28 January, 2015

An Open Letter to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs

The Honorable Mr. Robert A. McDonald
Dear Mr. Secretary,

Congratulations
1. Firstly please allow me, as a Veteran, to take this occasion to
congratulate you on recently having been found worthy of both
nomination and confirmation to such an august position as the
Secretary of Veterans Affairs. There are millions of Veterans
among the population of our Nation who have earned by their
service, occasionally at the risk of life and limb, such post-service
support as deemed appropriate by our elected Representatives.
Just as the citizens of our country have found themselves, from
time to time, being defended, protected and/or served by our
Service men and women, so we as Veterans now find ourselves
served by the dedicated members of the Department headed by
you. I sincerely hope that at the end of your term, you view this
honor and opportunity with as much personal reward and
fulfillment as you must have felt upon that first day at finding
yourself having been granted the statutory authority you have
been entrusted to wield on our behalf. Such a trust by your fellow
citizens would easily be held as the culmination of a lifetime of
successful accomplishment by virtually any one in our country.
Thank you for your agreement to serve.

A Commitment To Pay Not Kept

2. Secondly though, the circumstance which causes me to write to
you is that while I may be having a serious problem with your
Department failing to deposit money into my account as they
committed to do, in the process Ive discovered that you have a
much greater problem with your Department failing in the same
way to deliver on its own commitment to hundreds certainly, and
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more likely thousands, of my fellow Veterans. Heres what

happened.
3. On Thursday 18 December I received a letter here in Las Vegas,
NV from the Reno Regional Office dated 16 December notifying me
that having been found qualified to receive an award as
compensation for disabilities resulting from gunshot and shrapnel
wounds and other injuries and conditions, all related to your
military service, and with such conditions resulting in an 80%
disability rating, I would henceforth be entitled to receive a
payment each month at the rate of $1,551.48 per month, with an
effective date of 5 December, and a Payment Start Date of 1
January. Consequently, on Monday 22 December I made a trip out
to my local VA Hospital to sit down in person to ascertain whether
or not I understood exactly what was about to happen. A Benefits
Counsellor delved into my records on her computer and on
Tuesday 23 December called me back and assured me that I could
count on receiving the first payment, prorated over 27 days of
December, on the Payment Start Date of 1 January, but probably
on 31 December, the First being a holiday. This should have been
a trivial fiscal action, since I was already receiving a far lesser
amount ($133.17) by a previously established direct deposit from
an earlier disability claim only the amount of the payment
needed to be changed. As it turned out I received only the old,
lesser amount on 31 December. None of the promised increased
amount arrived then or on any of the 28 days since.

Your 800 Number Call Center

4. So on Monday 5 January I called the 800 number for assistance
and selected the choice provided specifically for pay problems.

What I Expected
5. What I confidently expected to find were officials trained to recover
and analyze my payment account, confirm the failure as I reported
it, intervene right while I waited on the phone, followed by being
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told I would find the missing money deposited in my account

within 2 working days and if it didnt happen, to call them back
personally at their own number and refer to a Case Number which I
had been assigned.

What I Found Instead

6. The young man I got was able easily to find on his computer
display the 16 December letter, and we were both in complete
agreement about what was written there, specifically the Section
titled:
You Can Expect Payment
Your payment begins the first day of the month
following your effective date. You will receive a payment
covering the initial amount due under this award

Thereafter, payment will be made at the beginning of

each month for the prior month. For example, benefits
due for May are paid on or about June 1. and also in that
same letter, Your effective [date is] December 5,
2014. and in a table format under the column heading
Payment Start Date was the entry Jan 1, 2015.
7. But after hearing that I had received no such payment on 1
January, he expressed amazement as to why I was expecting any
payment before 1 February, this being only January. So in a second
attempt I pointed out again that the 3-word term Payment Start
Date said 1 January, not 1 February, and unambiguously meant:
The date upon which payments would start that is, when a
payment would be made by the VA and received by me, but that
in fact no payment had been received by me. His reply was to
quote again that , payment will be made at the beginning of
each month for the prior month., so I should expect to receive
nothing until 1 February.
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8. Concerned that someone trained and assigned specifically to

