Democratic View – In Memoriam

By Ann Sullivan 

“That Nation which respects and honors its dead, shall ever be respected and honored itself.”
– Brevet Lieut.-Col. Edmund B. Whitman, 1868

On May 26^th we celebrate our most sacred national holiday. Memorial Day, which originated north of here in Waterloo after the Civil War, honors men and women who gave “the last full measure of devotion” to our country. This year, I find the Holiday especially poignant. Fifty years ago, on April 30th, 1975, the Vietnam War ended. Members of my generation fought and died in that long war.

When I graduated from high school in1965, many of my classmates, facing the draft, enrolled in the Armed Forces. Most had never heard of Vietnam, but that December, just when many of my classmates reported to bootcamp, President Johnson committed 195,000 soldiers to Vietnam. In 1969, the year I graduated from Cornell, around 543,400 American men and women were in country. By April 30^th, 1975, 2,709,918 American had served in uniform there. 58,148 died in the conflict. Another 100,00 were completely or badly disabled. My high school suffered grievous losses. Eight students who attended Manchester, NH Memorial have names engraved on a memorial plaque in front of my school. I remember many of them.

Tompkins County shared my hometown’s pain. 29 names of my fellow Cornell graduates who died in the Vietnam War are engraved on the Korea, Vietnam and Other Conflicts Memorial in Annabel Taylor Hall. Eleven Tompkins County young men died and are honored in a memorial in Dewitt Park. Among the names is Terrance Collinson Graves, a Medal of Honor recipient. Groton honors him with a special memorial marker. 

This month, I also will think of those still living who served. Approximately 19 million veterans are alive today. To honor our commitment to these men and women, the Veterans Administration offers an array of services. You probably know a vet who receives VA medical care. Other veterans receive education and employment assistance, housing loans and a myriad of other benefits. In Tompkins County, the VA operates an Outpatient Clinic in the Cayuga Shopping Mall on North Triphammer Road in Lansing.

Recently, however, under the pretext of correcting inefficiencies, the Trump Administration targeted the VA. The VA administration announced a plan to cut its staff by 80,000 employees, many of them veterans.

Veterans are fighting the proposed staff reductions, fearing a gutting of the VA Health Care services that comprise 90%v of its workforce. Livier Lozaro, a VFW commander in San Diego condemned the firings. “These decisions have been carried out with cold indifference. Our leaders love to talk about honoring veterans, but when it comes to acting, we see the opposite.”(‘A sense of betrayal’: Veterans and families speak out against VA cuts | WUSF)

Republican and Democratic veterans hold congressional and senate seats. Democrats have taken a unified public stance against reductions. Senator Gallego of Arizona, a Marine combat veteran, put a hold on nominations to the VA until it halts the proposed layoffs. Tompkins County’s Washington representatives, Congressman Riley and Senators Schumer and Gillibrand, have joined their fellow Democrats in publicly condemning the reductions. Some Republicans also raised objections. Others, probably afraid to cross the President, have not. “I trust the president,” said Congressman Babin of Texas (Veterans cuts spark GOP backlash on Capitol Hill – POLITICO).  This is the same president who has called service members “suckers” and “losers” and who once suggested that the joint chief of staff deserved the death penalty.

This month I will visit Tompkins County memorials that commemorate the fallen. I also will support Vietnam vets and the children and grandchildren who followed them into the Armed Forces by contacting Republican congresspeople to protest cuts that harm veterans. I believe I honor the dead by fighting for their comrades who survived. Patriotism knows no Red or Blue.

Ann Sullivan is a member of the Tompkins Democratic Committee’s Third Ward in the City of Ithaca.