gets state recognition

By JAINE TREADWELL

Features Editor

Nov. 29, 2000 10 PM

Pike County Chapter 20 of the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) received special recognition from the state office for 100 percent membership for 1999-2000.

Floyd McCain, junior vice commander District 3 DAV, presented a certificate of recognition to the chapter at their monthly meeting Tuesday and commended the chapter for their efforts in meeting and maintaining the quota set for them.

The membership of Chapter 20 is 89 and McCain said it is important that disabled veterans take advantage of the opportunities offered to them through membership.

"The DAV is not a political association," McCain said. "Its members reflect all shades of American political opinion. They count on the DAV to advocate their needs as disabled veterans and the DAV concentrates its attention and resource on this single, nonpartisan concern."

McCain said the DAV programs and activities also enjoy the support of an Auxiliary that focuses its attention on disabled veterans’ families.

"Women in the Auxiliary are all relatives of DAV members, Gold Star mothers or wives, or women who are also members of the DAV.

Randy Ross, veterans affairs officer for Pike County,

said that DAV membership is open to any honorably discharged veteran with a disability incurred in wartime military service or under conditions similar to war.

"Veterans disabled during the Vietnam War make up a third of the DAV’s membership and 13 Vietnam veterans have served one-year terms as national commander, the DAV’s highest office," Ross said. "Veterans who served during Vietnam or later make up all of the DAV’s management and professional staff at its headquarters in Washington, D.C. and Cincinnati, Ohio, as well as its offices nationwide."

The DAV originated after the troops came home from World War I.

Ross said when the troops came home from World War I, more than one million soldiers carried grim reminders of war – disabling injuries, battle scars, gas-seared lung and prolonged illnesses.

"The nation’s makeshift response to the needs of its disabled heroes soon broke down and angry veterans took matters into their own hands," Ross said. "They started self-help groups that soon merged to become the DAV."

After forming a national organization headquartered in Cincinnati in 1920, the DAV began planning a Washington, D.C. office to work toward needed legislation and expedite veterans’ claims.

Ross said during its first six months of operation in 1922, that office handled 7,000 claims for veterans across America.

"These young disabled veterans also worked with other organizations, initiating legislation that led to a centralized government agency to handle all veterans’s affairs – the Veterans’ Bureau which was the forerunner of today’s Department of Veterans Affairs," he said.

For more information about the DAV contact the local Veterans Affairs Office at 566-1780.