Agent Orange linked to death 20 years later

20 years after death, veteran's illnesses linked to Vietnam

The Jackson Sun
• March 30, 2008


Almost 20 years after his death, the Department of Veterans Affairs has recognized that an area Army veteran had a valid claim to service-related disability benefits.

"I wish he could've been alive to have it," said Virginia Grimes, the widow of veteran Andrew Grimes. She will receive a service-connected death benefit compensation in light of this recognition.

Her husband, a Gibson County native, fought in Vietnam and Cambodia and had began filing paperwork with the Veterans Administration in 1987 to get benefits after he became ill. He died at age 40 on Dec. 5, 1988, after The American Legion Magazine had featured him in a story about Vietnam veterans' filing for disability.

Grimes said her husband always believed his declining health and a rare lymphoma cancer were results of his exposure to the chemical defoliant Agent Orange during combat in the jungles of Cambodia in 1970.
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