Cancer survivors celebrate life, hope and community support

These local veterans fought one of their hardest battles after their service, and today they celebrated
Dayton Daily News
By Bennett Leckrone, Staff Writer
June 1, 2018

“There’s much more to healing (than medical treatment) It takes family, it takes friends, it takes community.” Jennifer DeFrancesco

The Dayton Veterans Affairs Medical Center held its first Cancer Survivors’ Day on Friday. SCOTT KESSLER/STAFF.

When Ray Smeltzer, a Miamisburg resident and Vietnam veteran, was diagnosed with prostate cancer around a year ago, he wasn’t aware it could have been caused by his military service.

Smeltzer’s aggressive prostate cancer, he was told, was associated with a foliage-killing chemical he had encountered as an Air Force sergeant in Vietnam.

“I went through a number of years without any evidence of contamination, but in my later years I found that I had a very aggressive and rapidly growing form of prostate cancer that they’ve associated with that exposure,” Smeltzer said.

Seeking treatment, he went somewhere new: The Dayton Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

On Friday, he attended an event at the VA Medical Center to celebrate cancer survivors. Through all of his treatment and surgeries, Smeltzer said, the VA has supported and served him.
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Containers carrying cremains of 56 people found in foreclosed home

Cremains thought to be interred at national cemetery
Sept. 26, 2012
By Kelli Wynn
Staff Writer

Dayton — Dellaina Grundy thought her father’s cremains had been interred at the Dayton National Cemetery more than 10 years ago.

On Tuesday, she found out that his remains were among containers carrying cremains of 56 people that had been found last week at foreclosed Dayton home co-owned by former funeral director Scherrie McLin.

“My mother got a call from the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office. She was told that they had found his remains in the home,” said Grundy of Jefferson Township. “He assured me that he was positive that my father was not in that grave. He had his remains in his office.”

The coroner’s office so far has contacted 20 families about loved one’s remains being found at the house at 2121 Philadelphia Drive, which is co-owned by McLin’s half sister Tanya Anderson.
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linked from Stars and Stripes

535 Veterans possibly exposed to HIV and Hepatitis by dentist in Dayton

VA Dentist May Have Exposed Veterans To HIV, Hepatitis

DAYTON: 535 Vets Possibly Infected At Dental Clinic
Jill Del Greco, Reporter
Posted: 10:30 am EST February 8, 2011
Updated: 11:28 pm EST February 8, 2011

DAYTON, Ohio -- More than 500 local veterans may have been exposed to diseases like HIV and Hepatitis.
On Tuesday, officials at the Dayton VA Center said 535 veterans may have been exposed to infectious diseases during visits to the dental clinic over the past eighteen years.
A testing clinic has been set up on the grounds of the Dayton VA Center effective immediately.
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VA Dentist May Have Exposed Veterans To HIV, Hepatitis

Army veteran wearing military fatigues kills himself at the VA

I still cry. Doesn't matter how many years I do this or how many posts I have to put up about one more suicide, it just never gets easier. Lives gone when there should have been no reason to end up feeling so hopeless they choose death over surviving as a veteran. When you think of what they survived in combat, what they managed to return from, to find they cannot survive back home, that is the loudest alarm bell humanly possible to sound, but too few hear it.

They face death all the time, but they survive. They are supposed to be able to survive living here after but too many can't. Their lives are supposed to be out of danger once back on American soil but too many times being back home is more dangerous to them than being in combat. They are supposed to be able to face their enemy and defeat them, or die trying but what happens when the enemy is inside of them and they have no help to defeat the enemy then? What happens when they are forced to fight alone? When they go for help but the help is not available or good enough to really help? What then? This is just one more result of the neglect they face in a system too overloaded to take care of all the wounded and programs that just don't work when they can get into them.

We can't save all of them but we should be a lot better at saving more after all these years of trying. So who's listening? Who's doing anything about this? We've been hearing since 2004 they are getting their act together but the veterans are still dying at their own hands. When will we get this right and stop letting it be more life threatening for them to come home than it is to be deployed into combat?

Photos courtesy of Thereasa Osborne of Elm City, N.C. Infantryman Jesse Huff hands out candy to a child during a patrol in Iraq in 2006.

Huff’s suicide caused many veterans seeking treatment there Friday to pause and ask questions. The veterans shook their heads or talked in small groups in the parking lot near where Huff’s body was found.

