Admiral Mike Mullen talks about homeless veterans

Conversations at the Capitol
Top military officer discusses wide range of issues at Chambersburg theater

By KATE S. ALEXANDER
kate.alexander@herald-mail.com
9:41 p.m. EST, February 10, 2011


If not for family, Retired U.S. Army Spc. Gabriel Fauntleroy would be homeless, he said.

Last year Fauntleroy, who lives in Fayetteville, was medically retired from the U.S. Army after he broke his back while serving in Afghanistan in 2006.

Fauntleroy twirled a cane in his left hand as he told of his meager, barely $1,200 monthly retirement subsidy and how a beleaguered bureaucratic process has kept him waiting for disability from Veterans Affairs (VA).

Forced to make frequent trips between Chambersburg, Pa. and the Martinsburg, W.Va. VA Hospital for therapy and treatment of his injury, he said he has to rely on his family's charity just to survive.

"Honestly, right now, without my in-laws, we'd be homeless," he said. "With $1,200 a month to live on, a wife and two kids, I mean, there is just no way I could do it."

Fauntleroy was one of the many faces that filled the Capitol Theatre Thursday to listen to Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Like many people, Fauntleroy was hoping for some answers from Mullen.

"I was hoping to get some kind of clarification, some kind of answer on why it is taking so long to get my VA percentages finalized," he said. "It's been four months."

In his opening address to the nearly packed house, Mullen spoke of the problem of homeless veterans.

"When these wars started in 2003, as a Vietnam vet, one of the things I worried about the most was generating another generation of homeless vets," Mullen said. "While I live in a very nice set of quarters in Washington (D.C.), not a stone's throw away from me I can see my peers from Vietnam who are still sleeping on the street. We can't do that again in our country."

Fauntleroy's father-in-law, Retired Marine Col. George Germann, asked Mullen what the military is doing to address the bureaucracy that has continually pushed veterans like his son-in-law onto the edge of homelessness.
read more here
Conversations at the Capitol