheryl Ann Cornelius, arrived home that evening, he was slumped in his chair, still clutching the gun.

Forty years after serving during the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, Jack remained tortured by the war. In the years before his death, the 61-year-old U.S. Army veteran downed prodigious amounts of vodka, drove his truck to random locations and talked of dead bodies floating in the water.

But even though Jack received an honorable discharge and sought treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder before his suicide in July 2009, the Department of Veterans Affairs denied his widow’s request to help pay for his burial and declined to grant the monthly compensation intended for survivors of veterans with deaths linked to military service.

By the time the agency reversed itself a year later, Sheryl had lost her home to foreclosure and racked up $700 in interest on a high-interest loan she’d taken out to pay for the funeral. 

The 58-year-old widow speaks with a soft Oklahoma accent. In the aftermath of two strokes, she moves slowly. And she has a strong sense of justice, rooted in her Southern Baptist upbringing.

“I needed the money,” Sheryl said, “but it was more important to me that the government admit that his death was caused by the war, that someone take responsibility for it.”

Internal VA documents obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting reveal an escalating number of widows and widowers are waiting for burial benefits and survivors’ pensions – breaking America’s final promise to its veterans.

Congressional and media scrutiny followed CIR’s March report that internal documents showed the number of veterans waiting more than a year for disability compensation had increased by 2,000 percent under President Barack Obama, from about 11,000 in 2009 to 245,000 in December.

Those documents also show that the bureaucratic logjam follows veterans to the grave. The ranks of widows, widowers, children and parents waiting for a nominal burial benefit – between $600 and $2,000 – nearly tripled during Obama’s first term: from 23,000 to 65,000.

Jack Cornelius was 19 when he was deployed to Vietnam. He served in the port of Cat Lai during the Tet Offensive in 1968.

The average wait time for a funeral subsidy had reached 207 days in December, from two months four years before.

In addition, 50,000 survivors were waiting an average of 229 days to find out whether they qualified for a pension – twice as long as in 2009. That part of the backlog is especially tragic, observers say, because most of the survivors are elderly widows who depended on their husbands’ VA pensions before their deaths.

“My mother had to get down to her last dime, literally, before they came through,”said Susan Landau, whose 94-year-old mother, Helen Fisher, suffers from severe Alzheimer’s disease. She lives in San Bernardino County, Calif., and waited more than a year for the VA to approve a nursing home subsidy for survivors of wartime veterans.

Finch’s husband, John Fisher, died four years ago. He received a Purple Heart and two Bronze Stars for his service in World War II.

In a statement, the VA repeated its current mantra about all benefit delays, saying they were unacceptable, but offered no explanation for why the number of survivors waiting for benefits had ballooned.

Unlike the rise in pending disability claims, partly tied to the large numbers of veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan and diseases newly connected to Agent Orange, there has been no substantial increase in survivors requesting burial benefits or pensions.

U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller, the Florida Republican who leads the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, singled out the backlog of burial benefits as particularly egregious.

“VA has continually demonstrated an inability to walk and chew gum at the same time,” Miller said. “With so much of the department’s attention focused on eliminating the disability benefits backlog, burial benefits claims are languishing.”

The agency countered with a statement saying a December agreement among the VA, Social Security Administration and Internal Revenue Service to automate pensioners’ income data collection will free up staff to work on the backlog of survivors’ claims. It said the arrangement already is making a difference.

Treatment for PTSD

Jack Cornelius never asked the VA to compensate him for post-traumatic stress disorder. But three months before he died, he went to the VA for help. Sheryl Cornelius and her three adult children had confronted him, demanding that he stop drinking and seek treatment.

At Oklahoma City’s VA hospital, doctors prescribed a series of psychotropic drugs, and, according to hospital records, issued a directive that he be “closely watched” by the health care system.

On June 11, 2009, at Jack’s final appointment before his death, psychiatrist Lorenzo Araujo wrote that he had started drinking again and that “his PTSD symptoms were exacerbated and he is having frequent nightmares, irritable, and at times feeling violent.”

So the family was shocked when, three months after Jack shot himself, the VA refused to subsidize his funeral or provide Dependency and Indemnity Compensation, a monthly stipend for survivors of veterans whose deaths are linked to military service.

In its three-page decision, the agency said that while Jack’s unit sustained casualties when it came under repeated mortar attack during the Tet Offensive, the “available evidence is insufficient to confirm that the veteran actually experienced a stressful event during his military service.”

In its decision, the VA said there was no proof that Jack’s PTSD was caused by the war and no proof that his death, the “self inflicted rifle wound to the head,” was linked to PTSD.

