White House apologizes to mom of Brooklyn Marine for form-letter flap

This is one of the dangers when staffers use form letters to reply especially when the form letter they send out has nothing to do with the letter sent. It happens all the time.

I've written to politicians for years and ended up with either no response at all of replies totally ignoring what I wrote. It is not the fault of the politician but the untrained, unthinking and short-cutter staffer.

White House apologizes to mom of Brooklyn Marine for form-letter flap
BY Corky Siemaszko
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Monday, July 27th 2009, 10:14 PM


First, the mom of a murdered Brooklyn Marine got a "form letter" response from the White House - then she got an apology.

Henryka Pietrzak-Varga was deeply upset last month when she received a standard letter from a White House aide, Michael Kelleher, that urged her to contact the White House if "you still need help with a federal agency."

The White House discovered the cold-hearted error after the Daily News asked for a reaction to the mom's disappointment, which she outlined in a Polish newspaper.

Soon after, a White House official called The News to say President Obama described the murder of Sgt. Jan Pawel Pietrzak and his wife, Quiana, as a "tragic loss" and thanked the mother "for her son's service and sacrifice for this country."

"Mr. Kelleher called Mrs. Pietrzak-Varga to apologize for the error," the official said. "Mrs. Pietrzak-Varga accepted his apology, and the two spoke for approximately half an hour."

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