Eric Sanders carried some stark, simple facts into Monday’s veterans affairs roundtable held in Eastern Iowa Community Colleges’ downtown Davenport campus.
“Two men, veterans of the Iraq war, are suspected to have killed themselves in the Muscatine area in the past 60 days,” said Sanders, one of the veterans who heads up the Muscatine County Veterans Affairs service group. “A family member of one of those men told me, ‘I never knew the resources that were available to him.’
“I had another vet, in his 40s who was eating out of the dumpster behind the Muscatine Hy-Vee. He was shown the resources available to him, found a home and found a job. The difference is in knowing the help that is out there.”
Sanders’ message was delivered to Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa, 2nd District) and fellow Republican Congressman Mike Bost (Illinois 12th District) during what they called their “listening session” with veterans and the leaders of service organizations dedicated to helping those who served in the armed forces.
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Along with Sanders, Joseph Lemon of The Abbey Addition Treatment Center in Bettendorf, Lola Vendewalle of Quad-City Veterans Outreach, and Bryan Miller of the Quad-Cities Veterans Network were on hand to provide feedback and raise issues.
“We are asking the basic question, ‘How does a veteran of the armed services become a civilian again?’ And it’s not an easy question,” said Bost, the ranking member of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. “We know in 2017 roughly 20 veterans committed suicide every day. We know that today that number is around 17.
“And of those 17, only six veterans will ever seek help from the Veterans Administration. Eleven will never use the resources available to them. It is a number we have to change.”
Miller-Meeks highlighted one of the stumbling blocks veterans face when looking for social, medical or employment services.
“All of what we heard was important today, but I have to say hearing about the ongoing problems vets are having with documents, especially the DD-214s, was very eye-opening,” Miller-Meeks said. “It is going to be some legislation I’m going to be working on.”
The DD-214 is a one-page document that provides a service member’s discharge date and details of military service. Sanders pointed out that a veteran cannot…
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