Great song by the Band in ’69 just before I left for the Jungle. The song’s lyrics resonate with what we do for Veterans. If you get a chance, listen to the song. It has some really good Jew’s Harp work in it- something you just don’t hear anymore.
In this case, my mission was for a surviving spouse of a one-legged dying Vet. Imagine leaving the US to work for Saudi Aramco in the sandbox and being gone for 12 years. You miss out on all the news about the new presumptives for AO. Unfortunately, Steve had also struck out about 5 times trying to get service connection for it before he left so he was of a mind that he was never going to prevail. That tends to happen when you use free VSO help. It’s really not their fault. Nobody will teach them law. Go figure. You’re given a job as a carpenter but they don’t give you a hammer, nails or a saw.
His wife, however, was not one to give up that easily. She came to me- or I guess I should say I came to her. They’d sold their car to make rent that month. Steve had one leg amputated waaaay above the knee for bone cancer- a disability that VA had said was not incurred in service because… well he’d never served in Viet Nam. If he’d lived long enough I’d planned to lasso that one and get it secondary to Agent Orange. But first I had to get them into greener financial pastures.
He had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and in order to get the oil job with the Sand Ranchers, he had to report pronto or lose the opportunity. Being a pragmatist, he opted to just have them cut the whole shiteree out thereby avoiding six months of puking in the piss pot from antineoplastic treatment (chemo) or 28 missions under the x ray machine to fry his pecker with radiation. He told me before he passed away that it was the absolute shits to find adult diapers over there. His kids had to send them to him from stateside.
Waterpump area- Udorn RTAFB 1970
His wife went with him to sandland and finally convinced him to throw in the towel when they had to take the leg. I reckon it was a rough life as a refinery mechanical engineer even if he was making killer bucks. Amputating the leg would have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. And it did.
They were burning through their life savings at an alarming rate and decided to downsize to a small mobile home near me but even that was too much without something more to cover expenses. I love a challenge so I started digging in the Blue Water files and found he’d been on a flattop (CVA 65 Enterprise) up at Yankee station on the one and only day it crossed inside the 12-mile limit while he was aboard- November 25, 1971. But that’s all it takes to join the Nehmer Class, right? Who ever said them Immunization records weren’t good for winning claims?
In sort of short order, I got him a quick 60% for the incontinence from the prostate enucleation. VA wasn’t so generous on the PTSD or the Ischemic Heart Disease. And while I was busy fixing that and filing for TDIU, Steve passed away. His wife,- let’s call her Daisy Mae- fell apart at the seams. She didn’t have a pot to piss in and soon wouldn’t have a window to throw it out of. Steve’s SSA wasn’t going to even patch the hole in her finances and worse, she couldn’t find the folder with all the marital information, Steve’s previous divorces (4) or anything else we were going to need to get her DIC.
Seems they’d left all that in a storage area in eastern Washington, ran out of dough and the owners sold the contents at auction like they do in Storage Wars. Worse, the Death Certificate said he died of heart problems I was still working on and Lewy Body dementia (LBD). I’ve had some lousy poker hands in my day but this was worse than a pair of twos in a 5-card stud game. I wasn’t going to be able to bluff my way out of it.
60 Mike Mike HE airmail
But here’s where that steel trap I call my brain comes in handy. About 6 years ago, my VA mentor, Law Bob Squarepants (Bob Walsh) had sent me an article showing the correlation between LBD and Parkinson’s disease. Last Monday, a social worker helping her sent me proof of her divorce prior to her marriage to Steve- the exact link we needed to show her marriage was unencumbered. Hooo doggies. I was finally cooking with Sterno, bubba.
I got the magic paper Thursday morning and got to make that phone call we VA reps absolutely live for in this business. Daisy Mae is not going to be living in some Section 8 shithole and eating cat food for the rest of her life. She’s going to have a decent existence- maybe not a luxurious penthouse suite in Beverly Hills, but who would want to live in LA nowadays anyway?
Lots of folks think we make wheelbarrows of money doing VA claims- that we’re somehow so rich we sport diamond rings, drive Mercedes Benz’ and have color TVs. To be truthful, you must be thinking about all them claims sharks. This didn’t even cost Daisy Mae the postage to mail me back the POA. I sent her a prepaid mailer. That’s the way it should be.
For the record, I freely admit I do have a color TV and drive a 2001 Ford F 150 with 208, 560 miles on it. It leaks oil and ain’t long for this world. When you put it in drive, you have to wait a few for it to get enough tranny fluid to kick in. Cupcake got the diamond ring back in ’87 and said she’s good to go with the one she has. Truth be told, an aged bottle of single malt scotch and a medium rare elk steak with spuds and I’m happy as a pig in poop. Pickles absolutely loves the old Ford and sees no reason to upgrade it anyway. Hell, if you think I’m funnin’ you, check this out. Dogs never lie.
And that’s the way it is- Saturday afternoon, June 27, 2026. It just doesn’t get any better than this.
asknod
Bethanie Spangenberg
kcraveiro
robinhoodesqvetsatty
Wesley McCauley
Veterans Claims Help 
RE Bob Walsh: Gotta agree, Bob’s the tits! He took me from zero to 100%. Even got 50% for Sleep Apnea about 10 years after we began the journey and I was already 100% P&T!