Pay back time for America’s veterans
By Bill Duncan
The View From Here
We go through life taking most things for granted. As a World War II and Korean war veteran, I volunteer with the VA Voluntary Service program and spend my volunteer hours at the Roseburg VA Hospital. I do this, I convince myself, as payback for the VA hospital system extending my life after mainstream medicine wrote my cancer off as terminal in 1980.
I don’t take that for granted.
What I did take for granted was the VAVS program. In 1977, when I was manager of the American Red Cross chapter in Douglas County I recruited volunteers to work at the Roseburg VA hospital.
Until recently, I will admit, I never thought much about the origin of the volunteer program at the VA. It was just there.
Chris Scheer, a writer for the AMVETS magazine "American Veteran," changed all that with a story about the VAVS 60th anniversary. Scheer told how the program got started:
"Not long after leading America’s soldiers to victory in Europe, Gen. Omar Bradley found himself facing another challenge, one every bit as real as any he had encountered during the war," Scheer wrote.
"As the newly appointed head of the Veterans Administration, Bradley was charged with caring for the thousands of sick and disabled veterans of that conflict."
What Gen. Bradley found in 1946 was an overwhelmed staff at VA hospitals. He organized volunteers to lend a hand in the communities where VA hospitals were located. He created an army of volunteers and thus on May 17, 1946 the VA Voluntary Service program was launched.
Its mission was to help the hospital staff care for America’s veterans — at that time most were World War I and World War II veterans. The corps of the volunteers came from veteran organizations, like the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the AMVETS. Gen. Bradley invited other organizations, like the Red Cross and Salvation Army, to provide their own cadre of volunteers.
From that humble beginning, VAVS today enlists thousands of volunteers who work in many areas of the VA hospitals and basically extend the care for veterans through their services.
In 2005 volunteers gave more than 13 million hours of service nationwide. Even if the volunteers were paid only minimum wage for those hours, it doesn’t take a mental giant to see what an impact that would be on the VA budget.
The mainstay volunteers, mostly from the World War II era, are aging. Laura Balun, current VA Voluntary Service director, has as her priority in 2006 to recruit younger volunteers to serve veterans. With veterans returning from the current worldwide conflicts, it is even more important that volunteers are there for them.
I volunteer through the American Red Cross as the organization’s national representative on the Roseburg hospital campus. One of the Red Cross programs that I am most proud of is the youth program at the Roseburg hospital. Much of its success over the years is not my doing, but that of the late Wanda McLean, who fostered the program during her lifetime.
Each year some 35 young people, ages 14 to 18, give part of their summer as volunteers at the hospital. This year’s program is called "Operation Cheer a Vet." The young men and women will work directly with the patients and in doing so will learn history first hand from those who survived past wars.
One patient described the program most accurately as: "It is like getting a visit from your grand child every day."
That is probably what Gen. Bradley had in mind when he saw the need and sent his army into the front lines of veteran’s care. Gen. Bradley’s call to serve and the VAVS still need you. Douglas County residents can contact VAVS Manager Dona Brewer at 440-1272 for information on volunteering. Roll up your sleeves for some payback time. You will discover that you are the real beneficiary.
(Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470,
or via e-mail at elderstatesmansblog@yahoo.com)