The American Legion Department of Colorado Blog

The American Legion – March 2, 2010

In honor of black history month, National Adjutant Daniel S. Wheeler spoke before The African American Consortium at the War Memorial in Baltimore on Feb. 27. In his speech, Wheeler expressed sentiments of praise for black servicemembers, noted their important contributions to military history and highlighted the struggles they’ve faced in gaining service honors equal to their non-colored brothers-in-arms.

    Wheeler delivered keynote remarks to about 125 people in attendance. The event was part of a celebration put on by The African American Consortium, an organization of Legionnaires and Buffalo Soldier Association members that exists to recognize the contributions of African-American servicemembers.

Below is a transcript of Wheeler’s speech:

“It is a great honor to be here among American heroes. I want to begin by thanking you, the African American Patriots Consortium, Inc., and the National Association for Black Veterans. You not only make events like this possible, but you also constantly remind us that black history is American history from the very beginning to today. The sacrifices of the Buffalo Soldier, the Harlem Hellfighters, the Tuskegee Airmen, the Marines of Montford Point, the integration of our armed forces and the black women who have served with honor and distinction are too important to be included as mere footnotes to be discussed only during Black History Month. They are the substance that helped mold America into the nation that we are today. One of the many things that set us apart from other countries is that we acknowledge our history – the good, the bad and the ugly. There is no debate about it. The legacy of the African-American veteran, hard fought and hard won, made America richer for all of us, even as they paid a greater price than most to win their place in history.

    “The American Legion believes that all veterans are special and, in many ways, unappreciated. Veterans are disproportionately homeless, unemployed and always have to fight the bureaucracy to get their well-earned benefits.

    “But the African-American veteran, historically, has suffered even greater indignities. Simply put, the black veteran often loved America more than America loved her black veteran.

    “Take Vernon Baker for example: a World War II veteran who was by any definition a remarkable officer in a racially-segregated Army. In April 1945, armed with a rifle and grenades, he destroyed four German machine gun nests and killed nine enemy soldiers. Yet, during that same period of our history, he was not welcomed in most hotels, restaurants and other public facilities.

    “Typical of the times, and typical of the mindset of too many, instead of praise for his actions in Italy, Baker was chewed out by his white regimental commander because he wasn’t wearing his steel pot when he returned from his heroic fire fight. Fifty-two years later, Vernon Baker, first lieutenant, U.S. Army, was finally awarded the Medal of Honor that he so richly deserved. Six other African-American World War II veterans were recognized with him on January 13, 1997, receiving the nation’s highest honor after more than a half century of having their valor denied because of the color of their skin. Despite the injustices they endured, they were patriotic, god-fearing, family-loving, hard-working American veterans – and proud of it. It is on the shoulders of these great men that we stand today.

    “Years before Gen. Colin Powell became the first African-American to chair the Joint Chiefs of Staff there stood another general who paved the way. U.S. Air Force pilot Daniel “Chappie” James, a graduate of the Tuskegee Institute, trained pilots for the all-black 99th Pursuit Squadron during World War II. After flying 101 combat missions in P-51 Mustang and F-80 aircraft during World War II and the Korean War, Gen. James’ service continued throughout the Vietnam War, and included the destruction of seven communist MiG-21s as part of Operation Bolo.

    “Gen. Chappie James summed up his own patriotism when he said, “I’ve fought in three wars and three more wouldn’t be too many to defend my country. I love America and as she has weaknesses or ills, I will hold her hand.”

    “The American Legion has long recognized some of the weaknesses that General James was referring to. In 1923 our national convention passed Resolution 407, which stated that groups fostering racial, religious or class strife were “un-American, a menace to our liberties,” and “inconsistent with the ideals and purposes of The American Legion.” It took a while for society to catch on – and it’s a long road we still travel.

    “As then, The American Legion believes today a veteran is a veteran, and we championed a GI Bill in 1944 that would include all veterans, even though some segregationists in Congress opposed giving equal education and unemployment benefits to black veterans of the 1940s.

    “National Commander Clarence Hill has made minority outreach in The American Legion a priority. We need your help with this. A larger and more diverse American Legion is a better American Legion for all veterans and their families.

