Please pass on to other vets.

The National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) has provided the following web site for veterans to gain access to their DD-214′s on-line:

http://www.archives.gov/veterans/military-service-records/

This may be particularly helpful when a veteran needs a copy of his DD-214 for employment purposes. NPRC is working to make it easier for veterans with computers and Internet access to obtain copies of documents from their military files.

Military veterans and the next of kin of deceased former military members may now use a new online military personnel records system to request documents.

Other individuals with a need for documents must still complete the Standard Form 180, which can be downloaded from the on-line web site. Because the requester will be asked to supply all information essential for NPRC to process the request, delays that normally occur when NPRC has to ask veterans for additional information will be minimized. The new web-based application was designed to provide better service on these requests by eliminating the records center mail room and processing time.

Please pass this information on to former military personnel you may know and their dependents.

Take a couple moments to visit the website and watch some of the videos. If you find the site valuable, you can help by linking to the campaign. Additionally if you know of a Veteran who is going through any the situations explained, please forward the appropriate video to them so they can view how a fellow Veteran found the care and support they needed to improve their lives.

This is just one of the videos you will find there…

The video below was produced by a university student, Chelsie Johnson who wanted to give recognition to our youngest soldiers….

The letter to TIME Magazine is below. Revise at will and then copy, paste, print, sign, and put in the mail on Friday, March 4th.

• If you think you’ll forget to mail the letter on Friday and you’d rather mail it today because this is when you’ll remember, mail away.
• If you want your letter to the editor to be considered for publication in TIME Magazine, be sure to include your full name, address, and phone number in the letter.

• OPPORTUNITY TO WIN A KINDLE: Share the letter – with enthusiasm! – on your blog or facebook page and encourage people to mail it in, and you’ll be entered to win the latest model Kindle. (One winner.) Used just once, it’s as close to brand-new as it can be without being in the original, unopened package, and it even comes with a leather case. TO BE ENTERED TO WIN: Email likeitfortime@gmail.com with the link to the blog or facebook page where you encourage others to send their letter to TIME. Write “letter share” in the subject line. The winner will be announced on March 4th on Enlisted Spouse Radio.

• MAIL YOUR LETTER TO: TIME Magazine Letters / Time & Life Building / Rockefeller Center / New York, NY 10020

• THANK YOU. Your participation is both necessary and greatly appreciated. Have fun, and good luck to all of us!

Dear TIME Magazine Editor(s),

I’m writing this letter to ask you to consider the military family as your 2011 TIME Person of the Year. If you accept nominations from the public/your readers, please consider this an official nomination.

Military families will be the first to say they don’t want to be honored or praised, but I understand Person of the Year isn’t an honor; it’s a “recognition of somebody’s effect on the world,” as Richard Stengel has said.

I also understand Person of the Year is, as another TIME editor has said, “given to the person, group, or thing that has most influenced the culture or the news during the past year.”

Evidence of the military family’s impact on recent news and popular culture can be found in the efforts of Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden to raise awareness of the military family, in Oprah Winfrey’s multiple shows honoring the military family, in the upcoming fifth season of Lifetime network’s “Army Wives,” and in the E! Entertainment channel special, “E!Investigates: Military Wives.” Any time the wars in the Middle East are in the news, so is the American military family.

Regarding the military family’s effect on the world, Rudy Giuliani was chosen for Person of the Year following the September 11 attacks because he “embodied what was really most important, what we learned about ourselves, which was that we could recover,” explained a TIME editor.

The military family embodies what is most important after a decade of war and multiple deployments: a resilient and unifying force even as the families grow weary of being separated – sometimes permanently – year after year, those years apart filled with agonizing anxiety and uncertainty about the future of their families. That resiliency speaks volumes about who we are.

When the American Soldier was chosen for 2003 Person of the Year, it wasn’t for making the news. It was, according to TIME, “[f]or uncommon skills and service, for the choices each one of them has made and the ones still ahead, for the challenge of defending not only our freedoms but those barely stirring half a world away.”

