M.o.m.s march 2008 newsletter
Pilot Program Serving Rural Vets to Start in Montana
FORT HARRISON, Mont. -- Rural Montana veterans will now have easier access to Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) benefits information and assistance through an innovative, first-of-its-kind, remote benefits delivery pilot program using video-conferencing technology and staffing support.
OK, folks not so!
For the past 8 months MOMS has been working with the WDVA on a pilot program, "MOMs goes Mobil" unlike the one above were you have to go to a designated place to use "Video Conferencing". Instead Video Conferencing comes to the veteran.
Another part of the "MOMs goes Mobil" is to provide "on site" access at events throughout Washington so veterans can get first hand information and access direct to the VA to sign up for benefits and other available resources.
Just had to set the record stright!
All Women Combat Helicopter Crew
BASE, IRAQ — On Christmas Day 2007, a little less than a month ago, the 2-147th Assault Helicopter Battalion, based in Minnesota, flew a historic Blackhawk mission under combat conditions into, and around, Baghdad.
The mission had the sense of history about it because every soldier in the two Blackhawks all four pilots, all four door-gunners was female. The two major briefings for the mission, by the S2 (intelligence) and S3 (operations), were also done by women.
Chief Warrant Officer Teresa Burgess of Olympia, Wash., was the air mission commander. That put her in charge of the overall mission and in one of the four pilots’ seats. “It was fun,” said the veteran pilot. “We never had a chance to do that before – eight women on two aircraft. Pretty neat.”
Did it worry her? Had she considered the reaction if something went wrong? “I thought about it the night before, but I’ve been training for years. I can do the job professionally and correctly, which is important in a combat zone. The question about competence wasn’t out there. We knew we could fly the mission.” Now’s the time for all good women... Nobody is actually sure where the idea for the mission came from, but it might have Greg Thingvold, of Stillwater. Thingvold is intensely proud of the National Guard, and is adamant about the merits of getting more females into the military. Traditional female roles are fine, he said, “But young women should know that there are more options out there. Lots of them. And the training is available in the military.”
Capt. Andrea Ourada, of Lucan, Minn, said that when Thingvold started to push the idea, the female pilots began to look at the possibility. “We weren’t trying to prove anything, really – it’s just that it hadn’t ever been done, and we had enough women in the battalion to pull it off. We couldn’t find any other flight battalion that ever could have done it. Not under combat conditions, anyway.”
The 2-147th, though based in Minnesota, includes elements from Washington and Hawaii for the Iraq deployment. The mission itself was virtually identical to the missions flown by the 2-147th almost every day of the year – moving out from Balad, the battalion transports troops, officers, politicians (just the other day, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice) and high-value small objects around the country. They get shot at while they’re doing it. Michelle Smith, of Houston, Minn., is a staff sergeant, a crew chief and a door-gunner. She volunteered for Iraq and thought the Christmas mission was “cool.” She has been in the guard for more than 17 years, and when not on active duty, commutes to Ft. McCoy, Wis., where she works as a firing-range safety officer and is more than familiar with weaponry.
She’s one of the people who thinks that the Blackhawks are frequently fired at, even if not often hit: “Fortunately,” she says wryly, “the enemy has not been trained really well on their weapons systems.” She leaves the impression that if Michelle Smith were training the insurgents, the Blackhawks would be in a lot more trouble. “Women should do more in the military than just pushing paper, and the Christmas mission was a chance to show off a little,” she said. Smith has an immediately engaging smile, an earnest smile. She volunteered for Iraq because she’d been training people for deployment. “This is my second family out here. I volunteered to come because I knew the rest of my people were going, and if I didn’t, who was going to take care of them?”
Pressure and perspective CWO Angie Barros, from Monticello, Minn., another of the pilots on the Christmas flight, said that when the idea for the mission was first floated, “I got a little stressed about it.” “This was going to be a supposedly historical event. Then I began thinking about why it should be historical. We do this. This is routine. I was amazed that it hadn’t
been done before. After I started thinking that way, I was fine.” The mission was fine, she said. “Showtime” – when the pilots and crew show up for the first morning briefings – was at 4:20 a.m., with “wheels-up” a little after 7. “We took off on time, made the stops on time – just a very smooth mission, overall,” she said.
Capt. Phoebe Inigo, from Hawaii, was the pilot most excited about the symbolic aspect of the flight. She comes from a “not very good neighborhood” on Oahu, she said, and the National Guard paid for her college education. “More girls need to know they can do this. That there are opportunities.