    “I am proud that so many African-Americans continue to serve America in The American Legion and would be prouder to see even more. Black veterans are already a significant part of our history. With your support, we can make history together and continue to do great things for America’s veterans, marching together in a common cause as brothers and sisters who share a common heritage of patriotism, courage, duty, respect, sacrifice, service for God and Country and for each other.

The American Legion – March 1, 2010

Richard Pond wears lapels full of service pins, exhibiting his dedication to The American Legion. His Legion nametag identifies him as the Boy Scout chairman for the Department of New Hampshire. In a navy blue suit punctuated by a splendidly colorful “Save the Children” necktie, Richard seems like a most unlikely candidate to be identified as a homeless veteran.

    Yet, not all that long ago, Pond faced that prospect. “We were $8,000 behind in house payments,” he confesses candidly, “with more bills piling up. There was no way out, and we lost our home. It was only because my mother-in-law took us in that we didn’t end up on the street.”

    Richard Pond and his wife are recovering now, and prospects are good for a secure future. But Army vet Richard Emden, without any family support, has not been so lucky. “I’ve been homeless for four years now,” he says. “I got a nice job a little while ago, going from $10 to $21 an hour, but then I lost it.”

    Inspired by their experiences, Pond and Emden work in their own ways on behalf of homeless veterans. Emden volunteers in shelters and carries copies of “Street Sense,” a bi-weekly newspaper published in Washington, D.C., to help raise public awareness about the homeless and poverty-stricken.

    For his part, Pond is active in a group called “Friends of Veterans” or FOV, based in White River Junction, VT. The group is a member of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, which helps veterans in need with assistance in resolving the root causes of homelessness: health issues, economic hardship and lack of affordable housing.

    Pond and Emden met at The American Legion’s Homeless Veterans’ Provider Workshop last Friday in Washington. The workshop featured five speakers: Mary O’Malley, the VA’s Homeless Special Populations Manager; Cynthia High, Special Needs Assistance Specialist at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD); Gordon Burke, Department of Labor; Verna Jones, a Legion staffer here who spoke on behalf of Women Veterans Support Services, Inc.; and retired U.S. Army National Guard Lt. Col. Aaron Rodgers.

    O’Malley detailed the varied causes of homelessness and the difficulty of eliminating it. “Homelessness is not solely a result of the lack of available housing or financial resources but frequently a consequence of multiple psycho-social factors, including unstable family support, job loss, inadequate job skills, health problems, substance abuse disorders or other mental-health concerns,” she said.

    In broad terms, O’Malley outlined VA’s five-year plan to assist every homeless veteran willing to accept help in obtaining safe housing, needed medical treatment, employment and earned veteran benefits.

    High then spoke about HUD’s work to locate and acquire transitional housing units for groups of homeless vets. She pointed to special challenges faced by the increasing number of women veterans who are homeless.

    “Many of them do not wish to go to a traditional shelter, both because of fear of harm to themselves, and because they do not wish the custody of their children to be endangered,” High said.

    Burke as well as Jones, who told her own story of homelessness some years ago as the result of domestic violence, echoed the plight of homeless women veterans later in the day.

    All workshop speakers emphasized prevention as the most essential factor in ending homelessness among veterans. All agreed that education and vocational training, as well as effective health care, could help make the goal of ending veteran homelessness attainable.

    Rodgers, who heads a Junior ROTC program at a Maryland high school, introduced one more preventive measure to the discussion: instilling traditional values in youth. Rodgers believes that teaching youth about military values, whether they intend to pursue a military career or not, will help steer them into healthy lifestyles and away from behavior patterns that often contribute to homelessness.

    The sentiment of the session was encapsulated in a closing statement by workshop organizer Mark Walker of The American Legion’s Economic Division: “These men and women led fulfilling, valuable and productive lives in the service. They need and deserve the same in civilian life.”

The American Legion – February 26, 2010

The Post-9/11 GI Bill is considered landmark legislation because of its sweeping benefits, which provide aid to veterans pursuing nearly all forms of higher education. But a few academic areas have been left out – namely, advanced-learning classes offered at institutions that don’t officially grant degrees.

    Under current terms of the legislation, the Post-9/11 GI Bill won’t cover vocational courses, on-the-job training or any sort of classes at institutions that don’t give degrees. So, veterans wishing to take private flight school lessons after their service have to use the Montgomery GI Bill or different education benefits to receive aid, which likely won’t be as generous.

