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BY JOHN ROWAN
Well, we finished VVA Summer School—better know as
our National Leadership Conference. The overwhelming consensus
of opinion was that it may have been the best one yet. I
want to thank everyone who attended, as well as the presenters,
the Conference Committee, and all the folks in South Carolina
who helped make this conference a great success. I know I
speak for everyone when I say that we all enjoyed the city
of Greenville and the local hospitality. Now, we can take
our newly acquired knowledge and go forward on behalf of
our veterans and their families.
I want to congratulate Elaine
Simmons, the new President of the Associates of Vietnam Veterans
of America, and all her newly elected officers. The officers
and directors of VVA look forward to working with them.
It
is hard to believe that we have been advocating for veterans
for thirty years now. But every once in a while we need to
remind ourselves why we do this work. Recently, I received
an e-mail from a disgruntled World War II veteran, who took
umbrage with our founding principle, “Never again will
one generation of veterans abandon another.” While
I can sympathize with his feelings that he did not do anything
wrong, I did have to explain things to him. My response follows.
I hope it will remind us of who we are and why.
“Dear
Sir, while I appreciate that you may have a problem with
our motto, I assure you that it was developed for valid reasons.
Our motto was adopted at our Founding National Convention
in 1983. VVA exists because many of our comrades were turned
away by the older organizations. All too often we were told
that we ‘didn’t fight in a real war’ or
were crybabies because we were willing to talk about post-traumatic
stress disorder, or post-Vietnam syndrome as it was called
at the time.
“They were not in favor of the establishment
of the storefront VetCenters, which have proved so valuable
in treating the mental health problems associated with warfare.
Furthermore, our concerns about Agent Orange were ignored
for years, while many of the other veterans’ service
organizations sided with the VA when they downplayed our
concerns. The American Legion finally did fund some mortality
studies that began to show the effects of the use of toxic
defoliants. VVA was the only VSO to support the development
of the Court of Veterans Appeals, which gives a veteran the
chance for his day in court against the VA bureaucracy.
“Our
motto is very clear to the new generation of veterans, who
understand that our activities have insured that never again
will America’s warriors be ignored by the American
people, whether they are for or against the war.”
As
we go into this fall election period, make sure that you
let everyone running for office know how we feel and that
they must care for all veterans and their families.
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2008, Vietnam Veterans of America. All Rights Reserved. 8605 Cameron
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