Community Steps Up When Veterans Need Help and Finally Ask

Help available for veterans often too proud to ask for it
Herald Tribune
Dale White
Staff Writer
May 19, 2027

MANATEE COUNTY — C. J. Bannister remembers the Marine veteran who stood “tall and proud” before her. “He was so humbled and embarrassed” to ask for her assistance, the director of veterans services for Goodwill Manasota remembered.

After eight tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, he returned to his family in the Sarasota-Manatee area. After three months, “his (Veterans Administration) benefits had still not kicked in,” Bannister said. If he could not quickly pay his bill, he told her, the electricity would be shut off at his home the next day.

As it and several other local agencies do every day, Goodwill helped that veteran and many others get through a crisis — whether it is keeping a roof over their families’ heads and food on the table, assisting them in finding a job or qualifying for VA benefits.

Sometimes, the help could be as simple as rewriting a resume, which Bannister, a former paralegal with the Air Force, learned she had to do. After she unsuccessfully applied for employment for months, another veteran helped her strip her resume of military jargon and convey her job skills in civilian terms.
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Florida Military and Veterans Assistance Program to Protect Protectors

Florida's military, veterans getting more protection against scammers

Attorney General launches 'Military and Veterans Assistance Program'

By Jodi Mohrmann - Managing Editor of special projects

Posted: 12:35 PM, May 17, 2017

“Florida has more than 90,000 active duty and reserve military members and more than 1.5 million veterans,” said Bondi.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Service members, military veterans and their families are often targeted by scammers, and now Florida's Attorney General is doing something new to help protect all of them.

Today, Attorney General Pam Bondi launched the Military and Veterans Assistance Program or MVAP. It's a new consumer protection program that will directly assist the military and veteran communities with consumer protection-related issues.

More Military Headlines

• Veterans beware of scam Choice Program phone line
• Service members, veterans often targeted in ripoffs

“Florida has more than 90,000 active duty and reserve military members and more than 1.5 million veterans,” said Bondi. “To the men and women who have put on a uniform to protect our country, we will continue to do everything we can to protect you from these scammers. As Memorial Day approaches at the end of this month, I am honored to have the opportunity to assist the heroes who lay their lives on the line to keep us safe.”

Members of Bondi’s MVAP team will provide resources and information to base JAG officers, county veteran service officers and other organizations across the state to help service members and veterans learn how to protect themselves from scams and file complaints.

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Vietnam Veteran Helping Others When They Have No Home

Vietnam medic now heals lives of fellow vets
CNN
By Kathleen Toner
May 18, 2017

Wheaton, Illinois (CNN)As a medic with the U.S. Marines, Bob Adams put his life on the line for his men in some of the most intense battles of the Vietnam War.

After returning home, he faced another devastating fight.

CNN Hero Bob Adams

"The war followed me home," Adams said. "I began to drink more heavily and use drugs. And that would help sometimes with what I didn't know I had, which was post-traumatic stress."

Adams struggled for more than a decade -- enduring a stretch of homelessness -- before he got sober in 1985. By the mid-90s, he was a clinical social worker specializing in PTSD. He started feeding the homeless in Chicago and realized that many of the people on the streets were veterans.

"I began to see signs: 'Vietnam veteran. Will work for food,' " Adams said. "It was pretty clear that something had gone very, very wrong."

"Marines do not leave anyone behind. ... To see that code being broken shocked me into action."

Adams developed a plan to help, and his efforts gained momentum in 2004 when he met Dirk Enger, a U.S. Marine and Gulf War veteran who shared his passion. In 2007, they opened the Midwest Shelter for Homeless Veterans in a clapboard, single-family home that accommodated five veterans.

Today, the nonprofit provides nearly 400 veterans a year with free assistance, including housing and counseling.

The group's transitional housing program helps veterans for up to two years. Residents do chores, attend 12-step classes and spend four hours a day seeking employment or acquiring job skills. The five residents become a squad of sorts.
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Suicidal Call For Help Leaves Afghanistan Veteran Dead

Afghanistan Veteran, husband, Dad, friend and now dead after over a decade of folks running all over the country making veterans aware they are committing suicide. Trouble is, they forgot to actually mention to them how they can heal. 

If you are still supporting suicide awareness after reading this site, please stop reading. If you haven't gotten the message yet, you never will understand that you've been part of the problem.

Man shot, killed by Tustin police after standoff was Army veteran who struggled with PTSD, friend says
Orange County Register
By CHRIS HAIRE and ALMA FAUSTO
PUBLISHED: May 16, 2017

“This is something he was battling for three years,” she said Wednesday. Fuentes, who lived in Tustin and had a wife and a young son, served with Cannon’s husband and became like family.

TUSTIN A man fatally shot by police Tuesday night after a two-hour standoff was identified as 24-year-old Edwin Fuentes, who, a close friend said, served in the U.S. Army in Afghanistan and struggled with PTSD.

At about 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 16, there was a call of a suicidal man in the 16200 block of Main Street in Tustin, near the Santa Ana Zoo and Prentice Park. Officers found Fuentes sitting in a car in an alley behind an apartment complex, Tustin Lt. Bob Wright said.
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Veteran Suicide Press Released Removed Truth!

More BS with the number!! Who did it come from? A Vietnam veteran!

“Veterans are returning from combat and committing suicide at a rate of 22 per day!” Delate emphatically declared. “Awareness and prevention is key, and I am doing everything I can to educate veterans and civilians alike to make a difference.”

Educate veterans and civilians on a fabrication?

So many people running around the country taking about veterans committing suicide without a single clue, yet reporters just let them talk as if it is fact. Will folks ever get it right?

Did he bother to read the report to know that is not true?

MEMORIAL DAY is an intimate portrayal of a veteran suffering from the wounds of war and on the verge of suicide who, through his story and numerous characters, experiences a transformation and redemption that offers hope and promise to new and old veterans and civilians alike. Delate wrote the theatrical version, which has been performed in New York, Los Angeles, and Hanoi.

Local Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial Day Addresses PTSD and Suicide press release didn't bother to mention that the majority of the veterans committing suicide are over the age of 50! Yep, that's right. But had anyone bothered to actually read the report, they'd know that. Save guess that had this been actually an important enough topic, they would have actually read the report!

Take a look at this and then tell me how all this "awareness" has done any good?