    This oversight has drawn criticism from veterans and political entities including The American Legion, which testified Thursday afternoon in front of Congress for H.R. 3813 – a bill that would make the appropriate changes to the Post-9/11 GI Bill. Robert Madden, assistant director for the Legion’s Economic Division, gave oral testimony for H.R. 3813 in front of the House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity, Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.

    Among other bills, Madden advocated for H.R. 3813, Veterans Training Act, which would amend the Post-9/11 GI Bill to include coverage for postsecondary education and higher learning at non-degree granting institutions on a by-approval basis.

    “The American Legion supports H.R. 3813 and would like to make sure on-the-job-training, flight schools and vocational courses are covered under the Post-9/11 GI Bill,” Madden said. “The American Legion seeks to support equalizing education benefits for those who seek higher learning in less traditional manners, as opposed to the traditional ways of seeking education at a degree-granting institute.”

    Madden also gave oral testimony on two other bills: H.R. 3948, which seeks to include Post-9/11 GI Bill coverage for preparatory courses for entry into postgraduate studies, and H.R. 3976, which would enhance benefits during housing crises to help servicemembers keep their homes.

The American Legion – March 3, 2010

David DuBois remembers trying to explain his work to a young soldier – a member of the so-called “millennial generation.” He told him to check out the Office of Wounded Warrior Care & Transition Policy’s Web site. The soldier looked at DuBois and politely explained that Web sites are for old people with enough time to sit down and use a computer.

    “The millennial generation is an on-demand society,” said DuBois, a former American Legion department commander who now directs wounded-warrior and transition-assistance operations for the Department of Defense. “Seventy percent of millennials sleep with their phones,” he explained. “They do not use phones to make phone calls so much anymore.”

    DuBois and three other military-to-civilian experts told The American Legion Economic Commission on Monday that networking – through electronic social media via cell phones, as the new generation prefers, or in person, as with the Marine for Life program – is critical to help newly discharged veterans restart their lives, especially if they come home with service-connected disabilities.

    “We’ve got to find a way so that every returning servicemember gets red-carpet networking,” said DuBois, a 2001 graduate of American Legion College. “To welcome all of them back, networking is the absolutely critical need.”

    The panel discussion, coordinated by the Legion’s Heroes to Hometowns program during the 50th Washington Conference this week, examined transition assistance from multiple angles, all of which rely on making connections among communities’ returning servicemembers.

    “Two million OIF/OEF veterans are enrolling in college,” said Stacie Hitt, director of “Operation Diploma” at Purdue University’s Military Family Research Institute. “Twenty five percent will have a hidden disability, and 15 percent will have a clear disability. That’s about 800,000 students with some kind of disability.”

    Her program engages the entire community – schools, clergy, veterans groups and others who come into contact with transitioning military families – to address concerns faced by those who have stepped off the military base and onto college campuses.

    One of her program’s goals is to provide resources for institutions in Indiana to better understand and serve transitioning families. Operation Diploma, she explained, provided $275,000 in grants for colleges that strengthened their veteran-transition programs last year, and $1.1 million will be awarded this year. While she said Indiana schools that accept GI Bill benefits are making headway in their transition-assistance programs, gaps exist. Classroom policies that deny calculators or electronic organization devices to veterans who have suffered from traumatic brain injuries, for instance, need to be rethought, she said. She also explained that with the amount of veterans coming home with some kind of disability, the number of campuses with veteran disability coordinators needs to rise from the current level of 72 percent.

    Col. Gregory A.D. Boyle, commanding officer of the U.S. Marine Corps’ Wounded Warrior Regiment at Quantico, Va., told members of the Economic Commission that “the goal is not for DoD to push the Marine out of the service but for the community to pull the Marine in.”

    The USMC’s transition assistance program, which is structured around the Marine for Life philosophy and includes a 24/7 call center, is a model among the service branches.

    “Every day, I work with the other branches, and we are all heading in the same direction,” he said. A key component of the program, he explained, is outreach before and after discharge, including “a 16-page checklist to prepare them.”

    He said that by the time a wounded warrior leaves Quantico, claims paperwork will have already been completed; TRICARE benefits will be managed, and resumes will be written. “We prepare them for life,” Col. Boyle said. “It’s the Marine for Life way.”