handle pay problems was stuck in reciting a script he had been
given and was not open to analyzing the particular facts of the case
in front of him, and thus not able to see the commitment made and
the failure to meet it, I tried for a third time by pointing out that
while I understood and agreed completely with the concept of a
month of accruing entitlement followed by payment of that accrued
amount on the following First of the month, I was not calling to
inquire about a payment due 1 February which would contain
January money, I was calling about money which would have
accrued during December, beginning on the Fifth, which should
have been paid to me on the First of January now four days past,
but had not. His reply was to quote again the schedule whereby
money accrued during one month would be paid on the First of the
following month in total disregard for the facts displayed in front
of his eyes on his computer screen and vocally expanded by me
that accrued money December had not been paid on 1 January,
as committed to in the 16 December letter. It was like talking to a
brick in a brick wall.
9. Since in my opinion the twin concepts of Effective Date and
Payment Start Date were capable of unambiguous expression in
only 5 words, I deemed the issue to be easily within the intellectual
capacity of a Middle Schooler, but for some reason beyond the
capacity of the person entrusted by the VA to handle this specific
issue in their National Call Center, so, in deference to the classic
definition of expecting a different outcome using the same inputs
as being that of insanity, and unwilling to go around for a fourth
time, I gave up on him and requested I be put in touch with his
Supervisor. He took my contact information and informed me that I
would be contacted within 24 hours.

Your Reno Office

10. On Tuesday, 6 January, not having heard from the Supervisor at
the National Call Center, I decided an Official at the Office which
had drafted the letter to me and personally made the
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commitment would be more likely to want to see any failure

attached to it corrected. I also hoped that being a Regional Office,
that location would contain what we would call in the Marine
Corps: a Disbursing Office, headed by a Disbursing Officer and full
of Disbursing Clerks, keeping everybodys pay straight. When I
called the Reno Office, the Official there understood immediately
why I was concerned and concurred that I had every right to be,
also saying he would be back to me as soon as possible with a
solution. As soon as possible turned out to be within only a half
hour. He gave me the name and contact information of a
Counsellor located here in Las Vegas.
11. Within less than 10 minutes that Counsellor called to inform me
that she had received the assignment from Reno and would be
back to me when she had a chance to assess the problem. She
was back within a half hour, telling me her research showed the
issue was driven by constraints within something called the
Omnibus VA Budgeting Bill and while she had no means to
personally intervene and put corrective instructions into the VA
pay system, she wanted me to know the source so I could do any
further research in pursuit of a solution on my own. It now
seemed clear to me that, unlike individual units and/or Bases in
the Marine Corps, neither Reno nor Las Vegas was home to a
Disbursing Office and despite timely, highly motivated responses
within Nevada, the solution to my problem was not going to be
found locally but back within the VA 800 number system. The
response of these two Nevada VA employees was as quick and
responsive as one could ever hope to encounter in the second
case even attempting to find a solution when it was beyond her
skill set a very nice experience.

The Phoenix Call Center

12. On Wednesday 7 January, within 48 hours rather than 24, I
received the promised return call from a Supervisor who turned
out to be calling from the Phoenix Call Center. Every one of his
responses was in complete contrast to the Call Center attendant
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of two days earlier. He agreed immediately that I was correct in

my understanding that the funds due me had been accruing since
5 December and with a Payment Start Date of 1 January I was fully
justified in expecting the money to have been direct deposited in
my account on that date, or the day before. It was such a
stunning contrast with the VA person who had handled my initial
request for assistance, that I felt akin to wandering out of a dark
tangled forest where I had become lost but then suddenly finding
myself stepping into a pleasant open meadow bathed in sunshine
with puffy white clouds and birds singing. Finally, sanity!! While
completely refreshing to hear, that introduction turned out to be
where the good news ended and together he and I both stepped
back into the forest of Grimms Fairytales. He went on to say that
it didnt surprise him at all that the events to be expected by any
Veteran reading the letter had not happened at all. He indicated
that such a contrary outcome often occurred, that in fact he
himself fielded hundreds of calls each month from Veterans
reporting promised money not arriving.
13. Despite being in complete shock to hear that such a situation as
promised money failing to show up was so common, I posited that
perhaps the date of the approval of my case, the 16 th of the
month, was sufficiently late in the month as to make it unlikely or
impossible to get the payment started, but if that were the case,
wouldnt the VA already have the experience, with millions of
payments every year, to predict very accurately how long they
would require to get one started, even easier in my case because
it entailed only changing the amount in an already established
direct deposit payment from one amount to a new one, and if my
case was decided too late in the month to allow the new payment
to arrive on the First, didnt the VA have a duty to say so in their
letter, and thus not lead me to count on an unreliable
commitment? He agreed that they did have such a duty to advise
us of such a circumstance and should never mislead Veterans, but
such an admission of its too late in the month to make a
payment by the First possible was not a part of VA notification
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letters. When I offered that reporting this oversight to his

