Posted on 06/03/2014 4:59:10 AM PDT by Kaslin
SSI and SSD give back pay to the day you applied. This man deserves the same at a minimum. I’d say an official presidential apology is in order to, but given the current president, I suggest we skip that.
Same with my father, he’s 87. My sister has been helping for years to try for his benefits. Records lost in the fire.
Sure seem to be a lot of fires at VA’s. I’ve heard stories like these before. Perhaps if they more clearly mark the fire extinguishers?
Reprehensible at the callous officious disregard this government had for him. Juxtapose this behavior with the daytime TV ads of “I can’t get the SS Disability benefits I deserve” and “Let the Cochran Firm get it for you”.
Fully thousands and thousands of dubiously debilitated ‘workers’ with the disease-du-jour, Bi-Polar disorder, anxiety, et al are approved (with the help of the Cochran firm and their ilk) and this veteran has to wait 68 years because the system doesn’t have an administrative court that can be bought like SSDI.
i don’t know why anyone thinks any of this is new. The VA has sucked for decades. No self respecting doctor wants to work there, it is regarded as career quicksand. It is known for having foreign doctors that can’t speak English. And the staff, the onerous paperwork, the ridiculous forms, there is nothing but discouragement and obfuscation.
It should be like this: if you served, you are eligible. Period. Instead there is a ridiculous hierarchy, battles about whether a veteran is truly injured, treating veterans like they are dishonest and magnifying their issues, all in the name of providing benefits only to the deserving.
It is a sick, sick system.
honestly speaking there was some fire in St. Louis that destroyed a bunch of records. But so the eff what? Whay do they have to treat these veterans like liars?
Let them tell when they were on duty.
Something similar happened to my neighbor, a WWII and Korean War vet. His records were destroyed in the National Personnel Records Center fire of 1973. It took his former platoon leader, then a Colonel, to pull strings with contacts at the Pentagon to get a certificate of military service (not a DD 214) and a replacement Purple Heart award issued to him so the VA would recognize his status as a veteran.
The fire was NOT at the VA, it was at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, MO, on July 12, 1973. Nearly 450,000 cubic feet of records were destroyed when the top floor of the building was gutted. Personnel records of nearly 20 million former members, to include my father’s, records were destroyed.
The major groups of records destroyed were:
1. Army personnel who served between 1912 and 1959, and those who had been discharged between Jan. 1, 1973 and the date of the fire. Remember that USAAC & USAAF personnel were part of the Army, thus their records were included in the Army personnel records destroyed.
2. Air Force personnel discharged between 1947 and 1963.
See my post # 9 regarding the 1973 fire at the National Personnel Records Center.
Our son USMC(Infantry), three runs in the sandbox, was in a VA hospital. They told him ‘nothing more we cannot help with’... BS...BS...
As he was leaving a woman at a desk ask if he needed help?
Once more, what’s the difference?
What a difference it was!
She was with the VFW not the VA.
She had him fill out some forms and told him who to see.
All is now well!
I’m fully aware of where and when the fire was. I had to see if my military records were destroyed (not).
My point is that records can be reconstructed through a variety of means. It is through the tenacity of interested parties AND a compassionate government with employees that actually do their jobs that justice is done.
My mother was able, after some effort, to get records of group orders that contained my father’s records of involvement in pacific nuclear tests... records our government just could not, nor would not find - conveniently.
It was that effort that later allowed the cancer and other problems that eventually killed him to be classified 100% disability.
It has nothing to do with a fire. It has to do with honor.
I am aware of that, but was wanting to get the right story out to those who do not. The one problem, I’ve been told by a person I work with at NPRC is that they never had the personnel to really get the reconstruction properly done.
And there are folks at NPRC who find saying “your records were destroyed in the fire” as a way of not having to do their jobs. Those are folks who need to be replaced.
Well, I certainly agree with you on that. And, I fear it’s not just the NPRC taking advantage of a 41 year old fire. It is the VA, up to and including its highest levels. That’s what I meant about honor.
Definitely agree regarding the VA & honor.
May God bless that woman for helping your son...
I am so angry and yet moved. Angry that the VA rebuffed and rejected your son.
Moved that a member of the VFW stood by and helped your son.
Yes his records were destroyed in the St. Louis fire.
The fire had burned the outer edges of the documents (in my loved ones 201 file) and some of the top pages but most were viewable in part.
Visualize dropping a package of copier paper in a fire. Then remove it. Outer edges destroyed and some top/bottom pages. But not all. And that is my point. There may be some pages viewable, even after NPRC claims "destroyed."
I understand. However the point is being missed here. This isn’t about a fire in 1973 - not at all, especially for records from WWII. There are so, so many other repositories where information of this type are stored. Unit records, websites, national archives and the like.
This is about the VA misusing the fact of a 1973 fire to cover up their unwillingness to do their damned job.
I do not know for certain but think she was a paid employee of the VFW; not that it makes any difference.
When I came home I had some follow up work at the VA.
IIRC they had VFW & American Legion ‘helpers’.
Fortunately I found gainful employment with superb ($$$) insurance.
Not that my experience with the VA was bad; They were busy, busy, busy! 1970,1971 and many needed it far more then I.
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