DO YOU KNOW WHY THE VFW WAS FORMED?
Friday, April 4, 2008 at 04:29 PM
by dist8
The VFW traces its roots back to 1899 when veterans of the Spanish-American War (1898) and the Philippine Insurrection (1899-1902) founded
local organizations to secure rights and benefits for their service.
In order to secure these benefits for veterans the leadership of the
organization created the Veterans Service Program. In the State of Missouri
we wanted our Service Officers to be where ever we can see the most
veterans. So we have Service Officers at the VA Regional Office, every VA
Medical Center and one located in Southwest Missouri.
We keep stats on how much money we are able to secure on behalf of the
veterans that we represent. Seven years ago we were recovering $18 million
dollars in benefits. Today that amount has grown to $92 million dollars a
year. We file a little more than 1,000 claims a month with half of them from
claimants coming to the VFW for the first time. We have signed up more
than 1,100 new members during the past three years.
At the VA Regional Office in St. Louis you will find representative’s from
seven organizations. But no service organization is handling more claims
than the VFW. The VA has 8,419 pending claims and we represent 2,469 of
them or 29.33 percent of all claims. There are 1,351 veterans who have
claims pending that are not represented by anyone, which represents 16.05
percent of all claims. We represent 500 more claims than a Service
Organization that has more than twice the staff as ours and we represent
2,074 more claims than the largest Service Organization. When you look at
the stats for four of the service organizations they represent on 8 percent of
the workload.
If it was not for the generous donations of several VFW Post, substantial
donations from the Ladies Auxiliary and individuals who have given us
donations out of their own pockets we would not have been able to secure
the 92 million dollars in benefits for our veterans during the past year.
The Veterans Service Program is the only program that directly helps our
veterans to receive their medical care, compensation, pension and education
benefits. You will not find another group of individuals who are as
dedicated to helping our veterans than your Department Service Officers.
They work weekends and more than 40 hours a week not because they have
to but because they want to. There are still thousands of veterans in the
State of Missouri who could benefit from our services but we don’t have the
staff to help them. The big difference between the VFW and some of the
other service organizations is that we are looking for veterans to help. We
review the veteran’s file and we look for other conditions that veteran can
claim that they are unaware of. Besides all the claims we get granted we
also get an average of 15 veterans a week a 100 percent evaluation.
I have been your Service Officer for over 30 years and for those that know
me you know that my mission is to file as many claims as possible and to
make sure our veteran’s are receiving the maximum benefits under the law.
I spend a large portion of my day arguing with the VA about negative
decisions that have made in veteran’s claims. You would not believe how
many times we have been able to get the VA to change their original
decisions.
I am asking for your help. If the VFW has helped you with your claim for
benefits and we are asking you to do what you can to support our Program. I
would also like for you to contact your Post and ask them how much they
have sent in to support our Program. Don’t be shocked if you find out that
nothing was sent in or they only sent in $25.00 for the year. Because we
have been there for you when you needed us maybe you can convince them
that our Program is worth more to veterans than 7 cents a day from a Post
that may have more than a hundred members. Hopefully you will find out
that they are giving their fair share because we are all in this together and
until all our veterans are receiving what they are entitled to receive our job is
not done.
I have one goal and that is to help our fellow veterans to receive their
benefits and to do that I need the resources necessary to get the job done.
All contribution should be sent to: VFW Department Headquarters, P.O.
Box 26, Jefferson City, MO 65102. Make check payable to the VFW
Veterans Service Fund.
Dennis F. Flynn
VFW Service Officer