Instead of granting Sheryl a $2,000 burial subsidy and a $1,215-a-month benefits check, the agency approved a $539-a-month death pension available to the surviving spouse of any low-income wartime veteran.

That wasn’t enough to keep Sheryl from losing the home she and Jack had shared. And it filled her with rage, because she wanted someone, anyone, in the government to take responsibility for Jack’s death.

In a statement responding to CIR, the VA stood by that initial decision: “Mr. Cornelius’s death certificate did not indicate that his mental disability caused or contributed to his death and VA issued a rating decision based on this information.”

Troubles kept hidden

Sheryl was Jack’s third wife. His first marriage ended almost as soon as he came home from Vietnam in 1969. His second lasted 23 years but, in retrospect, may have been damaged from the start by the lingering trauma of war.

“I really don’t know if I was madly in love with him or not. I was 19 and was ready to get out of the house,” said Cindy Cornelius, who kept Jack’s name even after the divorce because they had raised three children together.

When they first met, Cindy said Jack wined and dined her. A gregarious man with a Fu Manchu mustache, he took her out for lobster dinners and drove her around Oklahoma City in his gray Corvette.

But almost as soon as they married, Cindy saw a part of Jack that he’d kept hidden during their courtship. Jack’s flashbacks and nightmares were so intense that he almost always slept on the couch. He smoked marijuana constantly. He never talked about Vietnam when he was sober, but when he drank, he would rail about the war, usually about dead bodies he saw in the river during the Tet Offensive.

Jack Cornelius, shown with one of his grandchildren, struggled with alcohol and sought treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder before his suicide in 2009.

Jack put together a scrapbook of pictures of himself in uniform and pasted in a 1979 article published by the Associated Press on a VA-commissioned poll that found a majority of Americans believed Vietnam veterans were “suckers, having to risk their lives in the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

In January 1997, Cindy and Jack divorced. Five months later, he and Sheryl married in Las Vegas.

Sheryl had recently moved her family to Hinton, about an hour’s drive west of Oklahoma City, looking for a fresh start as her first marriage fell apart.

In Hinton, she found a sense of community. As an assistant to the town clerk, she chatted with residents who came in to obtain a permit or pay a water bill.

“The whole town kind of funnels through the clerk’s office, and there are a lot of older people who just want to sit there and stay awhile,” her son Jim Ray said. “Mom would put her stuff down and talk to them, because she has a certain kind of kindness and patience.” 

In 2005, she ran for City Council with a slogan that paraphrased the words of 18th-century Christian theologian John Wesley: “Do all the good you can, for as many people as you can, for as long as you possibly can.”

Jack campaigned hard for her, and she won in a landslide, becoming the first woman elected to Hinton’s City Council in 100 years.

Life at home was good, too. Jack adopted Sheryl’s children as his own. The couple bought a decrepit blacksmith shop next door to their house and demolished it to make room for a large garden, which Jack tended when he wasn’t providing security and cleaning services to area banks.

Jack still slept on the couch most of the time, but he stopped drinking and smoking pot. For the first six years of their marriage, Sheryl said, everything seemed fine.

Then, after Jack’s father died in 2003, he started to come unglued. He resumed drinking, and Sheryl began to worry about whether it was safe to have guns in the house.

Letter becomes window into combat

Jack Cornelius had what can only be called an All-American childhood. His father, Jack Sr., owned a popular Oklahoma City steakhouse and was involved in local politics. When Jack Jr. was in elementary school, his family bought a home in a suburban development with a distinct feature: Every house came with a pony.

That idyllic upbringing was shattered by the Vietnam War. Eager to get some choice in his assignment, Jack Jr. didn’t wait to be drafted. Hoping to avoid the worst of the combat, he enlisted in the Army in 1966 and joined a military transportation battalion as a stevedore. Almost as soon as he arrived at the port of Cat Lai, however, North Vietnam launched a campaign of surprise attacks during an agreed-upon cease-fire for the Tet, or lunar new year, in 1968.

“I know I have to write someone about this,” the letter begins. “If I don’t write and get it off my chest I’ll go out of my mind.” Over four handwritten pages, Jack described how 30 mortar rounds hit his compound overnight, along with heavy small-arms fire. No one was killed, but 15 Americans were wounded.

“Somehow, I hit something or something hit me and split my big toe down the middle,” he wrote. Blood was everywhere.

A letter that Jack Cornelius sent to his father describing an attack during the Tet Offensive later became crucial to proving the veteran’s post-traumatic stress disorder was linked to his military service.

This letter, which Sheryl found in a sealed envelope while cleaning out a box six months after Jack died, became the key to unlocking her survivors’ benefits.

