lynchburg, virginia the listening post · vietnam veterans of america “stanley e. taylor”...
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Vietnam Veterans of America “Stanley E. Taylor” Chapter 196
Lynchburg, Virginia
Apr. 11th - Chapter monthly
meeting at 6:00 PM at the
American Legion on Greenview
Drive. Take notice of the new
starting time.
Apr. 11th - AVVA Members of
Chapter 196 at 6:00 PM at the
American Legion on Greenview
Drive.
Apr. 28, 2017 - Red, White
and Blue Dance American
Legion 7:00 PM
May 13, 2017 - Lynchburg
Music Festival - The Chapter
will need 40 volunteers to help
pour beer. Contact David
Stokes to volunteer.
May 20, 2017 - Lynch Texas
Roadhouse event. See page 5.
April 1, 2017 Vol 9. Issue 4
Inside this Edition
Upcoming Events
President’s Comments
“The LisTening PosT”
Vietnam Events Sep 1950 - Apr 1954
Sep 1950 - US Military Advisors
in Saigon - The first group of
U.S. military advisors—the U.S.
Military Assistance Advisory
Group (MAAG)—arrives in Sai-
gon.
Nov 1952 - Ike Wins - Republi-
can Dwight D. Eisenhower is
elected President of the United
States. Richard M. Nixon is
elected as his Vice President.
Feb 10, 1954 - Eisenhower
Rejects Troop Commitment -
President Eisenhower refuses to
commit American troops to the
Franco-Vietnamese War. In a
press conference he states, "I
cannot conceive of a greater
tragedy for America than to get
heavily involved now in an all-
out war in any of those regions."
Mar 13, 1954 - Dien Bien Phu
Begins - The Viet Minh launch-
es its first assault on French
forces at Dien Bien Phu. The
battle will rage for over two
months.
Apr 1954 - Eisenhower De-
bates Intervention - President
Eisenhower's administration
revisits the question of direct
intervention in the Franco-
Vietnamese War.
Apr 17, 1954 - Nixon Supports
Troop Commitment - In a
speech before the press, Vice
President Richard Nixon ex-
plains that "if to avoid further
Communist expansion in Asia
and Indochina we must take the
risk now of putting our boys in, I
think the Executive has to take
the politically unpopular deci-
sion and do it."
President’s Comments 1
March Meeting Minutes 2
AVVA Happenings 2
Update on Camp Lejeune 2
VA, DOD Study PTSD 3
Cpt. Daniel Thomas, MIA 3
NC & VA Widespread Inac-
curacies 4
Adaptive Golf Program 5
To the members and associates
of Chapter 196,
While attending the State
Council meeting last month, we
had a very interesting presenta-
tion about Hepatitis C. If you
will recall, Jerry Knowlton, our
editor, had a report about this in
one of his articles. There are
some more additional things to
add to what has already been
reported on the subject of Hep-
C:
1. One in three Vietnam vets
probably have this virus,
2. If you were in a battle and
got any blood on you from
a wounded buddy,
3. While in basic training and
you got your shots with an
air gun.
If any one of these items
happened to you, then you need
to be tested for Hep-c. If hep-C
is detected, it is 100% curable
and you only have to take one
pill for twelve weeks. That is it!
Guys, Hepatitis C can kill you if
not treated. The virus can lie
dormant within your body for
many years before it shows its’
ugly head. Also if you or anyone
you know has ever gotten a
tattoo, than you should get test-
ed too. The needles may be
sterilized, but a small of amount
of blood can get inside the nee-
dle thus contaminating the ink.
Your doctor can collect a few
drops of blood and within
minutes you will have the re-
sults.
Looks like every time we turn
around there is something else
we have to contend with be-
cause of our service in “Nam.”
Sarah McVicker, our Region
Three Director, gave us an over-
view about what is being dis-
cussed at the national that will
decide VVA’s future. This is in
the early stages and we should
be hearing more about this in
the coming issues of The Veter-
an. As more information be-
comes available, I will pass it on
to you. I don’t think anything
concrete will be presented at
the convention this year but
who knows.
This just in! Kim, one of the
organizers of the Lynchburg
Music Festival wants us to be
the non-profit again this year at
the festival on May 13. This is
our biggest fund raiser and with
weather permitting, we stand a
good chance to make a lot of
money. We will need about 40
volunteers to pull this off. So
mark your calendars and sign
up at our April meeting.
Hope to see you there and
remember, we start at 1800
hours (6:00 p.m.)
Keeping you informed,
David Stokes, President
Vol 9. Issue 4 Page 2
Photos by Life Magazine Minutes of the March 2017 Meeting
Meeting was called to or-
der promptly at 6 PM. by 1st Vice
President Freddy Plesant.
