Decision to impact veterans who ride VA vans

To the Editor:

Editor’s note: This letter to U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski was released to the Times-News for publication.

Dear Senator Mikulski:

It is with reluctance that I must once again turn to you regarding a matter impacting some of our Western Maryland Veterans. At issue here is a director approved Martinsburg Veterans Administration Medical Center decision to discontinue allowing veterans who ride the DAV (disabled veterans) vans a meal on the day of their appointments.

After doing an inquiry into this, I can offer the following on how and why this happened, and also suggest your intervention on at least having this decision revisited.

First, this policy has been in effect at the VAMC for approximately 18 years. It has worked very well and truly nothing was broken that required a fix. Further, providing these veterans a meal was not technically an entitlement they rated. Funding to support this program was not, nor did it come from VA authorized appropriations.

Instead, funds were sourced for this through the Volunteer Funds Pool. The head paid employee of the Volunteer Office decided, on her own, to recommend discontinuance of this program and staffed it up the chain of command and had the director approve her recommendations.

This is truly an example of the adage win the battle, lose the war. It may be seen as a win for the Martinsburg VAMC, but clearly a loss for our veterans who rely on this service, as well as look forward to it. The adverse publicity this has caused the VAMC is so sad because it should not have happened in the first place.

The Martinsburg VAMC does a great job of supporting and taking care of our veterans. I do not believe the ramifications of their decision were fully considered when this was staffed to the Director.

By way of additional background, the majority of veterans who ride these vans do so as a last resort. They are on extremely limited incomes, and they do not have the luxury of having their kids or grandkids/friends to drive them to these appointments. In fact, several of them do not have living relatives to assist them in their time of need.

I can fully see where Martinsburg VAMC could counter that this is not an entitlement — so it’s case closed. However, I do not believe that to be the case. They have some exceptional people working there, and I feel they would welcome taking another look at this.

They do not deserve the adverse publicity levied at them as a result of this poorly staffed and unwarranted recommendation. It simply was without merit involving a disgruntled staff principal heading up the Volunteer Section.

To be part of the solution, and not the problem, why can’t the VAMC revisit this at their first convenience to have them reinstated? After all, the troops we are supporting today are our veterans of tomorrow. We all know they deserve more than this.

Finally, on behalf of our Western Maryland and surrounding Tri-State veterans, we once again thank you for our concern and compassion toward us. I remain yours in service to God, Corps, Country and my fellow veterans.

Vic Ryan Jr., Lt. Col., USMC (Ret.)

Cumberland