135 Ladies Only Veterans Honor Flight From Nebraska to DC

Female Veterans Honor Flight

"M*A*S*H" actress Loretta Swit (second from left) poses with participants in Monday's honor flight for female military veterans at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial. MIKE THEILER, For the Journal Star (Go to link above for more great pictures)

Women-only honor flight takes 135 veterans from Nebraska to D.C.
Lincoln Journal Star
JULIE KOCH
September 24, 2018

OMAHA — Since 2008, Bill and Evonne Williams have taken more than 3,500 veterans to Washington, D.C., on honor flights.

But Monday's trip to the nation's capital is different. The Patriotic Productions flight consists of all females. All of the 135 veterans are women, as are the volunteers, members of the media and the plane's pilots.

The trip, which is free to the veterans, left Omaha at 4 a.m. The veterans will spend all day Monday visiting military memorials in Washington, including Arlington National Cemetery, the 9/11 Memorial at the Pentagon, the Women in Military Service for America Memorial, the Air Force Memorial, the World War II Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall.

But before their trip to Washington, the veterans were treated to a dinner at a hotel in La Vista on Sunday evening. The guest speaker was Loretta Swit, who played Maj. Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan on the hit TV series "M*A*S*H."
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Will San Antonio community prove how they value veterans?

Veterans seek voter support for Props. 1, 4
My San Antonio
BY SCOTT HUDDLESTON
OCTOBER 28, 2013

A wounded Iraq veteran and a war widow who grieves the loss of a husband and father put a human face last week on a low-key statewide election on Nov. 5.

Veterans and politicians gathered Thursday to support Propositions 1 and 4, two of nine proposed state constitutional amendments. Both would provide property-tax relief to two groups of Texans who have borne a heavy burden from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Donna Engeman, whose husband, Chief Warrant Officer John Engeman, was killed at age 45 by a 2006 explosion in Iraq, said she's more fortunate that most Gold Star spouses. They typically are young wives, often with small children, with little experience in money management, she said after a news conference at Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 76.

Proposition 1 would give spouses of troops killed in action a full tax exemption based on the value of the first home they own once losing a husband or wife, unless they remarry. Engeman said some widows who lost husbands in Vietnam and more recent wars later lost their homes, unable to pay taxes and living costs.

“This is truly a lifesaver, to allow them to keep their homes. To imagine a spouse having to lose their family home, it's such a tragedy,” said Engeman, who served as an Army mechanic and now works locally as an advocate for surviving military family members.

Taxes and living costs also have forced at least two wounded veterans who received donated homes from charities into foreclosure, said J.R. Garza, a local Vietnam veteran and veterans advocate.

Wounded veterans who move from an apartment to one of the dozens of new houses, typically spacious and equipped with accessibility features, can expect to pay at least $7,000 more annually in taxes and utility costs, he said.

Proposition 4 would provide a tax break commensurate to a veteran's disability rating, for veterans or surviving spouses, on homes donated by charities. A veteran who is 70 percent disabled would have a 70 percent tax reduction. Texas has provided a full property tax exemption since 2009 for veterans with a 100 percent rating, but no discount for partially disabled vets.
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Senate votes again for full SBP to widows

Senate votes again for full SBP to widows
By Tom Philpott, Special to Stars and Stripes
European edition, Saturday, September 13, 2008



By a 94-to-2 vote, the Senate for a fourth straight year has agreed to repeal a law that bans “concurrent receipt” for military surviving spouses.

The intent is to end reduced annuities under the military Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) when a surviving spouse opts to draw Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

DIC, which is tax free, only is available to a surviving spouse if their service member has died while on active duty or as a result of a service-connected injury or ailment.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), lead sponsor of an amendment to the defense authorization bill (S 3001) to repeal the SBP-DIC offset, argued that “widows and orphans” simply seek the same sort of relief from a ban on concurrent receipt of dual benefits that Congress has delivered in recent years to seriously disabled military retirees through a series of initiatives.

“We have acted to get rid of these unjust offsets. But there is one offset that still remains…the one that affects survivors,” Nelson said. It is unfair, he said, that DIC, earned because loved ones died of service-connected causes, is used to reduce SBP, an insurance annuity retirees bought to give surviving spouses or children financial protection.

“In my previous life as the elected insurance commissioner of the state of Florida,” Nelson said, “I want you to know I never heard of any other purchased insurance annuity program that [refuses] to pay the insured benefits that the insured purchased by saying, ‘Oh, by the way, [I see] you are getting a different benefit somewhere else.’ ”

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