This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Veterans in the news

  • Joseph Keppard, Army veteran, saving the world

    SF Gate reports that a Nissan Sentra driver was speeding along Monarch Bay Drive when the driver hit the curb which sent the car upside down into the water. 53-year-old Joseph Keppard, a ten-year Army veteran, was meditating nearby when he saw the accident occur. He stripped of his shoes and dove into the water and pulled the pair out of the water;

    “In my opinion, looking at the tides and the currents and how deep the water was, they easily saved those teens’ lives,” said San Leandro police Lt. Ted Henderson.

    […]

    Keppard, who is 6 feet 4, said the car landed in deep water. He spent several minutes in the bay, searching in the dark for the teenagers and then pulling them out. At one point, others on the scene said there was a third person in the car, so Keppard dove down into the wreckage feeling in the darkness for another body.

    “The water was up to my eyes, and you could feel the current pulling,” said Keppard, who served a decade in the Army. “The whitecaps were going pretty good. I didn’t have time to think about myself. I just wanted to get those guys out of there.”

    […]

    Keppard, who frequently works out and meditates at the marina, said that the people he rescued didn’t thank him, but he didn’t mind.

    “I wasn’t even focused on any of that — it was more so about the lives,” he said. “They were kids — I’m tired of hearing about kids dying. Me being a minister, I do too many funerals.”

  • AverageNCO, Stealing Valor and the GI Film Festival

    You may or may not know that our own AverageNCO’s film, Stealing Valor, which he premiered here late last year, has been selected as one of the films to be shown at the GI Film Festival this week. He was interviewed at Lifezette recently;

    Q: What does it mean to have your film screened at the GI Film Festival, and what are your plans for the movie after the event?
    A: I’m overwhelmed my film was selected to be screened. It was a student project, and to see it selected for screening beside professional filmmakers is extremely humbling. I’m honored. I don’t think it’s a testament to my skills as a filmmaker, as much as it is to the [stories] and the people I profiled. The network of veterans working to expose imposters is an amazing group of people. They served their country and took an oath to defend it. They continue to serve — but now they’re defending the legacies of the men and women they served with, the legacies of their fellow veterans.

    I hope as many people as possible can see my film to simply acquire a basic understanding of stolen valor. I’m working full-time as a reporter now, and I use the film as a tool when I lecture to undergraduate journalism students at Pittsburg State.

    I would love to speak to other aspiring journalists on the subject — and teach them how not to be duped by an imposter in the future.

    If you haven’t seen the video yet, you really should. AverageNCO traveled the country to get the story from the mouths of the stolen valor community. He was tireless in documenting the story. And if you’re in DC this weekend, put the GI Film Festival on your schedule.

  • Veterans’ unemployment falls

    The Veterans’ Benefits Administration released new figures which shows that veterans’ unemployment numbers are improving;

    Attached is our monthly ‘cheat sheet’ for your use and information. The national unemployment rate for April 2017 decreased slightly from 4.5% to 4.4% and the Veteran unemployment numbers for April 2017 decreased from 3.9% to 3.7%.

    Thanks to all of you who are working directly or indirectly, to ensure our Veterans have meaningful employment.

    V/R

    Curtis L. Coy

    Deputy Under Secretary for Economic Opportunity

    Veterans Benefits Administration

    U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

    The Military Times reports that veteran employment is at an all time high;

    The record low for post-9/11 veterans comes after a slight uptick in unemployment between February and March. The volatility of the month-to-month figures is one reason critics of the monthly U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment data say not to put too much stock in the numbers. The data are based on a monthly Current Population Survey, which calculate the veteran unemployment rate from a much smaller sample size than the overall rate.

    The unemployment rate for nonveterans in April was also 3.9 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate for Americans overall also dropped slightly, as the U.S. added a total of 211,000 jobs last month, primarily in the hospitality, food service and healthcare industries.

  • Devil Dog Arms on the way back

    Devil Dog Arms on the way back

    About a year ago, we wrote about Joe Lucania, the founder of Devil Dog Arms, who had pretended to be a Marine in order to build his new company. He had never been in the military so when his customers found out the truth, he fell hard and was forced to leave the company.

    Guns.com reports that Devil Dog Arms is still around and now under the direction of a real Marine;

    Former recon Marine Walt Hasser is one of those seeking to rebuild Devil Dog Arms and its reputation. The strategy is simple: Come clean and hope the nostalgia of serving with fellow Marines will help to bolster the new company whose old reputation was built on a lie.

    […]

    Sure, Hasser said, Devil Dog Arms’ sordid past is a stain on the company and the stolen valor incident is probably making it hard for the business to turn a profit, but he hopes people will forgive the company’s past and see the new firearms maker for what it is: A phoenix who embodies the Marines esprit de corps.

