Lighthouse keeper who rescued mariners will be the first woman honored with a street name at Arlington National Cemetery
Washington Post
By Michael E. Ruane
September 5, 2018
In its 154-year history, all of the more than 40 roadways have been named after men — such as Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ulysses S. Grant, and Gens. George Patton and John Pershing, the cemetery said.
Ida Lewis saved at least a dozen people during her service at the Lime Rock Lighthouse in Newport, R.I. (Library of Congress)
In her day, she was the heroine of the Lime Rock Lighthouse, the intrepid young woman who by herself rowed into the stormy waters of Newport harbor in Rhode Island to rescue mariners in distress.
She was Ida Lewis, the shy daughter of a disabled sea captain. And after bold rescues in the late 1800s, she was front page news. She was given awards. VIPs clamored to see her. A polka, “The Ocean Waves Dashed Wildly High,” was written in her honor, and the sheet music bore her image.
But since she died in 1911, her deeds have been largely forgotten.
As Arlington National Cemetery opens its new $81.7 million section with solemn fanfare on Thursday, she will become the first woman to have one of the cemetery’s drives named for her.
“It’s a big deal,” Karen Durham-Aguilera, executive director of Army National Military Cemeteries, said this week. “It’s a huge commemoration.”
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Joliet police officer dies in apparent suicide
By The Herald-News
September 6, 2018
A Joliet police officer apparently committed suicide Tuesday in a Cook County Forest Preserve.
Daniel Rupp, 33, was pronounced dead about 3 p.m. Tuesday in the Sag Valley Equestrian parking lot in Lemont, according to the forest preserve police and medical examiner’s office.
Rupp’s body was found outside his personal vehicle, and a handgun was located nearby, said Sophia Ansari, a spokeswoman for the Cook County Sheriff’s Office.
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The delusion of awareness
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
September 5, 2018
I do not send veterans to the "awareness" folks for more help than I can give. I send them to professionals because they do in fact make a difference!
Are they therapists? Are they psychologists or psychiatrists?
Have they invested years of getting college degrees to help people living with mental health conditions? Are they members of the clergy, listening to people who have lost all hope?
What qualifies the "awareness" raisers to earn all the millions people donate to them all the time?
What is so important about the stunts they pull to attract reporters all over the country and being bestowed such publicity?
Why aren't we asking those questions?
Thirty six years ago I started to research PTSD and invested years training to do this work for one reason. It was personal to me. I did it for the veteran I loved, and fell in love with veterans. I do not make my living off this work. It is not my occupation. It is my obligation!
I know what it is like to feel all alone, lost and confused. Above all, what it is like to lose hope.
I can tell you right now, that after all the years of hearing the "awareness" folks, not once have I heard the one thing veterans need to hear the most. The one reason that will make them want to get up one more day.
Who thought that telling veterans they were committing suicide was a good thing to do? Hell, we did that way back over a decade ago, because no one was taking it seriously. Back then we thought it was eighteen a day. Then again, we thought that if we let people know what was going on, someone would do something to help.
I read the DOD Suicide report, see the numbers remain about 500 a year, and I grieve. Those men and women were willing to die to save others, but did not think they were worth saving too? What the hell did these groups do for them?
I read the news reports from across the country and see the veterans' families left behind, grieving and wondering what they did wrong. I wonder what the hell these groups did for them.
How does raising awareness of a number, that is not the whole truth, give anyone a reason to fight to stay alive?
This delusion of doing anything worthy of the lives we continue to lose must end!
The groups attempt to gain attention but so do the veterans who have committed suicide in public so that some knows they were here and suffered.
The veterans over the age of fifty, the majority of the known veterans committing suicide, are wondering why they no longer matter to the folks claiming to be raising awareness.
The one thing these veterans needed to hear was that there was HOPE for them to heal and live a better quality of life. That they really mattered and not were reduced to a slogan of a number when they all had names!
You may say that it is not hurting anyone to get the number wrong. Some have even had the audacity to say "It is just a number" when defending the use of the "20" or "22" a day.
They live their lives making a living off the fact that veterans continue to take their own lives. Professionals make their living off saving them, one at a time. That is the only number they need to know because they have a name to go with it!
Millions collected, Tampa charity for veterans goes MIA
WFLA
By: Steve Andrews
Posted: Sep 04, 2018
TAMPA, Fla.
People donated millions to Tampa charity VetMade Industries, Inc., to help train unemployed, disabled veterans.
The program was designed to teach veterans how to make Adirondack style furniture and get them them used to reporting for work and getting a paycheck.
An 8 On Your Side investigation found as donations from a generous public poured in, the woodworking shop at VetMade Industries stayed empty, the machinery sat idle, the doors closed tight.
According to founder and Executive Director John Campbell, the whole program was on hold.
How long has it been on hold?
"Going on five years, that we're, I call it a caretaker status," Campbell explained.
Caretaking what?
Tax records show that in three years, $5.5 million dollars in donations flowed into VetMade Industries.
During that same period, not one veteran received training.
"Zero goes to the veterans," retired Army veteran Ken Cook said.
Cook was among the original volunteers at VetMade Industries when it launched in 2009.
What he found was disappointing.
"There was a high falutin fancy program on paper, but the reality was that there wasn't any kind of organized training going on in any way, shape or form," Cook stated.
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Researchers find photographs of every Floridian whose name is listed on Vietnam Memorial Wall
Pensacola News Journal
Melissa Nelson Gabriel
Sept. 4, 2018
The final photograph posted by the group was of Army Pfc. Thomas J. Burton of Pompano Beach who died on Nov. 20, 1968, in Binh Duong Province at age 21.
After months of intensive work, researchers have found photographs of all 1,957 Floridians killed during the Vietnam War.
The statewide effort, spearheaded by the Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter in The Villages, is part of a national project to create a virtual Wall of Faces. Florida is the 34th state to find photographs for each person who listed the state as home.
The photographs will eventually be included in an education center, which will be built adjacent to the wall in Washington D.C.
John Thomstatter, a Vietnam veteran from The Villages, coordinated the search effort for the photographs. Thomstatter credited his volunteer research team for tracking down the many hard-to-find photos. The volunteers included private investigators, genealogists and people who knocked on doors and scoured libraries and archives around Florida.
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