The Official Voice of Vietnam Veterans of America, Inc. ®
An organization chartered by the U.S. Congress
December 2003
FROM THE NATIONAL CHAPLAINExtenuating Circumstances
BY REV.PHIL SALOIS, M.S. Dear VVA and AVVA Members,
You will have noticed that there were no obituaries published in the last two issues of
The VVA Veteran nor will there be any published in this issue.
It is certainly not because there have been no deaths to report on but quite on the contrary, the number continues to increase. Please rest assured that the Taps column will resume with the next issue of The VVA Veteran.
There were extenuating circumstances that prevented me from keeping up with this
important ministry and work of VVA as the National Chaplain. At the end of September, I was faced with the closing down of the National Conference of Viet Nam Veteran Ministers, the organization that I had founded in 1989. We lost some major funding sources that enabled the organization to stay solvent all these years. Some very painful decisions needed to be taken at our last annual meeting in the Bronx in October.
We needed to let our administrative assistant go after thirteen years of steady
employment. She was the clerical and administrative backbone of the organization and was the one who assisted me in keeping up with the VVA and AVVA obituaries. The problem was exacerbated by my computer crashing and losing a lot of my files (VVA Obits among them). I was not faithful as I should have been in backing up my work. What a painful lesson that was.
With the help of the VVA staff, I have been able to retrieve most of the files I had lost
and am in the process of rebuilding my records and will dutifully save my work on disks and elsewhere.
Friends, please accept my apology for the temporary lapse of the Taps column, as I know this column is widely read by all of you.
I hope you all have a most blessed holiday season and a happy and prosperous New Year.
Father Phil Salois, M.S.
VVA National Chaplain
|
Visit The VVA Veteran
archives |
E-mail us at TheVeteran@vva.org