White House honors 11 for veterans efforts
Published: May 25, 2012
WASHINGTON — With Memorial Day approaching, White House officials this week honored 11 veterans advocates for their efforts to help troops back from the current wars and earlier conflicts.
The focus this week has been on Vietnam veterans, with the Defense Department marking the 50th anniversary of the start of that conflict next week. Those honored said older veterans still face significant challenges and need the assistance to recover from their decades-old struggles.
“When I retired at 57, my life came apart because I never dealt with many of those issues,” said Samuel Luna, a Vietnam veteran and founder of Vets’ Journey Home Texas. “So many of us veterans are retiring now, and facing PTSD and problems we never spoke about. So we try and reach them, and we want to get to the younger vets too so they don’t have to carry what we did for 50 years.”
Luna’s group provides weekend retreats for veterans to “learn about what their war experience did to them.” He has been concerned that the number of Vietnam veterans involved in the retreats has decreased in recent years, overshadowed by the challenges of the current wars.
But John Reynolds, a Vietnam vet who founded the employment assistance group Veterans2Work, said he has seen progress among corporate leaders recognizing the value of hiring veterans of all ages.
“You have to explain that it’s in their best interests,” he said. “Sometimes they’ll do it because it’s ‘the right thing to do,’ but ultimately the only thing that works is to show them why it helps their business to hire from this talent pool.”
Here’s the full list of the veterans honored as “Champions of Change” this week, and links to their organizations:
- Samuel Luna: Vets’ Journey Home Texas
- John Reynolds: Veterans2Work
- Hernán Luis y Prado: Workshops for Warriors
- Stephen Sherman: Dorie Miller Memorial Foundation
- Gail Belmont: Quilts of Honor
- Richard Kornegay: National Association for Black Veterans
- Jeff Hanson: Palmetto State Base Camp
- Robert Curry: Dryhootch.org
- T.J. Breeden: eMerging Entrepreneurs
- Cassaundra St. John: F7 Group
- Joey Strickland: Arizona Department of Veterans’ Services