Former soldier kills self on steps of VA center
Iraq war veteran left no suicide note, police say
Jesse C. Huff ‘wasn’t the same when he came back’ from Iraq, a cousin says.

By Lucas Sullivan and Margo Rutledge Kissell
Staff Writers
Updated 11:25 PM Friday, April 16, 2010
DAYTON — Authorities might never completely determine why Jesse C. Huff dressed in Army fatigues, walked to the steps of the Dayton Veterans Affairs Department’s Medical Center and shot himself to death Friday morning.

Police said they found no suicide note and knew of no ominous statements he made to employees while inside the medical center hours before his death.

Huff’s cousin, Jason Osborne, 32, of Wilson, N.C., said Friday evening that he saw Huff two months ago while visiting his grandmother in Dayton.

“He was a really good guy. He just went through a lot after he got out of the Iraq war,” Osborne said in a phone interview. “It really affected him mentally. He wasn’t the same when he came back.”

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Iraq war veteran left no suicide note, police say

Staff photo Ron Alvey An assault rifle lies in front of the Dayton VA Medical Center, located at 4100 W. Third St. Police on the scene said the death is the result of a suicide. The deceased man, Jesse C. Huff, was 27 years old and had been seen in the medical center's emergency room prior to his body being found outside, according Donna Simmons, VA spokeswoman.

Did war vet kill self to make a statement?

Man had been in VA emergency room earlier in the morning.

By Lucas Sullivan and Margo Rutledge Kissell
Staff Writers
Updated 11:23 PM Friday, April 16, 2010

DAYTON — Jesse Charles Huff walked up to the Veterans Affairs Department’s Medical Center on Friday morning wearing U.S. Army fatigues and battling pain from his Iraq war wounds and a recent bout with depression.

The 27-year-old Dayton man had entered the center’s emergency room about 1 a.m. Friday and requested some sort of treatment. But Huff did not get that treatment, police said, and about 5:45 a.m. he reappeared at the center’s entrance, put a military-style rifle to his head and twice pulled the trigger.

Huff fell near the foot of a Civil War statue, his blood covering portions of the front steps.

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Did war vet kill self to make a statement




Army veteran wearing military fatigues kills himself at the VA
By Dan Sewell - The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Apr 16, 2010 14:01:09 EDT

DAYTON, Ohio — An Army veteran wearing military fatigues shot and killed himself Friday with an assault rifle on the steps of a Veterans Affairs medical center in Ohio where he had been a patient, authorities said.

Police found a rifle and a satchel near the body, which was on the steps of the Dayton VA center’s main entrance Friday morning. Bomb squad members detonated the satchel, but there was no immediate information on what was in the bag.

The Montgomery County coroner identified the man as 27-year-old Jesse Huff.
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Former soldier kills self on steps of VA center

7,000 to 8,000 homeless veterans are female

New Housing Serves Homeless Female Vets
October 20, 2008
Associated Press

DAYTON, Ohio - Carisa Dogen is an Army veteran. She's also homeless, and has slept in parks and scavenged for food in trash cans.

"It's real tough, especially on nights when it's cold and rainy," Dogen, 38, said as she sat inside The Other Place, a homeless shelter. "I got accosted a couple of times by males. Walking the streets and stuff, it's hard and it's scary."

Dogen is among the 7,000 to 8,000 homeless female U.S. military veterans as estimated by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. She is among the few who are hoping to benefit from new housing specifically for female veterans, an initiative homeless advocates say falls far short of what is needed.

A 27-unit renovated apartment building for female veterans on the Dayton Veterans Affairs Medical Center campus was completed in August. It is expected to be filled by mid-November.

The facility is one of the largest of about a dozen around the nation, said Peter Dougherty, director of homeless-veterans programs for Veterans Affairs. Run by a private housing agency, it will give veterans access to medical services, day care, job training, and drug and alcohol counseling.

The homeless female veteran is a relatively new phenomenon because only recently have so many women been in the military, said Todd DePastino, a historian at Waynesburg University in Pennsylvania who wrote a book on the history of homelessness.

Nearly 11 percent of U.S. troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are women. Women make up about 5 percent of homeless veterans, up from 3 percent 10 years ago, according to the VA.

"It's a national embarrassment," said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

More women are showing up at the door of Swords to Plowshares, a San Francisco group that provides housing and other services to homeless veterans.
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