    And once a Marine is home, local mentors – often former Marines themselves or members of veterans service organizations like The American Legion – network with the newly discharged veterans to help them adjust.

    Roger Neppl, director of military programs for the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Paralympic Division, explained how local community networks can help newly discharged wounded warriors restore self esteem, avoid depression and improve their health by getting them involved with adaptive sports programs. “If, in fact, you have an injured servicemember in your community, you can help by connecting the dots,” Neppl said. “Link people with local sports clubs, parks and recreation departments that have adaptive training programs, colleges and universities and even K-12 public education systems can help. Just connect that person.”

    DuBois – who recently led a work group on a massive update of the federal TAP (Transition Assistance Program) that will better serve the needs of National Guard and Reserve components – said a new online directory provides a comprehensive listing of programs and services to help troops in transition. The site – www.nationalresourcedirectory.gov  “is a huge resource system for the federal, state and local level. If your organization’s program is not there, there is a mechanism to self-nominate to be included.”

    American Legion Heroes to Hometowns program coordinator Andrew Tramontana told the commission that in order for any of these efforts to help transitioning troops to be successful – whether it’s on campus, over coffee, on a ski slope, in a swimming pool or as a friend on a social media site – “we have to do better. Too often, the request for assistance that we receive comes too long after the fact. We have to ascertain information and needs at the grass-roots level. We have to communicate, and we have to collaborate.”

    Heroes to Hometowns is a nationwide program that connects American Legion posts and members with returning wounded, sick or injured servicemembers in transition. For more information, visit www.legion.org/heroes.

By Tom Philpott – December 26, 2009

A rising number of state and local criminal courts are recognizing that combat veterans who commit crimes may suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or mild traumatic brain injury. If such is the case, they may need – and deserve – health care more than jail time.

The trend is seen in jurisdictions that have established special veterans courts, and in states that have passed legislation to raise awareness among judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys that combat-related stress may be causing some veterans’ misbehavior. When PTSD is confirmed, judges today are handing down more constructive sentences to troubled veterans than stints in prison.

These initiatives, combined with news accounts of “invis-ible injuries” inflicted on thousands of troops overseas, have changed the way many veterans who break the law are handled.

“There’s a bunch of Petri dishes in courts all across the country where people are experimenting with different approaches,” said Brockton D. Hunter, a criminal defense attorney in Minneapolis. “The commonality is recognizing that when veterans’ criminal behavior is driven by a psychological injury, whether PTSD or TBI, we owe them the help they need as the country that sent them to war, because these veterans are every bit as injured as the guy who lost both legs to an IED blast.”

The first local veterans court appeared in Buffalo, N.Y. Others now operate in Orange County and San Diego, Calif, Tulsa, Okla, and parts of Alaska, Illinois and Pennsylvania.

Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif, chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, led a roundtable discussion on these courts in mid-September to tout their benefits.

For veterans facing conviction, these courts assign other veterans to serve as mentors, arrange appointments with VA services, or appoint public defenders who encourage vets to tell their stories in court. Some of these courts also work to address underlying problems for vet offenders, including unemployment and homelessness. Filner said veterans’ courts cost significantly less than incarceration. Long term, they save money and, “more importantly, they save lives,” he said.

Less costly still is legislation like Minnesota passed last year. Hunter and another attorney, Guy Gambill, drafted and pushed the bill through, inspired by California’s passage of a similar measure in 2007. It modified Minnesota’s sentencing statute to encourage courts to deal more appropriately with psychologically injured veterans. Probation officers conducting pre-sentencing investigations now must consult with VA and inform judges on what role PTSD or TBI may have played in offenses committed by servicemembers or veterans.

Given the sacrifices our veterans have made, legal advocates such as Hunter are urging judges and prosecutors “to take a look at this issue with fresh eyes.” Where they find “underlying psychological injury,” courts should consider “a therapeutic response” rather than convictions and sentences that will follow veterans throughout their lives.

The message is being received. “With lower level offenses, more judges are deciding it doesn’t make sense to convict these people if they have an opportunity to get the help they need,” Hunter said. Offenders often enter no-contest pleas and agree to get treatment, thus avoiding convictions.

    But PTSD or TBI can’t be “get-out-of-jail-free” cards, which remains a worry for prosecutors, Hunter said. Before treatment can replace jail time, veterans need to take responsibility for what they’ve done, admit they’ve got a problem and get the help they need.