superiors along with a draft of a proposed paragraph to include in
such letters ought to lead to a change of policy and prevent it
from happening again, he indicated that his superiors were almost
certainly aware of these kinds of oversights, but in any case they
wouldnt respond to a report from him that such things were
taking place, no matter how numerous, and he had no authority to
make, or even recommend that changes be made, to VA letters to
Veterans. I was left in stunned disbelief that I was being told that
senior VA personnel would know Veterans were being left adrift
from missing payments, but such a situation would result in no
sense of alarm or urgency on their part, and apparently no
mechanism was in place to immediately correct the failure.
14. I was surprised at the apparent absence of any responsive means
for VA personnel taking reports of Departmental failure directly
from Veterans, to report problems and recommend solutions up
their chain of command, no matter how trivial (or serious) the
issue and no matter how common sense and urgently needed was
the solution. The equivalent in the Marine Corps would be failing
to provide a radio or telephone to a sentry posted on the front
lines to specifically alert the leaders of any problem activity.
Every one of my fellow Veterans will relate completely with the
principle at work in this scenario, not even having to be a Marine
or having experienced ground combat - it applies equally to a
clerk in a supply warehouse in CONUS. No responsible leader in
any human endeavor would operate without a system in place to
immediately and reliably alert them to the presence of hazards so
they could be removed or disabled, but all the evidence
encountered by me would say the VA operates otherwise.
15. In any case the Supervisor was convinced, as I was, that in
todays world, 15 days before the end of the month was more
than sufficient time to make a change in the amount of an already
established payment, so since my payment wasnt made, why
wasnt it? He said he had no means to look into my payment
account and so had no means to answer that question. This
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struck me as ludicrous for a Supervisor tasked to oversee shifts of

VA employees sorted out by the menu prompts at the 800 number
to specifically hear and resolve pay problems. Its as if the VA
staff is there not to correct any failure but instead they appear to
be able only to repeat information to shed some feeble light on a
problem - not at all to actually solve it. Pretty stunning.
16. Since this Supervisor then went on to declare himself and all
other persons to whom he was empowered to connect me to be
equally without authority or means, and thus helpless to make
any entry in the VA pay system to produce the missing money,
offered as the only solution to my missing funds: wait until next
month and hope it clears up by then. I take this as clear
evidence that among the nearly 280,000 VA employees at
hundreds of medical facilities, clinics and benefit offices scattered
across this country with a 2014 budget request of $152 Billion,
there isnt a single official, supervisor or clerk with the technical
means and/or authority to generate entitlement money into the
hands of qualified Veterans when the regular system has failed to
make that happen. (And a simple engineering estimate
calculation that occurs to me without any supporting research on
my part is that if your Department issues 1,000,000 payments per
month and achieves an admirable accuracy rate of 99%, that still
means there will be 10,000 failures/errors each month so how
can your Department possibly exist without having an Office
dedicated solely to the timely rectification of those 10,000
unintended failures? Mulling just that much over, makes my head
hurt.) And if it should turn out that there is indeed such an Office
or Staff tasked with the mission to make up for money which goes
missing, then its obvious that the VA personnel manning the
phones receiving calls coming in to report payment failures, are
unable, unwilling or incapable of connecting the stranded Veteran
with those personnel. Its as if the crewmen in the engine room of
the Titanic were provided with no means to alert the bridge, Hey,
weve got a leak down here! and even if they did, neither the
Captain nor any of the Mates tasked with the responsibility for
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running the ship could be bothered to tell any of the crewmen to,
Man the pumps!

And Then We Arrive at the Secretary Level

17. But the Supervisor did go on tell me that my one means of calling
attention to the missing money and getting the failure rectified,
was to write a personal letter to you, the Secretary of his entire
Department - as the sole person within your Department who
might (his term) possess sufficient authority to order immediate
corrective action and he went on to add that the timing
was particularly fortuitous for me because you were newly
appointed. Shocking!! Outrageous!! Pathetic!!
on so many levels!! Replacing a missing payment can only
be accomplished by the Secretary himself??!!
18. In my career experience this would be the equivalent of being in
charge of a unit of 200 shooters taken by bus each day out to a
rifle range for a week of firing practice and upon reporting back to
my commander in the rear on the first day that our scheduled hot
lunches had failed to arrive, being told that not only would no
make-up meal be immediately prepared and dispatched to our
relief, but that we were to simply wait until tomorrow and hope
the next regularly scheduled meal would arrive, but if I felt
strongly about the oversight, I could always write a letter to the
Commandant of the Marine Corps. Such a recommendation would
suggest there was no one in the entire Marine Corps between me
at that lonely outpost and the Head Man in Washington, DC
capable of performing what by any measure ought to be a routine,
everyday matter. But apparently in the VA it is not only not
soluble every day, but only subject to solution once a month, and
maybe not even then, and then only by the Head Man himself.

