Legion Commander responds to Washington Times article

American Legion National Commander Mike Helm sent the following letter to the Washington Times in response to its article, "Younger veterans bypass VFW, American Legion for service, fitness groups."

To the Editor:

In reference to “Younger Veterans Bypass VFW, American Legion for Service, Fitness Groups,” I have to wonder why the growing footprint of American Legion posts on college campuses throughout the country – chartered and operated by the newest generation of war veterans – was not mentioned.

These Legion posts are emerging because they do so much to help student veterans and their families; one such post even helped to change a state law to make tuition rates more fair to those who have served our nation in uniform.

The article failed to mention American Legion National Emergency Fund collaborations with Team Rubicon at several disaster sites over the years. The Legion is working with several post-9/11 veterans groups right now, providing leadership on advisory councils in southern California to better connect veterans with services available to them.

The American Legion is, indeed, a service-oriented organization; last year alone, it hosted or sponsored more than 1,000 veteran job fairs nationwide. American Legion service officers are now working on the VA claims of more than 700,000 veterans of all ages, and fighting to protect VA benefits every day in Washington. Over the last four months, the Legion conducted a dozen Veterans Crisis Command Centers across the nation, in the aftermath of an all-out meltdown of trust between veterans and VA (which is only now beginning to heal, thanks to changes demanded by The American Legion).

At these crisis centers, The American Legion provided face-to-face, firsthand assistance to more than 3,000 veterans and their families along with nearly $1 million in retroactive compensation that had been delayed, thus denied, to veterans and their families of several wartime eras. These centers will continue to operate into 2015 because they are effective and relevant to veterans, particularly those leaving the service and coming home from war today and in months to come (about 1.5 million).

Much was missing in this disingenuous portrayal of The American Legion and VFW.

I can tell you what would be missing from the fabric of our nation if not for The American Legion and VFW. Missing would be the Department of Veterans Affairs, the GI Bill, livable wages for military personnel, recognition that veterans were poisoned by Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, and relevant education benefits built to serve the 21st-century student veteran.

Missing would be national and government awareness of post-traumatic stress disorder. Missing would be millions of community volunteers who save VA tens of millions of dollars in staffing, and raise millions of dollars in donations for veterans health-care facilities. Missing would be tens of thousands of youth programs, from baseball to Junior ROTC, from Boys State to scholarships for the children of service members who have given their lives for our country since 9/11.

In order to collect such information, the reporter of this piece should have investigated beyond interviews with a handful of veterans who did not have a positive experience at one American Legion post or another (from nearly 13,800 throughout the world), but that would have taken a willingness to tell the story fairly and accurately.

Michael Helm, National Commander

The American Legion