State sets up a 24-hour veterans hot line
"MN Agencies"08/02/2007
The "Veterans Linkage Line" is meant to simplify access to a wide range of services, including crisis counseling and benefit advice to ease the transition back to civilian life.
By Patricia Lopez,
Star Tribune
August 01, 2007
Army 2nd Lt. Andy LaBree was only half-listening to the demobilization seminar at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, when he finally came home after a year in Baghdad.
Higher-ups droned on about the services that were available, programs to help readjust to civilian life, time-sensitive benefits. They gave returnees like LaBree fistfuls of pamphlets, papers to fill out, numbers to call.
LaBree, 27, just wanted to get back to Monticello. See his parents, his four sisters and brother, his friends, and tuck into a fat serving of honey-planked salmon at the Blackwoods.
By the time he got around to checking his benefits, LaBree was behind and lost in a blizzard of forms, phone numbers and faceless voice systems that never seemed to get him to a live person.
On Wednesday, LaBree joined Gov. Tim Pawlenty, state Veterans Affairs Commissioner Clark Dyrud and others to unveil the "Veterans Linkage Line," a 24-hour hot line designed to get veterans help with everything from crisis counseling to health and education benefits.
The hot line, 1-888-LinkVet, augments a state website, http://www.minnesotaveteran.org, that offers more detailed information about benefits, programs and services to Minnesota veterans and their families.
"We hope this will be a user-friendly pathway for our heroes and their families to use," Pawlenty said. "We want to make Minnesota the best place in the country for vets."
Dyrud, a Vietnam vet, said he recalls his own transition to civilian life after nearly a year in Vietnam, punctuated by a brief stay in a military hospital after he took shrapnel in the stomach.
"It has affected me every day of my life," he said.
Combat troops become accustomed to "living ... on the edge, in the moment," he said. After 30 years of working with veterans' claims, he said, "I know heartbreaking stories, times where you think, if the person just got help in time, things might have been different."
Dyrud particularly worries about active-duty military members, who, unlike National Guard members, return one-by-one rather than in units.
"You lose track of them," he said. "That's why we're trying to do more outreach, do what we can to make it easier."
The hot line, he said, is the first step. "We'd like to build it into true case management, so there's one person handling their case."
LaBree said that after a couple of months he eased his way back into his old life and is now at Bethel Seminary, where he's studying to be a chaplain.
But, he acknowledged, after a year of perimeter patrols and security missions in Baghdad, the initial months back home posed a bit of a struggle.
"Military life is simple, ordered, disciplined," LaBree said earnestly, still wearing his uniform and standing at a modified parade rest.
"You get so used to a disciplined lifestyle," he said. "In the absence of orders ... it's a challenge, at first, to motivate yourself, to make regular decisions."
LaBree finally got his benefits figured out, with the help of a clerk from his old unit, missing out only on some dental benefits.
"I talked to a battle buddy last night," LaBree said, "and we agreed that something that can streamline this process would be very beneficial."