Army veteran died days after winning re-election as Mayor

Local mayor dies 17 days after winning runoff election

KWTX 10 News
By Brandon Hamilton
Dec 28, 2018

COPPERAS COVE, Texas (KWTX) Copperas Cove Mayor Frank Seffrood died unexpectedly Friday morning at his home following a brief illness, just more than two weeks after winning a second term in a runoff election on Dec. 11.

He was 79.

The Wisconsin native was a U.S. Army veteran who retired in 1979 after 23 years of service.

Lt. Gen. Paul E. Funk II, III Corps and Fort Hood commander, issued a statement Friday expressing condolences to Seffrood’s family.

“Frank served our nation for 23 years in the Army and was always a good friend to Fort Hood with a passion for helping our soldiers and their families. He will be missed,” he said

Seffrood worked for Central Texas College from 1980 to 1986 and the U.S. Postal Service from 1986 to 2010.

He served on the Copperas Cove City Council for 6 ½ years before he was elected mayor in 2015.

He’s survived by his wife of 55 years, Rita, three children and three grandchildren.
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Doctors and veterans complain about sluggish reimbursements for care

VA works to resolve problems after doctors, veterans complain about sluggish reimbursements for care
By Rhiannon Meyers
Posted March 18, 2012

CORPUS CHRISTI — Disabled veteran Roy Stamper, 54, spends his days in front of a television, hobbling around his apartment on a cane and managing the constant sharp pain and numbness in his artificial hips with daily morphine pills.

For months, Stamper tried to find a local orthopedic surgeon to take a look at his hips and diagnose the pain, but over and over again, he found that doctors simply refused to accept a voucher that promised reimbursement for care from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Some local doctors have stopped seeing veterans because the VA has taken too long to reimburse them for the treatment.

The VA now is working to resolve the backlog of claims after U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Corpus Christi, complained that slow payments put local veterans at risk of not getting the care they need.

Officials with the regional VA health system treating Valley and Coastal Bend veterans say there are 12 outstanding claims to be processed. However, two Corpus Christi doctors say that they alone have more than 40 outstanding claims awaiting VA payment.
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Local veterans join national campaign to tell stories of Vietnam

Local veterans join national campaign to tell stories of Vietnam War's fallen
By Mike Baird
Posted March 18, 2010 at 4:23 p.m.

CORPUS CHRISTI — Local veterans have joined a national campaign to personalize our Vietnam War dead.

One is a former Miller High School drum major who watched Hurricane Beulah’s approach in September 1967 as he left for Vietnam. Army Cpl. Robert Ochoa was concerned about his parents who were patching their roof on Koepke Street, but they made it through the storm.

Two months later they learned during Thanksgiving dinner that their son was killed from a hand grenade blast Nov. 21.

Juan Saenz, 68, a surviving Vietnam veteran who was a neighbor of the family, carried Ochoa’s photo Thursday in a ceremony at Nueces County Courthouse announcing the national campaign to build The Education Center at The Wall. It’s a planned two-story underground adjunct to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The centerpiece will be a Wall of Faces with images of the more than 58,000 fallen alongside media footage and oral histories from loved ones.

Delia C. Alaniz, 81, of Corpus Christi already has provided photos and a letter from her son. Marine Pfc. Paul Alaniz Jr. was shot in the head on Mother’s Day, May 12, 1968, by a sniper in Quang Tri, Vietnam, she said.

“Paul was only in Vietnam eight days,” Alaniz said Thursday while pressing her hand against his photo. “I want everyone to remember my hero, my son.” She keeps her cell phone ring tone set with the sound of a saxophone, which he loved to play.
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Local veterans join national campaign to tell stories of Vietnam

Missing soldier's body found

Soldier's body found in bay near Corpus Christi
Houston Chronicle - United States
© 2009 The Associated Press
Jan. 3, 2009, 12:45PM
ROCKPORT, Texas — The body of a soldier missing since he apparently drove his car off a pier the day after Christmas was found along a shoreline Saturday morning.

Aransas County Sheriff Bill Mills said his office received a call just after 9 a.m. Saturday and recovered the body of Pfc. Jamie Wagner Sengvanhpheng from Copano Bay, near Corpus Christi and a few miles inland from the Texas Gulf Coast.
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