Legion helps quadruple amputee defy the odds!

Brendan Marrocco’s Bronze Star nomination includes a handwritten note from the battalion’s executive officer. It describes how the 23-year-old U.S. Army soldier from New York “… embodies the attributes of sacrifice, selfless service and discipline. Always ready to perform any mission in combat.”

These are some of the attributes that also prompted Lt. Rich Kilcoyne, leader of the 2nd Platoon, to honor Marrocco – then a private first class – as a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle driver last April.

The 2nd Battalion of the 27th Infantry Regiment was stationed at Forward Operating Base Summerall, 130 miles north of Baghdad, near Bayji – perilous territory in the combat theater. The locals are almost all Sunnis. Many are former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. The 82nd Airborne and the 101st Airborne, which preceded Marrocco’s battalion in the region, suffered many losses in this particularly hostile part of Iraq.

Soldiers at FOB Summerall worked closely with police in Siniyah and performed joint patrols with Iraqi Police. Marrocco’s platoon served as the quick-response force for the battalion, rushing to the scene whenever a roadside bomb went off or trouble erupted. “We were a very close-knit platoon,” Kilcyone says. “We did a great job of keeping Siniyah under control.”

Late on the night before Easter, Brendan Marrocco called his father in the United States. At the end of the conversation he said, “Look, I’ve got to get going. We’re going out tonight.” At about 11:30 p.m., 15 members of the 2nd Platoon left FOB Summerall to escort other U.S. soldiers to the Siniyah Joint Security Station. Marrocco was at the wheel of one of the MRAPS in the four-vehicle convoy.

The platoon delivered the soldiers without trouble. A half-hour after midnight, the group headed back to the FOB, following the same dirt road they traveled to reach Siniyah, a lonely desert bypass that tracked a high-voltage power line. U.S. troops often travel along such routes to keep a low profile and avoid traffic.

The convoy was just 25 minutes from the base when it was attacked.  The first three trucks passed the sophisticated roadside bomb, known as an “anti-armor IED”, or an “explosively formed projectile” (EFP) without incident. It exploded into Marrocco’s vehicle, the last in the convoy.

The armor-piercing projectile punched through the middle of the driver’s side door and exited just above the head of Sgt. Justin Minisall, who sat to the right of Marrocco. The blast tore off both of Marrocco’s arms and his left leg. His right leg was mangled beyond saving. His ceratoid artery was severed, his body badly burned, and vision in his left eye was severely damaged.

Minisall’s leg appeared broken and the left side of his body was sprayed with shrapnel. Cpl. Mike Anaya, temporarily trapped in the gunner’s turret, bled profusely from multiple wounds. The pressure from the explosion also blew the back doors off of the MRAP, but Pvt. Jacobee Johnson, the fourth man in the vehicle, was unharmed. He jumped out to provide security, and then helped triage for the wounded. “Johnson was a major part in assisting us,” Kilcoyne says.

When Lt. Kilcoyne reached the vehicle, Anaya had been untangled from the gunner’s turret and was being treated by Medic Matthew Kenney. Kilcoyne and his Iraqi interpreter pulled Marrocco from the vehicle, put a tourniquet on his left arm and patched up the other points of amputation. “He was pretty burned up,” Kilcoyne says.

Minisall, meanwhile, pulled himself out of the MRAP and moved to one of the other trucks. When Kilcoyne and his other men when to check on Minisall, he turned them away. “As injured as he was, he sat there and took it,” Kilcoyne says. “He told us to concentrate on the more seriously wounded – Anaya and Marrocco.”

Brendan Marrocco remembers the medic treating him during those frantic minutes. “He did as much as he could do,” Brendan says. “Then he gave me morphine to make me comfortable. At that point, it could have gone either way. It was up in the air.”

When the medevac helicopter arrived, Anaya was no longer responding to first aid. He had lost too much blood. Brendan was still hanging on. “It was a good sign for us,” Kilcoyne says.

Still, the men wondered if two of their platoon would die in the wee hours of Easter Sunday. “When they said (Brendan) was alive, I was surprised,” Kilcoyne said.