Followed with pledge of alle-
giance and draping of the POW/
MIA chair by comrade George
Kolar.
Opening Prayer was given by
Gary Witt
Officers: 2016 - 2018
David Stokes - President
Freddy Pleasant - 1st VP
Jim Purdy - 2nd VP
Gary Witt - Sec.
Jim Fischel - Treas.
Directors...
Wayne Creasy
Art Ross
George Kolar
Steve Bozeman
Bob Sherman
Otto Davis
Mike Brady
Robert Crowder
Gordon Wilkins
All officers and directors were
present except David Stokes, Jim
Purdy, Steve Bozeman, Wayne
Creasy, Gordon Wilkins, Art
Ross, & Bob Sherman.
All were excused due to City
Council meeting for Desmond
Doss memorials.
Motion Made to dispense with
the reading of last months
minutes. (Passed)
Jim Fischel gave financial report
and it was approved.
Membership Report :
VVA. 190
AVVA 31
No Outreach report.
Fran Crowder reported on Brew
Madness festival. Needed more
Volunteers.
Old Business:
Still waiting on payment from
some of the brewers. Meeting
with Kim was cancelled.
David Stokes & Jim Purdy attend-
ed the State Council meeting last
week. No report.
New Business:
Otto Davis made a motion to
donate $250 to Heritage JROTC
Brandon Dizon to assist with trip
to France. (Passed)
Gary Witt reminded everyone of
the Texas Roadhouse fundraiser
for the Adaptive Golf on Monday
March 20th. He also gave out
coupons from Blaze Pizza.
Meeting was closed at 6:30pm,
with prayer by Gary Witt.
Respectfully submitted by
Gary Witt,
VVA 196 Secretary
AVVA Happenings
The AVVA just had 2 fund
raisers this past month. One was
the Brew Madness and the other
was Corks and Cuisine. May I
personally do thank the volun-
teers that helped us for these.
Without you, these two events
would not have happened. Now
next Month, we will have our
annual Red, Whit and Blue
dance at the Legion on April 28
from 7 to 10 pm. As always, we
will need help setting up for the
event and clean up after.
Our next meeting will be April 11
at 6 PM. See you then.
Fran Crowder
Chapter Representative
Update on Camp Lejeune - Contributed by Henry Wyatt
WASHINGTON – The Department
of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) regula-
tions to establish presumptions
for the service connection of
eight diseases associated with
exposure to contaminants in the
water supply at Camp Lejeune,
North Carolina, are effective as
of today.
“Establishing these presump-
tions is a demonstration of our
commitment to care for those
who have served our nation and
have been exposed to harm as a
(Continued on page 3)
Vol 9. Issue 4 Page 3
Update on Camp Lejeune - Contributed by Henry Wyatt
Page 3
result of that service,” said Secretary of Vet-
erans Affairs, Dr. David J. Shulkin. “The Camp
Lejeune presumptions will make it easier for
those Veterans to receive the care and bene-
fits they earned.”
The presumption of service connection
applies to active-duty, reserve and National
Guard members who served at Camp Lejeu-
ne for a minimum of 30 days (cumulative)
between Aug. 1, 1953, and Dec. 31, 1987,
and are diagnosed with any of the following
conditions:
• Adult leukemia
• Aplastic anemia and other myelodys-
plastic syndromes
• Bladder cancer
• Kidney cancer
• Liver cancer
• Multiple myeloma
• Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
• Parkinson’s disease
The area included in this presumption is
all of Camp Lejeune and Marine Corps Air
Station New River, including satellite camps
and housing areas.
This presumption complements the
health care already provided for 15 illnesses
or conditions as part of the Honoring Ameri-
ca’s Veterans and Caring for Camp Lejeune
Families Act of 2012. The Camp Lejeune Act
requires VA to provide health care to Veter-
ans who served at Camp Lejeune, and to
reimburse family members or pay providers
for medical expenses for those who resided
there for not fewer than 30 days between
Aug. 1, 1953, and Dec. 31, 1987.
(Continued from page 2)
Researchers from the Department of Vet-
erans Affairs (VA) and Department of Defense
(DOD) recently released findings of a new
study called Prospective Post-Traumatic
Stress disorder Symptom Trajectories in Ac-
tive Duty and Separated Military Personnel,
which examines Post Traumatic Stress Disor-
der (PTSD) symptoms in Veterans, compared
with active-duty populations.
This is the first known study comparing
PTSD symptom trajectories of current service
members with those of Veterans, and is the
product of a collaborative effort from VA and
DOD researchers analyzing data from the
Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), the largest
prospective health study of military service
members.