    It’s new motto, “Honor, Courage, Perseverance,” is a nod to the Marine Corps’ own “Honor, Courage, Commitment.”

    Hasser is so confident in the company’s success, in its dedication to perseverance, that he’s not being paid until the company turns a profit, he said.

    Hasser admits that he’s the only Marine in the head office, but that he plans to hire more when they get the business back on it’s feet.

  • Vietnam vets awarded Silver Stars 45 years later

    Vietnam vets awarded Silver Stars 45 years later

    Robert Frank wrote awards for his helicopter crewmembers in 1972, but the paperwork was lost in the shuffle that year. The Army Huey crew, Robert Monette, Robert Frank, Spc. John Deslouriers and Spc. Leonard “Bruce” Shearer, had rescued the 7-member crew of an Air Force C-130 aircraft which had been shot down near Saigon. Their commander, retired Major Jack Shields resurrected the paperwork and the crew reunited in Arkansas for an award ceremony, according to Fox News;

    The “Huey” crew saw the C-130 Hercules plane crash when they were on a research mission in Saigon, Vietnam, 45 years ago.

    “They never made a Mayday call. By all accounts, no one knew they had been shot down,” Monette recalled to Stars and Stripes.

    They thought there wouldn’t be any survivors, but flew closer and spotted people moving among the burning wreckage, Frank said. They initiated a rescue mission despite being low on fuel.

    Deslouriers, the gunner, fended off the North Vietnamese Communist forces as the rest of the team pulled five airmen from the wreckage. Frank called a second helicopter to rescue two more people. No one was killed that day.

    From Stars & Stripes;

    Robert Monette, who was the helicopter pilot that day, said the medals were “unexpected, and very, very humbling.”

    “We did these sorts of things in the air cavalry all the time, the difference this time being it was recognized and documented,” said Robert Frank, the air mission commander on the Huey. “Heroic things were done every day. Sometimes somebody would see it, other times they wouldn’t.”

  • Twin WWII vets celebrate their 92nd birthdays

    Twin WWII vets celebrate their 92nd birthdays

    The El Paso Times tells the story of twins Manuel Luis “Manny” Santoscoy and Luis Manuel “Louis” Santoscoy who are celebrating their 92nd birthday together;

    When they were drafted at the age of 18 while juniors at El Paso High School and shipped to the southwest Pacific during World War II, it would only make sense that they would seek to be together and protect each while fighting the Japanese. The two started off as excited new members of the U.S. Air Force, but within weeks were sent to the 24th Infantry Division, 34th Regiment, Company H, when replacements were needed.

    Though some of their memories are not as sharp, the twins — who celebrated their 92nd birthday Wednesday in El Paso — found their adventure, although perilous at times, in the service.

    You should click over and read the whole article, because I don’t want to take anything from the author who, obviously, took a lot of pains to write the story of these two brothers. These two American heroes.

  • Robert Brooks gets dignity he deserved

    Robert Brooks gets dignity he deserved

    Last month we talked about Robert Brooks whose earthly remains were found inside a suitcase in a field in Arkansas. His body had been dumped there so his caretakers could continue to get his social security checks. Brooks had been a turret gunner on B-17s during World War II and he didn’t deserve the grave that his caretakers had planned for him.

    Chief Tango sends us link to the Washington Post which reports that the Patriot Guards made sure that Mr Brooks went home in style;

    They listened to Taps in Little Rock and lined up to salute the urn that carried Brooks’s ashes before escorting him to the Tennessee border, where a fresh batch of Patriot Guard Riders joined the procession.

    And so it went, through Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, toward their final destination, Fort Jackson National Cemetery in South Carolina, where the remains, an American flag and Bible signed by the Patriot Guard captains who carried him there, were given to Jay, [Robert’s son,] in a reunion 10 years overdue.

    Two more people have been arrested in New York State for the abuse of Mr Brook’s corpse in addition to the two who were arrested in Arkansas.

  • Joseph Benjamin Harris III passes

    Joseph Benjamin Harris III passes

    Bobo sends us a link to the sad news that Joseph Benjamin Harris III has passed on at the tender age of 89. He drew the Trix rabbit and wrote the iconic phrase “Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids”. He went on to invent cartoon characters like Underdog and Tennessee Tuxedo.

    Of course, like most of his generation, he was a veteran;

    Joseph Benjamin Harris III was born to Charlie Harris and Gladys Golden in Jersey City on Jan. 5, 1928. He served in the Navy and the Marines and graduated from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn before he started at Dancer.