According to a February 2009 study conducted by Boston University’s Sloan Work and Family Research Network, “43.2% of active duty forces have one or more children.” Without a military family care plan—siblings, grandparents, spouses, or others to care for those children—nearly half of our deployed forces would be rendered useless.

The challenges the families of service members experience don’t include the direct threat of mortar rounds and IEDs, but they do include the 24-hour awareness that mortar rounds or IEDs could kill the person they love – their parent, their child, their best friend – any minute of any day, as well as the unique task of trying to maintain a sense of normalcy for children who have a revolving parent and a home environment that is in a perpetual state of flux.

I hope you’ll give this nomination the serious consideration it warrants.

Sincerely,

Few Americans know that the wives (or husbands) and children of those killed in action or rendered 100% disabled due to their service are eligible for full GI Bill benefits. Many military support charities are continuing to raise money for scholarships for the children of KIAs and 100% disabled veterans and they apparently do not know or realize that the children and the surviving parent of KIAs and the children and spouse of 100% disabled veterans are eligible for full GI Bill benefits and there is no better scholarship program any where in the world.

For more information and to help spread the word, visit their website!

Semper Fidelis,

Jerry P. Reed
President/Executive Director
Operation Military Embrace, Inc.

Click here for the 2010-2011 DEA Payment Rates

This weekend I happened upon a service called Safelink.  Safelink Wireless is a government supported program that provides a free cell phone and airtime each month for income-eligible customers.  After some research and a couple of phone calls, I found this to actually be true and with no strings attached.

There is an income restriction of course for this program, but if you receive benefits from one of the following programs then you already qualify:

• Medicaid
• SSI
• Veterans Disability Pension
• Veterans Surviving Spouse Pension

Traditionally, the Lifeline program was only available as a discount on a consumer’s landline telephone bill. SafeLink Wireless was created by TracFone Wireless, Inc. when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently approved the company to offer Lifeline — a public assistance program that ensures telephone service is available and affordable for low-income subscribers. The cell phone offers in-demand features: voicemail, text, three-way calling, call waiting, caller ID and access to 911.

SafeLink phones are not paid for by taxpayers or the federal government. TracFone Wireless pays for the phones and also the cost of promoting its SafeLink program to make sure that eligible consumers know about the program.

What it doesn’t show is the shock wave that traveled through Medina’s helmet and skull, shocking his brain.  Medina appeared to sustain only minor injuries.  In reality his brain had been damaged extensively enough to change his life forever.

The invisible wound was slow to reveal itself.  It crept into his life, slurring his words and lessening his ability to concentrate.  It took months before his injury was apparent enough to cause his superiors to remove him from the theater of operations. By then his slurred speech had turned into a stutter and he was no longer able to read and comprehend a printed page.

He was medivaced to Germany in August, two months after the explosion.  There he was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and sent back to the states for treatment.  At Fort Bliss he waited another month before he met with a neurologist who wrote that Medina suffered from “multiple cognitive symptoms including poor concentration, short-term memory loss, and difficulty multi- tasking.”

Medina did not get a follow-up session until December.  At that time the neurologist wrote, “I am concerned that he may be slipping into a cycle playing the sick role.” In reality the former convoy commander was fighting to overcome the effects of his concussion.  He wanted to be well.  He wanted to stay in the Army, rejoin his unit and return to duty, but he wasn’t getting the support he needed to get well.

Typically someone with a traumatic brain injury being treated in a civilian rehabilitation center will undergo three to six hours a day of therapy.  This treatment will continue sometimes for months.  SGT Medina and many other soldiers like him received little or no treatment.  Instead the returning soldiers were accused of being malingerers, faking their symptoms to work the system.

With modern protective gear, encounters with explosive devices that once would have been fatal now often leave soldiers alive but with severe wounds.  Traumatic Brain Injury has been called the signature wound of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.

The military estimates that about 150,000 troops have suffered traumatic brain injury in those two wars. But other estimates place the number at more than 400,000. Most people who suffer mild concussions soon get better but between five and fifteen percent develop long lasting cognitive disabilities.

While a traumatic brain injury is an actual physical wound, it is impossible to see and hard to diagnose.  Many soldiers are treated instead for post traumatic stress disorder.  The psychological treatment is helpful because a soldier often suffers from both, but it does nothing to rebuild the neurons destroyed when the brain tissue was damaged.