According to VA’s National Center for
PTSD, the PTSD rate among Vietnam Veter-
ans was 30.9 percent for men and 26.9 per-
cent for women. For Gulf War Veterans, the
PTSD rate was 12.1 percent. Operation En-
during Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom
Veterans had a PTSD rate of 13.8 percent.
“Knowing there are similarities in how
PTSD affects service members and Veterans
makes it easier to pinpoint which treatments
are the best to control the condition,” said Dr.
Edward Boyko, an epidemiologist and intern-
ist at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System
in Washington state, and VA’s lead research-
er on the Millennium Cohort Study.
Officials involved with the project said they
are hoping the collaboration will improve the
understanding of Veterans’ health needs,
relative to their experiences in service.
“The data that MCS researchers have
been collecting since 2001 is incredibly valu-
able for both the DOD and VA,” said Dr. Den-
nis Faix, director of the Millennium Cohort
Study and preventive medicine physician.
“Going forward, working with VA will allow
both agencies to make sure we are getting
the best information to develop a comprehen-
sive understanding of the continuum of
health in current and former service mem-
bers.”
The results of the joint VA DOD study will
appear in the Journal of Psychiatric Re-
search’s June 2017 issue. It is the first of
many joint future publications expected to
result from the collaboration between VA and
MCS.
You can learn more about the study here:
millenniumcohort.org/
VA, DOD study a major breakthrough for understanding PTSD
Capt. Daniel W. Thomas, MIA
U.S. Air Force Reserve Capt. Daniel W. Thom-
as, missing from the Vietnam War, has now
been accounted for.
On July 6, 1971, Thomas was the pilot of
an OV-10A aircraft with one other crewmem-
ber flying over central Laos in support of an
eight man Special Forces reconnaissance
team. When the aircraft arrived in the area,
the weather was bad, however it was deter-
mined that this would not affect the aircraft’s
mission. Approximately thirty minutes after
the last radio transmission from the OV-10A
aircraft the ground team heard an impact or
explosion to their northeast, but could not
determine the distance to the explosion. Ex-
tensive search efforts failed to locate the
crash site.
After multiple negative attempts to investi-
gate the crash site, in April 2014 a Vietnam-
ese witness provided a photograph of an ID
tag associated with one of the two crewmem-
bers. In August 2014, possible human re-
mains were approved for repatriation and
accessioned. DPAA analysis of aircraft wreck-
age and life support items indicated both
aircrew members were in the aircraft at the
time of impact. Additionally, through re-
search, analysis, and DNA testing, the DPAA
Laboratory identified the second crewmem-
ber, Maj. Donald Carr, in August 2015.
On April 12, 2016, the DPAA lab received
dental remains, ID tag, and other material
evidence from the Vietnamese Office for
Seeking Missing Persons. Laboratory analysis
of this evidence, as well as circumstantial
evidence were used in the identification of
his remains.
Vol 9. Issue 4 Page 4
A review of a dozen Veterans Affairs medi-
cal facilities in North Carolina and Virginia
identified widespread inaccuracies that vast-
ly understated veteran wait times for appoint-
ments last year, leading the VA inspector
general to conclude that VA scheduling data
is still unreliable and a “high-risk” area for
the agency. The miscalculations, outlined in
an inspector general report issued 2 MAR,
masked actual demand for care and preclud-
ed veterans from getting private sector treat-
ment, which they are supposed to be able to
get if they have to wait longer than a month
for a VA appointment.
The inspector general looked at primary
and mental health care appointments for
new patients and referrals for specialists and
found that overall, 36% had to wait longer
than a month for an appointment, but the VA
scheduling system said only 10% had waited
that long.
The report estimated that as many as
13,800 veterans should have been able to
get VA-sponsored care in the private sector
because of their long waits, but the VA never
added them to lists authorizing them to re-
ceive outside care under the so-called Choice
program. VA staffers entered the wrong dates
in the scheduling system in some cases and
didn’t follow up on appointment requests in a
timely way in others. In a few cases, medical
center directors or other supervisory staff
disagreed with national guidelines designed
to ensure veterans see specialists within a
time frame dictated by their referring doctor.
So they just didn’t require staff to follow
them. The inspector general also reviewed
records of veteran patients who were added
to Choice lists and managed to get appoint-
ments outside the VA. Auditors found that
82% of them waited longer than 30 days,
and on average, they waited nearly three
months.
“Choice did not reduce wait times to re-
ceive necessary medical care for many veter-
ans,” Larry Reinkemeyer, assistant inspector
general for audits, wrote in the report.