How It Appears To Me
19. So my letter to you on this occasion is, sadly, driven by my duty
to inform you, hoping you didnt already know, that letters sent
bearing your Department Letterhead and authorized by a
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signature and/or title of an Official acting on your behalf,

committing your Department to paying a qualified recipient
Veteran an amount of money as compensation for
injuries/disabilities determined under lawful statute and applicable
regulations to be due them, will, not exceptionally but rather
routinely, in the first instance theyre tested, turn out to be not
worth the paper on which theyre printed. Compounding the
consequent damage to your credibility and integrity by what I
genuinely expected initially would turn out to be unintended
oversight or simple human error, was my discovery that when I
called the 800 number published for my particular issue (missing
money) , which turned out to be the Phoenix Call Center, I fully
and confidently expected to find the VA Person assigned to
receive my call, much less the Supervisor of that VA Person, easily
capable of comprehending the failure of your Department, and
either fully empowered to correct the failure by their own actions,
or capable of connecting me with someone who did have both the
training and authority to speedily rectify the lapse. But sadly to
the contrary I found not only was there no surprise among your
appointed subordinates that this failure to pay happened to me,
but the Supervisor (who may be only one among dozens or
hundreds of others similarly situated) told me he himself handles
hundreds (his own term which would infer thousands or
tens of thousands in total) of such calls each month and for
each and every one of them he claims he has no tools or authority
to manually intervene and correct the error himself, nor does he
have the means to make available to me or other Veterans any
other Office or Official tasked specifically with intervening and
immediately correcting the failure. On this planet? - in my
country? in this century? unbelievable!!
20. And while the second worse part is that the Pay Officials I
contacted were surprised that I should expect it to be any
different that I was so nave as to expect to find concern for my
welfare and a sense of urgency to correct your Departments
failure the very worst part is that the Supervisor not only was
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convinced no one up the chain of command in his Department

would pay any mind to alarms he, a seasoned professional on the
front lines every day, might raise, but that only the plea of an
outside victim personally to the Department Secretary had any
chance at all of generating timely intervention, but even that was
fleeting and possible only because you were recently placed in
authority implying that only during some honeymoon period
do you have the freedom of action to differ from Departmental
policies established by your predecessors without criticism to
yourself, but that after such a period it is accepted as fact that
within the Department no one expects even the Secretary himself
to correct a failure because to do so would require an admission
that a failure while he was in authority had occurred at all. In my
opinion this condition is guaranteed to bring poisonous paralysis
to any organization which allows it to fester.
21. At the risk of resorting to the left-handed compliment of: heres
how we did it in my outfit, the Marine Corps in particular, but all
other Services to varying degrees, has a reputation for setting and
demanding Members meet high and exacting Standards. What is
less stressed but generally acknowledged even by the Public, is
that the Corps can confidently expect those Standards to be met
because we mete out a consequence that is swift and certain in a
system that is elementary in its stark simplicity: if you screw up,
we nail your hide to the wall. Now we do have appropriately
various degrees of nailing, but none of them are pleasant. We
also acknowledge that everyones success (from the Commandant
to the newest Private) is built on the precious experience gained
by each of us from our previous best efforts and whatever failures
may have followed and while everyone fails to some degree at
some time, its the some more than others that separates the
wheat from the chaff. As successful as I was to complete
Honorably 27+ years of service, every success I had was to some
degree the product of some previous failure, just thankfully not
terminal, and I have the nail holes in my own hide to show for it