It offered proof that Jack did face combat while in Vietnam and evidence, written in his own handwriting, that he found the incident terrifying. Those were crucial ingredients in connecting his PTSD to military service.

Sheryl got the county medical examiner to revise the investigative report on Jack’s death to add “post-traumatic stress disorder” as a “significant medical condition” that contributed to his suicide. She approached Hinton’s police chief, Shannon Pack, who wrote a declaration stating that Jack urged him “not to let helicopters fly over Hinton because it made him have flashbacks of Vietnam.”

She filed a fresh petition with the Department of Veterans Affairs, and on May 20, 2010, the agency reversed itself and declared Jack’s death related to his military service. Two months later, more than a year after his death, the VA cut a $2,000 check to cover some of his funeral costs and soon after bumped Sheryl’s monthly checks to $1,215.

VA’s system slow to respond

To this day, the VA maintains it acted correctly in the Cornelius case, granting a modest pension quickly and adding an additional monthly check and funeral subsidy once his widow provided the necessary documentation.

But some observers say the delay in her case shows the system is broken, letting down veterans’ families just when they need help the most.

Ami Neiberger-Miller, spokeswoman for the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, said her organization has worked with many families in which a veteran has committed suicide but the VA is reluctant to provide survivor benefits. According to the agency, 22 veterans commit suicide every day, about double the rate of Americans with no military service.

“These families are grieving, and on top of that, they don’t have benefits and have to prove a service connection for the death,” Neiberger-Miller said.

The VA says it is looking for ways to handle burial and pension claims more quickly.

On March 22, responding to a letter from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, the agency’s undersecretary for benefits, Allison Hickey, said she “would like to see if some internal VA processes can be adjusted” so that some surviving spouses who haven’t remarried could begin receiving a monthly benefits check immediately when they file a claim.

Sanders said he was pleased with Hickey’s response and would “continue to closely monitor how the changes are implemented.”

But other lawmakers are becoming increasingly impatient with the overall problems of VA benefit delays.

In March, Miller, the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs chairman, called for Hickey’s resignation, saying she wasn’t equipped to handle the agency’s problems. Others, including Time magazine political columnist Joe Klein and Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican from California who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, have said VA Secretary Eric Shinseki should step down.

In an op-ed in The Washington Post co-written with Concerned Veterans for America CEO Pete Hegseth, Hunter cited the VA’s inability to digitize the processing of disability claims as an example of mismanagement. Documents obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting reveal that after a four-year, $537 billion computerization effort, 97 percent of disability claims remain on paper.

In a statement, the VA said it has no timeline for computerizing claims brought by veterans’ survivors. The system, due for a $155 million infusion in Obama’s 2014 budget, will be able to handle burial benefit claims “eventually,” the agency said.

Ominous feelings

In the days before Jack Cornelius died, his family was filled with a sense of dread.

Although Jack had never hurt Sheryl, he was so angry and drunk that she began to worry about her physical safety. One night, when her daughter, Sarah Dawn Ray, called, the two women had a premonition that the situation could soon turn violent.

“I told her she should come stay with me in Oklahoma City,” Sarah said. Somehow, Sheryl got Jack to drive her to her daughter’s apartment.

Meanwhile, Sheryl’s two sons, Jim and Ian Ray, continued checking in on Jack. They told her Jack seemed vacant, sitting alone in his chair, rarely interacting with anyone, including Ian’s 2-year-old daughter, his favorite grandchild. He stopped going to work.

On July 8, 2009, the family decided that Jack needed to be hospitalized to get intense psychiatric help. That evening, they traveled to Hinton in Ian’s pickup truck. As Ian waited at the car, smoking a cigarette, Sheryl and Jim entered the house.

It was so quiet, they thought Jack had gone out. Then Jim saw Jack sitting in his favorite chair with a rifle in his hand. In a rush, Jim moved the rifle behind another chair so his mother wouldn’t see it and called for his brother to come take her out of the house.

Ian guided Sheryl across the street to the police station. At that moment, she said, she knew Jack was dead.

Nearly four years after Jack’s suicide, his passing still dominates Sheryl’s life. She’s moved in with her son Jim, who works for an oil and gas company. Her small bedroom is filled with items that commemorate Jack’s life and military service.

His burial flag sits folded neatly on the floor next to her bed. A framed copy of the letter Jack wrote describing the horrors of Vietnam is on the wall, alongside a picture of Jack at 18, in uniform, smoking a cigarette, with a helmet that looks too big for his head.

Source: Center for Investigative Reporting, May 1, 2013, by Aaron Glantz, edited by Amy Pyle and copy edited by Nikki Frick and Christine Lee.