‘We have a lot of wisdom in this room’

American Legion service officers gather for first in-person training session since 2020.

Dozens of American Legion-accredited department service officers (DSOs) gathered in Northern Virginia Oct. 20-25 for their first in-person training session since 2020. They came from as far away as Australia and brought with them more than 700 years of professional experience in the field of assisting veterans and their families with U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs benefits claims.

And that fact wasn’t lost on those providing the instruction: lawyers from Bergmann & Moore, which provides no-cost representation to Legionnaires and their family members who wish to pursue an appeal of a VA benefits denial before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. 

“We have a lot of wisdom in this room … in this very honorable field,” said Bergmann & Moore Managing Partner Glenn Bergmann during The American Legion DSO Symposium graduation ceremony Oct. 25 in the Loudon Auditorium at The National Conference Center in Leesburg. “You have a legacy to ensure that it’s passed on. You need to recruit some compassionate service officers … because you cannot take your knowledge with you. It’s great that you’ve all got it, but ensure that the mission continues. Ensure that the knowledge, everything that you’ve learned, finds someone as compassionate and as selfless as you.

“And make sure they know how to treat veterans, how to treat widows, their children, to help them get their benefits. And ensure that for tomorrow, the same care, the same compassion from The American Legion is passed on to the younger generation.”

The American Legion and Bergmann & Moore entered in a memorandum of understanding in 2017 by resolution that provides training from the law firm for Legion DSOs. But this year’s session was the first since March 2020, right before the start of the pandemic. All of the sessions since then had been conducted virtually.

It was a positive change for those who attended this year. “It’s very nice to be around other service officers because you can get nuggets of information that you probably won’t get doing it over a computer screen,” said Department of Wisconsin service officer James Fialkowski, who is in his 17^th year as a service officer and is a member of American Legion Post 416 in Greendale, Wis. “I’ve learned as much from fellow service officers as I have from the instructors, because those service officers have so much experience and have seen most everything there is out there.”

Department of Missouri service officer Tracy Vawter, who has 24 years of experience, had a similar view. “We do learn a lot from each other and our interactions in person,” said Vawter, a member of St. Louis Service Women’s Post 404. “It’s not really quantifiable – you can’t maybe measure it – but there’s a significant benefit to this professional interaction.”

Bergmann said virtual training was necessary and proved to have its benefits. But he also recognizes the need to incorporate on-site training as well.

“I feel like the remote training was a blessing and a curse. A blessing in the sense that we can reach more people, cost effective, for The American Legion,” he said. “We can train people in place. However, anyone who has been to an in-person session knows the value. Not only did we train the service officers, but they interacted with us. They interacted with each other.

“I overhead some DSOs saying they feel like they learned just as much from the instructors as they did from other smart department service officers who they’re not regularly in contact with. The blessing of in-person is we have the personal interaction, we have the growth that’s necessary because we need interaction.”

Bergmann & Moore Director of Outreach Paul Sullivan, a member of American Legion Post 41 in Silver Spring, Md., talked with symposium attendees about what it meant to be back together. “They shared how they’re able to see their peers, create relationships with their peers, begin mentoring with some of their peers because some of the students here have 20 or more years of experience, and some may only have two or three,” he said. “The other thing is communication is not just someone talking. There’s the tone, and there’s also the body language. When the students are meeting with each other after a lesson or instruction, they can see with the other students, ‘Hey, did you get? I got it. Do you have a question?’ That’s where the relationship and the mentoring come in in-person. This dynamic only happens in-person. And it’s invaluable.

“The students were very thrilled (and) very excited to do this in-person again. Watching in person the eyes light up of the students when they see, ‘Oh, that’s a new way I can win a dependency claim for a surviving spouse’ … it’s that type of process that makes this in-person training enormously more effective.”

The five-day symposium touched on a variety of issues servicemembers face while also incorporating real-life scenarios. Attendees were able to attend live U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims appellate panel oral argument that took place in the auditorium and was followed by an interactive discussion with the court’s chief judge, Michael P. Allen.