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as we all do who managed to go on and serve beyond the very

first day of our arrival in the Corps.
22. But since the Corps does recognize openly that we will have to
deal with failures, we are as well known for holding accountable
through courts-martial, early discharges and other means, those
who act in a manner which endangers our ability to achieve our
assigned mission. We view the admission that some Marine failed
and brought shame to our Corps by their poor judgment or
conduct, not as a sign of failure per se, but as a guarantor of our
future success, because when we own up to the lapse publicly by
announcing it throughout our Corps, as we do by publishing the
offense committed and the consequent punishment in our Base
newspapers, it illustrates for all to see that raising an alarm will
always be appropriately responded to (we wont leave you out on
the front lines stranded by yourself) and those who may fail to
raise that alarm and leave some poor wretch to his fate alone, are
drummed out of our Corps and not allowed to occupy positions,
whether lowly or quite senior, which may endanger others. In
your line of work you wont encounter those ejected by us with
the most punitive Discharges because they also fittingly lose their
right to VA benefits but dont thank us were glad to do it.
So in that same vein I submit that success for the VA isnt basking
in the blissful but misleading false silence of stifled and ignored
pleas for help from victims of your own Departments failures, it
would rather be public accounts from Veterans about the swift and
aggressive corrective action that Members of your Department
took every time they became aware of some error or failure
adversely impacting a Veteran. Im just saying.

The Impact on Me
23. I only returned across 3,000 miles to Las Vegas, NV (driving the
last 600 of them) to attend a local high school 50 th Year Reunion in
October, arriving on the 11th, and remained for a rare family
reunion 3-14 November. Then instead of departing before
Thanksgiving and being gone no more than 6 weeks, I delayed
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into the latter part of November to use the opportunity for access
to my permanent records stored here to have the Reno VA Office
reconsider again my claim submitted originally in 1994 and again
in 2011, which was finally recognized on 16 December, 2014. Not
only was I visiting Nevada on a shoestring budget, but I was facing
the burden of having to return in the Spring of 2015 with my
income tax refund in hand to have the hundreds of dollars in
repairs done on my car which I couldnt afford now, but which
were necessary to remove the one year Nevada Smog Inspection
Probation under which my car has been operating since
September. So the unanticipated but happy consequence of
suddenly and unexpectedly receiving this VA entitlement is that I
might be able to have the work done now and not have to return
to Nevada in a whole separate trip later this Spring. But making
the choice to remain here in Las Vegas until the VA money was
paid to me, meant spending the money budgeted for my return
trip toward the expense of remaining here instead. I made that
choice to stay based on the commitment in the 16 December VA
letter and the subsequent confirming assurances of the VA
Counsellor. So I made all the arrangements involving lots of other
people and lost work for me while I was absent in Nevada.
24. Then came the failure of the VA to send the money. Not having
the promised funds arrive, means that now I am stranded in Las
Vegas until they do arrive. And upon sounding the alarm to the
VA, instead of immediate relief in days, Im told sit around and
wait until next month and maybe it will work itself out. So now if
the money arrives on 1 February and the work on the car can be
accomplished within 2 weeks Im facing having been away for 4
months instead of my original 6 weeks. Now, I wont starve or be
living out in the cold, but I have been camping out in an
unfurnished single-wide mobile home thats a worksite for
remodeling, sleeping on a camp bed and heating meals in a tabletop microwave with a gas furnace for heat, but no hot water. I
drive 3 miles over to my sisters house for a shower. Ive endured
worse, but the failure of your Department just added insult to
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injury no pun intended. In a just world where the failures of the

VA to make funds available were randomly distributed, it gives
one pause to consider the case where you yourself might have
been attending a conference out here in Las Vegas and upon
preparing to return discovered that the travel funds you had been
told would be there had failed to materialize. Would your VA
staffs response be: Mr. Secretary, youll just have to wait until
next month and hope the error corrects itself? or would some
Staff act to make the funds immediately available. One can only
guess.
25. Its well known by the public that in all the Services, one major
way we enforce discipline is by means of a rigid class structure
where titles and rank provide privileges, but you might be
unaware that, peculiar to the Marine Corps, when we eat in the
field the diners are served in reverse Grade order, the most junior
Privates (who are otherwise required to salute and address me as,
Sir) get fed first and the Officers, junior to senior, are fed last.
Just an old tradition, but It ensures everyone gets fed, the Brass
are aware of whats being made available to eat, everyone has a
choice of the same things, and you can guess how often it is that
the cooks run out of something with people still standing in line to
be fed. The equivalent mechanism producing the same desirable
result at the VA would be to have all the career Civil Servants
continue to be paid by the Civil Service, but have all the Political
Appointees in the VA depend on receiving their pay from the same
persons operating the same system used to pay the Veterans.
What a concept.