Anaya, Marrocco and Minisall were airlifted to the trauma hospital at Contingency Operating Base Speicher, outside Tikrit. Soon after the medevac helicopter delivered the wounded, the call went out to wake the soldiers stationed at Speicher, asking them to roll up their sleeves for a massive emergency blood drive. Brendan would need as many as 60 pints before leaving Iraq.

“It was going out as soon as they were putting it in,” says his brother, Michael.

Next: Part 3, An Easter Sunday Phone Call

Alex Marrocco hung up on the first person who called his phone at about noon, Easter Sunday. He thought it was a telemarketer. Thirty seconds later, it rang again. On the other end was a U.S. Army major from Schofield Barracks, Hawaii.

“I’m sorry to tell you, Brendan has been involved in an explosion,” the major said when Alex demanded to know what happened to his son. “He lost his legs. He lost both his arms.”

The elder Marrocco’s knees buckled, and he dropped to the kitchen floor of his Staten Island, N.Y., home.

When Mike Marrocco – Brendan’s brother – heard his father scream, he ran downstairs and grabbed the phone. The Army representative repeated the news. “I kept it together until I realized what had happened,” Mike says.

Brendan’s mother was attending Easter Mass when the Army first tried to reach her. She listened to the voicemail as she sat in her car after church. “It said I needed to call the Department of Defense,” Michelle Marrocco remembers. “I started to shake. It couldn’t be good.

“When they told me about his wounds, I thought, ‘How much worse can it be?’” says Michelle, a nurse who deals with severely debilitated patients at the home health-care agency she manages. “Four amputations. His carotid artery severed. The vision in his left eye… All I kept seeing was a head and a torso.”

In the hours after an armor-piercing roadside bomb ripped through the vehicle he was driving, Brendan Marrocco had been flown from the battlefield to hospitals near Tikrit, then Balad, and finally on to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

Michelle called the intensive care unit at Landsthul. The nurse held the phone up to Brendan’s ear. He listened but could not speak. The nurse told Michelle that Brendan was mouthing the words, mamma, mamma. She broke down in tears. “We’re coming,” she reassured Brendan. “We’re coming.”

Alex and Michelle immediately flew to Germany. “I had to go see him,” Michelle says.
  Brendan was attached to six IVs and other medical equipment, and his face was burned. Still, seeing him made Michelle feel better. The bomb had severely injured Brendan and, ironically, helped save his life. The explosion blew off three of his limbs and mangled his right leg beyond repair, yet was so hot that it also cauterized most of his wounds.

“It is a testimony to his medic and our medical professionals that he is alive,” says Jim Balkcom, a civilian aide to the Secretary of the Army, who first contacted The American Legion about Brendan and his desire to be standing on the tarmac to greet his unit when it returned from Iraq.

Brendan is well aware of the peril he faced. He later told his mother, “You know I shouldn’t be alive.”

“The first six months, I cried every single day,” Michelle says. “It’s very hard.”

“It’s an emotional roller coaster,” adds Alex, who is an engineer for an oil company.

“I’m glad that he’s alive. As a father, when I look at him, I can only imagine how difficult his future is going to be. You don’t want that for your child.”

Three days after the attack, Brendan arrived at Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s ICU. By early June, Mike had quit his computer job with Citibank in Manhattan and moved to Walter Reed to live with his brother and assume the role of his non-medical attendant. Today, they live in outpatient quarters on the hospital grounds.

“It wasn’t a decision at all,” says Mike, 26, who is three years older than Brendan. “It wasn’t something I thought about that much. It was something that needed to be done.”

Mike and Brendan were close growing up in a suburban Staten Island neighborhood. They played kickball in the schoolyard with the neighbor kids and attended each other’s soccer games. They played video games, and they went camping with the Boy Scouts each summer on the Ten Mile River in Pennsylvania, both achieving the rank of Life Scout. Brendan was the archery star – hitting the bull’s eye with an arrow and then splitting that arrow with a second shot, like Robin Hood. He did that twice, Mike says.

Brendan remembers those days fondly. “We would go out and have a blast in the woods and learn a whole lot. And we played manhunt – which is almost like an Army game.”

Their interests took them different directions after high school. Mike went to Rutgers University and earned his degree in computer information systems. Before joining the Army, Brendan tried college for a couple of semesters, then earned his certification as an auto mechanic and worked for a Brooklyn Subaru dealer.