In spite of Fort Sill’s size and the money that has been poured into it to build facilities for soldiers suffering from Traumatic Brain Injury, it has finally decided that it cannot provide adequate care for all of its patients.  SGT Medina was one of a handful of patients who was finally sent to Mentis, a private neurological rehabilitation facility near El Paso, Texas.

Medina has shown progress since he started in February.  His ability to read and concentration has improved to the point that he has started a blog to tell others about Traumatic Brain Disorder and its treatment.

He writes, “I might be slower right now, but I think it’s all going to get better and I want to go back to what I love doing, which is soldiering, it’s what I love to do.“

Victor and his wife, Roxana, are still fighting the battle but have turned what could have been a very dark moment in their lives into something positive by sharing his experience and educating others so that they too can see that “It does get better.”  I encourage you to connect with him on his website!

When Will Beiersdorf saw the twin towers fall on September 11, 2001, he knew his life was going to change forever.  A few days later this Naval Reservist got the telephone call he was expecting.  He was activated and sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for over a year.  During that year his family faced financial uncertainty and hardship.

When Will came home he and his wife, Mary Beth, decided to form Salute, Inc. for two important reasons.  First they wanted to raise funds to help other military families for whom sudden activation caused similar problems. Second, to raise awareness!

Salute Inc. has helped dozens of people through several programs.  Because of Mary Beth’s experiences during Will’s deployment, they decided that an important mission for Salute would be to offer direct assistance to military families.  The “unsung heroes” back home often have trouble paying rent, utility bills, or travel expenses.  Salute has started a program to address these needs and now helps families through difficult times.

But that is only one of many assistance programs Salute runs. Their Nightingale program is designed to help families of severely wounded soldiers being treated at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.  Families of service members undergoing extensive rehabilitative care often have extreme financial hardships.  The Nightingale Program helps them relocate to be close to their hospitalized loved ones by paying travel and supplemental housing costs and incidental expenses.

This program also provides wounded soldiers with devices to keep them active and engaged in life.  A good example of this is Ramina from the Air Force.  During her rehabilitation, Salute provided her and her family with assistance.  Later she wanted to attend a military sports camp but needed a specially-adapted bicycle.  Salute had that bicycle made for her.

Salute would like to expand their Wounded Warrior Laptop Program.  But because it is funded by the generous donations of only one family, it must be limited to a very narrow group of recipients.  Veterans wishing to receive laptop computers to help them with school or business must be from Illinois.  They must also have been wounded severely enough to have been hospitalized for over thirty days.

The Forgotten Veterans Program is designed to help Illinois institutions like homes and hospitals that provide long-term care to veterans.  These institutions don’t have to apply for this assistance.  A panel assesses their needs and then donates money for medical or recreational equipment.

Salute, Inc. isn’t just about raising money.   The Beiersdorfs had a second important reason for forming the organization.  They also wanted to raise awareness about the sacrifices that soldiers are making during this time of crisis.

One way to accomplish this, Will decided, was to form a marathon team to run in honor of wounded soldiers.  Beiersdorf hoped to get a handful of runners together for this cause but found dozens of eager volunteers, instead.  Each person runs both to salute all veterans and to honor one special wounded warrior. Right now Team Salute is in the final stages of preparing for the Chicago Marathon on 10-10-10!

Will himself runs for individual soliders whose names he carries with him during the race.  He modestly explains that it isn’t “he who honors them but rather he is the one who is honored to be allowed to represent them at marathons.”  He says that those times during a race when he thinks he can’t go on, he remembers the sacrifices those soldiers made and draws strength from them.

Will Beiersdorf, founder of Soldiers Inc., will be joining us on the 2010 Veterans Day Telethon on Saturday November 6, 2010 to talk more about his organization and we are thrilled to have him join us!

The founders of Salute, Inc. know first hand about the struggles of having a deployed spouse in the military. Since Salute, Inc. began in 2004, we have helped many members of the military and their families. Your donation will help them continue to provide financial support and assistance to those who bravely serve our country.