veterans

Rochester’s Veterans Outreach Center has hired new staff and is stepping up its efforts to prevent suicides, executive director Laura Stradley said.

The center will find ways to connect veterans to a variety of health care and career services, even if they show no immediate signs of mental distress, said Stradley.

Some veterans end up disconnected from local or federal agencies, like the Department of Veterans Affairs, that are designed to support them, Stradley said.

Local writer Jeff Spevak has a new book out. It's called "22 Minutes" and it tells the story of Ernie Coleman, a sailor, carpenter, and Navy veteran who survived the worst defeat in U.S. Navy history. Spevak calls him a common man who lived through uncommon circumstances. 

We sit down with Spevak to discuss how he told Coleman's story when Coleman himself refused to talk about the tragedy that haunted him. We also discuss the trauma many veterans, like Coleman, face.

With an average of 20 veterans dying by suicide each day in the U.S., Congressman Joe Morelle said Wednesday that he’s introducing legislation to make sure the Veterans Administration helps prevent more deaths.

Morelle said the VA received $6.2 million in the 2018 fiscal year to promote its suicide prevention services for veterans. It spent less than a third of that money, he said.

“To only have less than a third of that money spent when 7,000 vets are dying every year is reprehensible,” said Morelle.

Ken Moore served with the U.S. Army in Vietnam, after being drafted in 1965. Like a lot of Vietnam veterans, he went through some tough times overseas, memories that stayed with him throughout his life.

But that didn’t stop him from wanting to help his fellow vets. When he retired from a 30-year career at Kodak, he worked for Monroe County in the Veterans Service Agency for a time. Laura Stradley used to head up that agency, now she is executive director of the Veterans Outreach Center where Moore was also active.

This is the 100th anniversary of what has also been called Armistice Day, a day that was originally established to mark the end of World War I.

But of course that remembrance has now become a day to honor all veterans and that’s what they were doing at the War Memorial at the Blue Cross Arena on Sunday in a ceremony organized by the Monroe County American Legion.