Mike has no regrets about leaving Wall Street for Walter Reed. “It’s pretty nice to have a front-row seat to everything (Brendan) is doing. Unlike a billion-dollar company, you can actually see the results of what you are working for. You feel good about yourself at the end of the day.”

Brendan is grateful to have his brother as roommate, patient advocate and scheduling assistant. “It’s great having him to help out, to be part of my rehabilitation,” Brendan says. “It’s made things a lot easier for me. (And) I think it makes me want to do better.”

Alex and Michelle, who are divorced, take turns making the 200-mile drive to Walter Reed on the weekends, giving Mike a break and staying through Monday evening to consult with the medical team.

“I want to go to therapy with him,” Michelle says. “I want to meet with his doctors. I want to see him walking. I want to know what his physical therapy plan is.”

As Alex puts it, “This is what I can only describe as a family tragedy. And Brendan’s recovery is being dealt with as a family. Every one of us is there.”

That makes a tremendous difference, Brendan says.

“Having the support, being able to see them, being able to talk to them, definitely makes the recovery easier. Whenever I have a bad day, they are always willing to sit down and talk.”

Still, the journey is far from easy. “It’s an extremely hard situation,” Michelle says.

“We get our strength from Brendan. If he can do this, we can do this.”

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen:

Once again we are in the last week of the month and it is time for you to contact your local Army Recruiter to obtain the names of the new soldiers that went on active duty this month.

    As we approach the holiday season, please contact the families of these new soldiers and invite them to a function where you can recognize the family of our newest soldiers by presenting them with a Blue Star Banner, Blue Star Certificate, and a Certificate of recognition from our National Commander and National Adjutant. This is a great time to encourage these families by showing them that we, the American Legion are thankful for their son or daughter’s service to our nation, and we want them to become members of the American Legion Family.

    As I have said in the past, this is a post program to recognize those members of your community who are serving America. This is your program, and you can modify it to fit your local situation.  If you need help or information to get your program going, I can be reached at e-mail gar@coloradolegion.org or 970-734-5600.

    Have you recognized your local military recruiters yet?     They are also serving America and need to be recognized along with our newest soldiers.

    The Freedom Team Salute, a program sponsored by the Secretary of the Army, can be utilized a local business that supports Active Duty Soldiers, Army Reserve and National Guard. This program is also utilized to recognize those who have served in the United States Army. Please feel free to call or e-mail if you would like more information or need assistance with a nomination.

    Operation Soldier is a program that works to recognize those who serve and their families. This program will increase your membership when these folks see who we are and what we do.

    Christmas Packages being sent overseas should be mailed by December 5th to ensure delivery by December 25th. Packages addressed to “any soldier” are not acceptable. If needed, we can supply names and addresses of individuals and units in specific countries.

Now is the time to act to let a soldier serving far from home that we really do care about them, especially during this holiday season.

    Once again, we will be recognizing future soldiers at our Department Mid-year Convention with a Swearing In Ceremony.

INDIANAPOLIS (Nov. 12, 2009) — America’s largest veteran’s service organization has launched a new Web site, bulging with new content and featuring a completely redesigned look. American Legion National Commander Clarence Hill said the new Web site, “is a tremendous addition to our online presence. It’s more informative, better looking, and easier to navigate than our previous site. I encourage Legionnaires to visit www.legion.org [1] and explore the wealth of content in its pages.”

    Initial planning for The American Legion’s new Web presence began in September 2008, according to Hill. The new site includes more than 30 separate landing pages for American Legion programs and activities, including baseball, scholarships, troop support, membership/post activities and the Family Support Network.

    Two prominent programs – The American Legion Riders and Sons of The American Legion – also have their own landing pages. Online visitors will also find the Legion’s popular blog site, “The Burn Pit.”

    “We’ve got everything there from our COP Keating fundraising drive for soldiers attacked in Afghanistan, to film footage of the Legion’s 1927 National Convention in Paris, France,” Hill said. It’s a very impressive online compilation of what The American Legion is all about.”

    The Legion’s new home page features two major stories, headlines and news links that are updated each morning. The page’s new design also includes links to the Legion’s social media such as Twitter and Facebook, to major hubs of Legion activity such as the Veterans Benefits Center and Legislative Action Center, and to the national commander’s Web site.

    “Our national staff has worked very hard to create this new Web site as a fantastic calling card to the entire world,” Hill said.