Other people from my neighborhood who went to college, if they could even get through, they’d have debts like $30,000. I had zero. And I got to fly. And here I am. I like it.” Inigo had worked extensively with the Guard in recruiting efforts in Hawaii, especially in her old neighborhood, going around to the schools, telling people what was available through the military. “That’s where the Christmas mission can be valuable. You say, ‘Look, this happened. I flew it.’ Would you like to do something like that? What would you like to do?”
Changing roles, attitudes In addition to the pilots and Sgt. Smith, the Christmas mission included crew chiefs Leilani Aho, from Washington, and Michelle Aina and Crisaron Voeuth, from Hawaii. Crew chiefs are qualified to do maintenance on the helicopters, in addition to working as door-gunners during the flight. They were on leave or unavailable for comment for this story.
Burgess, the air mission commander on Christmas, said one unhappy aspect of the landmark mission was that she missed her husband and two sons, ages 16 and 12, on the holidays. “They miss me, but they don’t really express it much. This is sort of old-hat for them — they’ve been with the military as long as they’ve been alive, and they know that this happens.”
Burgess has been in the military, in one way or another, for 25 years — 10 on active duty, 15 with the guard — and has seen things change over the years. “Attitudes [toward females] have changed. There are still some problems, but not like it used to be. I’ve had people get out of my helicopter when they found out a woman was flying it. I still have people say, ‘You know, you’re the first woman I’ve ever flown with.’ A lot of things have changed that over the years. The Christmas mission was another step in the process.”
John Camp is a Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist and best-selling novelist who writes under the pen name John Sandford. He can be reached at jcamp@minnpost.com.
VA to Open 14 New Clinics in Seven States
Peake: Health Care Closer for Veterans
WASHINGTON -- Veterans in seven additional states will have easier access to world-class health care under a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) plan to open 14 new outpatient clinics in 2008. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Dr. James B. Peake today announced that VA will establish new clinics in Arkansas, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Washington.
“VA is dedicated to providing the best in health care to the men and women who have served this nation in uniform,” Peake said. “These new clinics will bring that care closer to veterans who have earned it through their service.”
Locations for the new clinics are:
• Arkansas – Phillips County
• Illinois – Coles County
• Indiana – Scott County
• Kentucky – Carroll County, Christian County and Graves County
• Oklahoma – Stillwater
• Tennessee – Bolivar, Campbell County, Dyer County, Roane County, Sevier County and Warren County
• Washington – Lewis County
The new clinics are scheduled to activate in 2008. The exact locations of the new facilities, along with their opening dates and the health care services they will provide, have to be determined. VA has previously approved 50 additional clinics that will begin providing services in 2008 for a total of 64 new clinics throughout the country this year.
VA Travel Nurse Corps
Travel, adventure and health care are all part of a VA nurse employment opportunity called the VA Travel Nurse Corps. Now you can be a travel nurse and a VA federal employee!
This exciting new program establishes an internal pool of registered nurses (RNs) who can be available for temporary, short-term assignments at VA medical centers throughout the country. The VA Travel Nurse Corps meets nurses’ needs for travel and flexibility while meeting VA medical center needs for temporary top quality nurses! VA medical centers are located in every state around the country.
The Travel Nurse Corps is an opportunity to provide quality nursing care to the nation’s veterans in state of the art health care facilities while seeing the United States. To learn more about the VA Travel Nurse Corps, send an email to TravelNurse@va.gov. To start the application process, fax your resume to (602) 200-2391 or call toll free (866) 664-1030 or in Phoenix (602) 200-2398 . We will respond to you promptly within 24-48 hours!
http://www.travelnurse.va.gov/
VA Reaches Out to Vets, Families in Need
WASHINGTON -- To support veterans and their families during major emergencies, especially natural disasters, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has begun to deploy mobile pharmacies that will provide vital medicine when patients are unable to fill their prescriptions. VA will also open up the facilities to help communities during major disasters and other emergencies.
“The mobile pharmacies give VA the ability to provide critical medications to veterans when disaster strikes,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Dr. James B. Peake. “VA is committed to ensuring our veterans receive their care and prescriptions as soon as possible during an emergency.”
Each VA mobile pharmacy is housed in a 40-foot-long solid steel trailer built to withstand winds in a Category 3 storm. The units include a satellite connection with VA’s Consolidated Mail Outpatient Pharmacy system, a computerized, automated state-of-the-art mailout pharmacy that can process more than 1,000 prescriptions hourly.
