A publication of Vietnam Veterans of America, Inc. ®
An organization chartered by the U.S. Congress
August 2001/September 2001
President’s Message
Welcome Home To VVA
By Thomas Corey
I want to thank the 642 delegates who represented our members at the Tenth National Convention in Greensboro, North Carolina. Thank you all for your devotion and commitment to the future of Vietnam Veterans of America.
I also want to thank everyone who has entrusted me with the awesome responsibility of being your President. I accept your challenge to reflect our common values and principles as we continue to seek fairness and decency in the VA system. I am honored to be VVA’s leader for the next two years.
Vietnam veterans and their families deserve no less than the security of knowing that when the nation’s commitment to its veterans is under attack, VVA will be leading the fight to safeguard the rights and benefits to which we are entitled.
The delegates conducted the business of our organization with professionalism and courtesy. They demonstrated respect for each other, despite some differences of opinion. Debate on issues was spirited and passionate, but never angry. I have attended all ten VVA conventions--and believe me--we have come a long way since that first one in 1983.
The delegates have chosen to confront the future as a unified force for change. We reunited with VVA members who had not attended a national convention in many years, and we are happy they heard the call to come home to VVA.
We left the convention with a very specific mandate as stated by the delegates. Our duty as officers and board members is to pursue the agenda framed by the resolutions. We were charged with making fair and reasonable decisions based on information available from a wide range of sources.
VVA will be a leading advocate for health care and entitlements for veterans, and we will work for all veterans who need our assistance. It is our duty to speak up for those veterans who don’t have a voice. We will continue to meet our responsibility to those still unaccounted for and their families.
We have begun a new stage of life for VVA. Working together as we have for 23 years, we can challenge the future without fear of failure. Together, we will meet our obligations to our nation’s veterans.
The week in Greensboro demonstrated that we have identified our adversary, and together we discovered it is not VVA. There is a spirit in VVA that is renewed every two years during our conventions. It is the spirit of unity and purpose. In odd-numbered years we come together like members of a large, extended family to discuss what VVA means to each of us, where we want to go, and how to get there, together.
The VVA spirit is a chronicle of our common struggle to represent the interests of our generation of veterans by acknowledging our origins, and by honoring the memory of those we lost, by serving those who survived. We recognize that our founding principle imposes a condition on each of us: "Never Again Will One Generation Of Veterans Abandon Another."
Peace be with you.
Welcome Home to VVA..
E-mail us at TheVeteran@vva.org