The investigation is the largest on wait-
time manipulation at the VA since 2014,
when at least 40 veterans died waiting to be
seen at the Phoenix VA while schedulers
there kept secret wait lists hiding how long
they were waiting. The inspector general has
looked at more than 100 medical centers
individually since then and found widespread
problems, but the most recent investigation
is the first to assess the reliability of wait-
time data in an entire region, the mid-Atlantic
in this case. And it identified flaws in the
scheduling system still used by VA facilities
nationwide.
VA Secretary David Shulkin, whom the
Senate confirmed unanimously a month ago,
was undersecretary for health at the time of
the audit, which stretched from April 2016 to
last month. He said the agency has already
taken action to improve wait times for the
Choice program, and he disputed the find-
ings about inaccurate wait times because he
disagrees with the way the inspector general
calculated them, according to his response
included with the report. “I cannot concur
with some of the conclusions in this report
nor use them for management decisions,”
Shulkin wrote. He said they are also based
on outdated rules for scheduling appoint-
ments. Shulkin issued new rules in July..
Understating wait times. But the inspec-
tor general said that even after taking those
rules into account, schedulers entered dates
that understated how long veterans were
waiting in nearly 60% of appointments.
“Thus even if we calculate wait times
using VHA’s updated policy, which was not in
effect during the scope of our audit, there
were still significant inaccuracies,” Rein-
kemeyer wrote.
“VA data reliability continues to be a high-
risk are,” he said, adding that the findings
are consistent with others by the Government
Accountability Office as recently as last
month.
His office reviewed a sampling of more
than 1,400 appointment records from the
last quarter of 2015 and found veterans
waited an average of 27 days for primary
care appointments — the VA scheduling sys-
tem said the average was only eight days. For
mental health, the inspector general found
the average wait was 26 days, but the VA
system showed 6 days. And for referrals to
specialists, the audit found veterans waited
an average of 36 days, while the VA system
said the wait was 10 days.
The inspector general tracked the time
between appointment requests and the actu-
al appointments. The VA system, on the other
hand, tracks the time between dates that
veterans say they want to be seen or when a
doctor says they should be seen and their
actual appointments. For example, if a veter-
an asks for an appointment in two weeks or if
a doctor says come back in two weeks, the
wait time clock starts in two weeks instead of
at the time of the request.
“VHA believes it is very important to re-
spect veterans’ preferences for when they
want to be seen,” Shulkin wrote in his re-
sponse to the report.
But depending on schedulers to enter the
right dates can lead to inaccurate results. For
example:
The inspector general found a new vet-
eran patient asked in August 2015
for a primary care appointment and
didn’t get one until nearly two
months later, but the VA system
showed zero wait time because the
scheduler entered the appointment
date as the preferred date.
In another case, a veteran seeking a
mental health appointment in July
2015 couldn’t get one until the end
of September that year. Four days
before the appointment, the VA
canceled it along with others that
day. A scheduler rebooked it two
months later in November 2015
and entered that date as the one
preferred by the veteran. The sys-
tem showed zero wait time even
though the wait was actually four
months.
Republican Rep. Richard Hudson of North
Carolina, home to nine of the 12 medical
facilities audited, said the resulting report
“shines a light on a systemic, bureaucratic
problem at the VA.”
“It is an absolute fiasco and our veterans
deserve better,” he said in a statement 3
MAR.
“I am alarmed and outraged that employ-
ees weren’t following proper reporting proto-
col, preventing veterans from accessing time-
ly, quality care through the Choice Pro-
gram.” [Source: USA TODAY | Donovan
Slack ]
NC & VA Widespread Inaccuracies
VA Secretary David Shulkin
Vietnam Veterans of
America—Chapter 196
Lynchburg , Virginia Vietnam Veterans of America
Chapter 196
439 Westview Circle
Lynchburg, VA 24504.
Give This to a Fellow Vietnam Veteran...
www.vva.org
www.vva-vasc.org
The Vietnam Veterans of America associa-
tion is a "home of our own" - a community of
fellowship with people who share your expe-
riences, needs, and hopes for the future.
Agent Orange is still with us and our num-
bers are dwindling, probably at a much fast-
er rate then we would like it. That makes it
even more important for Vietnam Veterans
to have a viable and strong organization to
represent us in Washington
Membership is open to U.S. armed force
veterans who served on active duty (for oth-
er than training purposes) in the Republic of
Vietnam between Feb.. 28, 1961 and May 7,
1975, or in any duty location between Aug.
5, 1964 and May 7, 1975.
To have a fellow Vietnam Veteran join, either
cut out the application and give it to the Vet
or better yet, give your copy of our newsletter
to him or her. Don’t forget that a copy of
their DD-214 with their membership applica-
tion is required.
Families, friends, supporters, and veterans
of other eras can join the Associates of Vi-
etnam Veterans of America and receive the
same benefits, including a subscription to
The VVA Veteran.