Pharmacists can use the satellite system to obtain a veteran’s prescription data to dispense the drugs on site. In addition, VA can send replacement medications during an emergency by mail or another carrier to a veteran’s home or temporary address.
VA recognized the need for mobile pharmacies in 2005 after hurricanes Katrina and Rita severely damaged VA medical centers along the Gulf Coast. The Department deployed several mobile medical clinics as part of its response to the disasters.
The first mobile pharmacy was unveiled on Sept. 11, 2007 in front of VA’s Washington, D.C., headquarters. The unit was displayed recently at a meeting of the American Society of Health System Pharmacists in Las Vegas. A second mobile pharmacy is expected to be delivered in March 2008.
To ensure rapid response to a wide range of emergencies, VA’s mobile pharmacies will be strategically placed across the nation. Plans now call for one of the three mobile pharmacies to be stationed at Dallas; Murfreesboro, Tenn.; and Charleston, S.C. The Department also expects to acquire a fourth unit that will be placed in the western part of the country.
Each mobile pharmacy is divided into five compartments, including a work area for pharmacists, an entryway accessible to patients and a sleeping area with a bath and shower for VA personnel.
Pharmacy personnel from across the country have already volunteered to staff the units in the event of a natural disaster or other emergency. Six pharmacists who were part of a regional disaster drill have already completed their training and can deploy on short notice.
“Our mobile clinics enabled us to provide critical services during hurricanes Katrina and Rita not only to veterans but also to thousands of others in the area who were adversely affected by the storm,” said Michael Valentino, VA’s pharmacy chief. “These new mobile pharmacy units will ensure that we are even better prepared for future emergencies.”
Dear Elizabeth,
The American Legion Auxiliary would like to recognize you and Mothers Of Military Support
(MOMS) program as one of our Public Spirit Award winners for 2008. This award, established
in 1983, recognizes outstanding individuals and/or organizations for contributions that positively
impact our communities. We especially honor those efforts and contributions that directly or
indirectly benefit our military and veteran community and their families.
Some past recipients of the American Legion Auxiliary Public Spirit Award are Ronald Regan,
Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Ann Landers, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Miss America Heather Renee French
and Colin Powell. As the largest patriotic women's service organization in the world, we are
particularly proud to count you among these shining examples as we recognize our own
members as winners of the award this year.
The award presentation will take place at the Awareness Assembly luncheon in Washington,
D.C. on Monday, March 31. Since it is a stipulation that the recipient must accept the award in
person, I am most hopeful your schedule will permit you to be with us on this occasion.
I hope you can arrange to be with us; on behalf of our membership, I would be very pleased to
recognize your work and the MOMS program.
Sincerely
Jan Pulvermacher
National President
More Education Benefits Coming to Reservists
WASHINGTON – Some members of the National Guard and the Reserves who serve on active duty will see a significant increase in their educational benefits, thanks to improvements announced today by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
“Reservists and National Guardsmen who serve multiple tours on active duty may get an increase in their educational benefits, in keeping with the value of their service to our nation,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Dr. James B. Peake.
Under new provisions, members who accumulate three years on active duty, regardless of breaks in service, may be eligible for the maximum payment under the Reserve Education Assistance Program (REAP). Previously, reservists and guardsmen had to serve two continuous years on active duty to receive the highest payment.
The new eligibility rules are retroactive to October, 1, 2007. The top payment under REAP is currently $880.80 per month.
The new law, part of the National Defense Authorization Act, also expands the period of eligibility for certain Guard and Reserve members who complete their service obligation before separation from the selected reserve.
Members meeting these criteria may be eligible to use REAP benefits for a period of ten years following discharge. Benefits typically end upon separation for members who do not complete their full, obligated service.
Additionally, some REAP-eligible National Guard and Reserve members may now make an extra contribution to the Department of Defense to increase their monthly benefit rates.
Service members receive an additional $5 per month for each $20 contributed. With the maximum $600 contribution, this option can add up to $5,400 to a member’s total 36-month education benefit package.
Beginning on October 1, 2008, participants in REAP and the Montgomery GI Bill program for the Selected Reserve who pursue non-degree programs lasting less than two years may also be eligible to receive accelerated payments.
During FY 2007, more than 60,000 National Guardsmen and reservists were paid under REAP, more than 41,000 were paid under the Montgomery GI Bill program for the Selected Reserves, and approximately 344,000 participants were paid under the Montgomery GI Bill for active-duty members.
For more information on changes to VA’s GI Bill benefits, go to www.GIBILL.va.gov or contact VA directly at 1-888-GIBILL1 (or 1-888-442-4551).