Another panel discussion focused on effective advocacy, while the agenda also included sessions on The American Legion’s Be the One veteran suicide prevention program, the  PACT Act and the Appeals Modernization Act (AMA) and strategies for choosing AMA options.

There also were classroom sessions, which often led to a back-and-forth discussion between attendees and instructors. “I think because there was more time afforded in this in-person conference than in any previous in-person conference, it is facilitating that interactive quality in the training,” Vawter said. “Forty hours of training in three days is a lot less time for talking with each other and talking with the instructors than doing it over five days.”

Gary Polmanteer, a service officer based in Brisbane, Australia, spends approximately six months a year in the United States and was able to attend the symposium at the request of the Department of Hawaii. A member of Yanks Down Under Post AU01 and a 100-percent service-connected veteran, Polmanteer had done virtual training previously but had never been to an in-person session.

 Doing so gave him, “a better understanding of how the whole process works, where to go with it,” he said. “Appeals is something we don’t get as involved in, because we don’t have access to that (in Australia). So, it makes it even more important when we put together our claims that we do a fully developed claim. By coming in here and understanding some of the hiccups, that helps us teach and help with our (veterans in Australia) how to develop that claim.”

DSO training provided during the symposium was a new experience for Department of South Dakota service officer Matthew Pillar, who took over the position this year. A member of American Legion Post 138 in De Smet, he appreciated the opportunity to attend.

“It’s made me rethink my long-term vision of my office and how we’re going to handle new claims and appeals, and how we’re going to delegate those tasks,” Pillar said. “I’ve got some really good ideas to bring back to streamline what we do. I’d like to think we’re pretty successful already, but bringing back some of this information is going to make us even more successful. I’m excited to start implementing a lot of the stuff we learned here this week.”

Being able to interact with the other DSOs also was beneficial. “What we do is similar, but so different. There’s always multiple avenues of approach with all of these things,” Pillar said. “One thing off the top of my head was at supper the first night we were here, a VSO was talking about having a hard time proving active-duty service for a veteran, and how she pulled his pay records to find active-duty service.

“Something so simple, like ‘why didn’t I ever think of that.’ I’m dealing with a case just like that. Had I not come here, I probably would have never thought of that. If coming to something like this helps me help one veteran, it’s worth it.”

Being able to assist fellow veterans is what has kept the Department of New Jersey’s Ken Connors working as a service officer for 23 years. The commander of Raritan Post 23 in Keyport, N.J., Connors said getting a favorable ruling for a veteran “gives you a sense of purpose. And when you look at the attitude of the people and the change when they maybe had an issue, and you were able to help them overcome that obstacle and they get their claim settled, you see how happy they are and how grateful they are.”

During the graduation ceremony, American Legion Executive Director for Government Affairs Mario Marquez provided the DSOs with two asks. “Go back to your (National Executive Committeemen) and your department commanders … and tell them how you feel about this course. And inform us of what you think we can do to make this course better,” he said. “A lot of times at (National Headquarters), we put our heads down, we’re working on the grind … we don’t get to engage with you, who are really the cream of the crop. You are the reason why we do this. We do appreciate everything that you do.”

VA Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Benefits Michael Frueh also addressed the DSOs during the graduation ceremony. He said that service officers like the Legion’s are that “last mile” between the veteran and his or her earned benefits. “You all know how to serve the veterans in your communities,” he said.

Bergmann said regular training for the Legion’s service officers is critical because of a changing benefits landscape. “Because (veteran) law is fluid because the courts are always changing the law, there is new law that needs to be shared,” he said. “That information has to be transferred back down to the people who are kind of in the trenches. We want the department service officers to be educated because that builds a better file when we’re representing a veteran at the court.”

And being able to provide that representation is what has kept Vawter in her role as an advocate for 24 years.

“It’s a privilege to be able to help veterans with their VA benefits processes,” she said. “It’s a responsibility I don’t take lightly. I owe it to the Legionnaires that came before me and the ones that are now still seeing value in the mission.”