Aubrey Gene Laney, Coast Guard Veteran To Be Laid to Rest

Memphis Funeral Home to bury homeless veteran with military honors
WMC Action News 5
Ashley Sharp
July 12, 2017

(Source: WMC Action News 5)

MEMPHIS, TN (WMC) - A homeless veteran who died in March will finally be laid to rest on Thursday at the West Tennessee State Veterans Cemetery.

Aubrey Gene Laney, who served in the United States Coast Guard, passed away with no family members to make his funeral arrangements.

The Memphis Funeral Home and the Dignity Memorial Homeless Veterans Burial Program decided to step in and provide Laney a public memorial service and internment with military honors befitting of a veteran.

Corey Hague, the location manager at Memphis Funeral Home, hopes that the community will come together to attend the service honoring a man who dedicated part of his life to serving the country.
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Pulse Responding Officer Wins PTSD Disability Claim

UPDATE

Judge Hears Lost Wage Claims For Pulse Officer With PTSD

Jessica Realin, Gerry’s wife, said the city fought the case hard.
“You’re sitting there watching them pick apart a person, and this person served this community for 13 years proudly,” Realin said. ” For them to tear him apart as if his service didn’t matter, it’s disgraceful.”

Orlando pension board grants officer with PTSD early retirement, pension
Gerry Realin assigned to remove dead from Pulse nightclub
ClickOrlando.com
By Emilee Speck - Digital journalist
July 13, 2017

"This has been a very difficult time for my family. Listening to the evidence today was very hard." Jessica Realin

ORLANDO, Fla. - The Orlando Police Department Pension Board granted the early retirement and pension for an officer diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after he was assigned to carry bodies out of the Pulse nightclub.

Officer Gerry Realin, 37, asked the board approve his early retirement on permanent disability. The veteran officer was not present for the board’s decision. His wife, Jessica Realin, said doctors told her it would be too stressful for him.

Gerry Realin was one of seven assigned on June 12 to remove some of the 49 dead from the Pulse building. He was diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder following his assignment to the nightclub and, according to his treating physicians, has been unable to return to work in any capacity.

The board found that Realin's PTSD was a permanent and total disability directly attributed to his response to the mass shooting.

After the decision, Jessica Realin was very emotional and thanked the board for their time and for hearing their case.
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6,000 Veterans Waited Decades for Answers on Experiments

Lawmakers want Defense Department to declassify info about experiments on troops

STARS AND STRIPES
By NIKKI WENTLING
Published: July 12, 2017

Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., has been questioning the Defense Department about the testing since he was elected to the House in 1999, when a Navy veteran who had been subjected to chemical agents asked Thompson to look into it.

Airman 1st Class Harry Leonard, postal clerk, sorts mail while wearing nuclear-biological-chemical gear during a test to evaluate his unit's ability to perform under fallout conditions in October, 1978. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

WASHINGTON – Three lawmakers introduced a measure Wednesday to force the Defense Department to declassify records about chemical and biological testing that the government performed on servicemembers in the 1960s and 1970s, in an attempt to connect the affected veterans with Department of Veterans Affairs benefits and health care.

The Defense Department conducted the land- and sea-based tests, known as Project 112 and Project SHAD (Shipboard Hazard and Defense) from 1962 to 1974 to learn the effects of chemical and biological agents such as nerve gas and E. coli. About 6,000 servicemembers were affected, according to the VA.

“Veterans were exposed to some of the most extreme and hazardous agents during the SHAD project and 112 and now suffer from debilitating health care conditions,” said Ken Wiseman, associate legislative director with Veterans of Foreign Wars.
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WWII Started Veteran Sailor Couple's Love Story

Veteran couple enjoys long deployment together: 70 years and counting
San Diego Union Tribune
Lyndsay Winkley
July 11, 2017

Soon after, his friends and their new girlfriends invited him to take a trip to Big Bear, enticing him with the promise of a date. It was Anita

Anita and Melvin, both World War II veterans who live in a Chula Vista veteran's home, just celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary. (Courtesy of Mark Holt)

Melvin said the ship was about 100 yards from the starboard bow of the battleship Missouri, where Japan’s formal surrender took place. The sky was black with airplanes, he recalled, adding that they were loaded for bear in case the Japanese had planned an attack.

“I was on the flight deck watching the whole thing through binoculars,” he said.

One of his last assignments was to ferry women and children held captive in Japan to their freedom in Shanghai.

Meanwhile, Anita Holt’s considerable typing and shorthand skills helped propel her from a Seaman Apprentice to a Yoeman First Class.

“That was as high as you could go in enlisted rates,” Melvin said. “She was very smart.”
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Time To Do More Than Raise Awareness

If everyone is raising awareness, why don't veterans stop killing themselves? 

Isn't that a fair question? Isn't that a question all of us should be asking? There is another question that all of us should be, not only asking, but getting an answer to; What good are they doing for veterans?

It is easy to talk about how much someone cares but a lot harder to care enough to know what will help. Then they need to be willing to do it as well as prepared to do it.

Ok, confession time. A few weeks ago I had yet one more frustrating conversation with a local charity for veterans. It turned out they were not doing the work, but sending veterans to others to do the work. Top that off with only selected veterans and their families were welcome. The OEF and OIF veterans mattered enough but the majority of our veterans didn't.

When I asked them if they were aware of the fact that 65% of the veterans committing suicide were over the age of 50, the answer was "yes" but they were not willing to do anything for them.

So why are the majority of the veterans being neglected? Or should I say, rejected, simply because they were here longer?

Are you still writing checks to these new groups when your husband is part of the forgotten majority? Are you passing on links on Facebook to them instead of groups helping your family?

Do you honor all our veterans or just some of them? Have you even thought about that?

The results are these groups with selected attention have ended up getting in the way of veterans discovering they do have the hope of healing and are not stuck where they are. Seems like that would be a beneficial message to share with them. 

So what good are you doing our veterans? Do you find out what is really helping and who is doing the work or settle for what is popular? Raising awareness, whatever that is supposed to mean, is very popular and all kinds of stunts are being pulled all across the country. The problem is, no one in the media pushing these stories bothered to review the outcome. 

Matthew 11:29-30King James Version (KJV)29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

We, however, review the outcome on a daily basis when we read about veterans taking their own lives after surviving combat. We read about the families left behind. I don't know about you, but every time I read one, I think about how my husband is still here and how close we came to that not happening. I think about his nephew who lost his battle over a decade ago and how I could not find a way to help him. I couldn't even find the right words to get him to hear me.

I think about the lives saved over the years and then I get even sadder because this work is not glamorous, or expensive or even publicized because that is the way it needs to be. I just get sad knowing so many others could be doing the same work but do not bother.

If you really want to help them, then help them find their roots. Who they were is still in there beneath the pain of how they are right now.

The Harvest Is Plentiful, the Laborers Few35 And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few;38 therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

If you want to do more than just talk about helping veterans, then do it!

Be part of the help that has been going on since 1984 for all generations of veterans, Point Man International Ministries. We talk a lot about Veterans Courts operating now as good for them. It is the basis of how Point Man started when a Vietnam veteran/Seattle police officer, noticed he was arresting too many Vietnam veterans and he decided to do the work and help them.

Support group that are taking care of all generations. Look them up online and read their mission statement. Don't write a check to selective groups if you want to help all generations. Find out what they claim to be needing the money for.

Ask questions before giving support to any group. If they do not, or will not, answer your questions, then let others know what you discovered. The press will has shown no interest in doing it, so it is our job!

We cannot set them free from PTSD controlling their days unless we are willing to give hours digging them out of the trench.