The Impact On Other Veterans

26. For Veterans comfortably settled, the delay in receiving their
earned amount on time might be no more than a minor nuisance
and hardly noticed. Unfortunately as I said, thats not currently
the case with me. I wont go hungry and I will sleep dry but Ive
had to use credit to provide funds I wouldnt otherwise have had
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to do because of the failure to pay me on time. For other Veterans

who are homeless the failure of the VA to pay them their earned
amount on time can possibly be devastating not too dramatic to
say even life threatening think living under an underpass this
winter, where the ability to buy, or not be able to buy, a coat, wool
socks and boots can make the difference. Fortunately, thats not
the case with me. So I submit to you that the particular
circumstance of the Veteran due an entitlement, whether well off
or destitute, whether a famous War Hero or anonymous clerk
never deployed and safely far in the rear, whether a General
Officer or career but Honorably Discharged Private, should be of
no determining consequence whatsoever. While sad cases of
plight might be more emotionally heartrending, that ought to be
immaterial to the performance of the VA. Only the earned title of
Veteran should matter and each is equally worthy of being
served by a competent VA Public Servant.

No More, But No Less

27. Each Veteran ought to get what they have earned, when its
supposed to arrive, every time no more, but no less no money
unearned, not merited and not paid early, but every penny that is
due, arriving on time and Im of the opinion that the
Veterans Affairs Department, and you as its Secretary, have an
obligation to see that every Department employee and all the
equipment and systems at their disposal, are focused unerringly
to the accomplishment of this mission.
28. Despite the apparent inability to correct a simple matter by VA
personnel and their casual acceptance of that inability, I have had
the great good fortune to have never encountered this attitude
and inability on the part of virtually any other Federal Government
employee previously which gives me hope and confidence in the
dedication and competence of Americans serving their fellow
Americans. Nowhere during my service in the Corps, nor on the
part of my fellow Postal employees where I worked before I joined
the Corps, nor from either of my best friends from high school who
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between them served in the Corps during Viet Nam (and then
raved about the superlative treatment he received for treatment
of his wounds at the VA hospital in Palo Alto over a 40 year span),
as a civil engineer for the Department of the Navy, as a lawyer for
the General Services Administration, and as a civil engineer for
the Mine, Safety and Health Administration, did they act in a
cavalier or careless fashion toward their fellow citizens
themselves, nor permit it by their subordinates, nor let it pass in
silence if perpetrated by their seniors, truly believing and acting
with pride in the concept of Service inherent in being a Public
Servant. I would like to think that concept is a generational
attitude, inherited by my Generation from the Greatest
Generation, but perhaps thats a bias and wishful thinking on my
part and precludes a fair assessment of the Generation now
stepping up to fill our shoes but I wonder? Im not seeing it
commonly in practice. So I find this recent encounter with the VA
to be contrary to my past Federal employee encounters and a
source of hope that in the future Americans who choose to work to
serve Veterans in the VA can find a change of leadership which
demands and accepts nothing less than timely competence that
will have every VA Public Servant rightfully and demonstrably
proud to say they work for the VA.
29. Some do now. I believe its no accident that both Nevada
employees with whom I dealt displayed an uncharacteristically
and aggressively helpful can-do attitude, despite ultimately
lacking the means to correct the VAs error. I happen to know
they both served in the U.S. Navy Hospital Corps in their previous
working lives and bring those attitudes and habits with them, and
in the case of the second employee, she didnt agree to be hired
by the VA just to get a job, but rather because of her familys
prior history in Service as well as her own and that of her
husbands, she sought out a position within your Department
specifically so she could serve Veterans all to the great benefit of
your Department. In chemistry and mathematics, having such
individuals with their work ethic joining you in your mission to
16

serve Veterans, would be characterized as necessary but

insufficient Necessary because without such Staff as these, no
amount of systems and supervisors can be made to produce
success, but also Insufficient, because even with Staff such as
these, they still cant produce success without the proper tools to
accomplish their goals. The heartening news is that since such
people are seeking you out because of allegiance to your worthy
Mission, if you can only get them the tools they need, they can
carry us all across the goal line.

So Sir,
Good luck correcting the deficiencies in your Department and feel
free to help yourself in instituting any of the attitudes and philosophy
of service among your subordinate leaders that Ive noted above.
And if along the way you can solve my missing money problem, that
would be nice, too.
Respectfully submitted,
Steven M. Lowery
Major
USMC (Ret)
PS Sorry about the length, but I think it all matters. And
incidentally, the reports of Just call me, Bob that have been related
to me by numerous VA peersonnel, strike me as motivating. Good for
you.
PPS Since I wrote this and before I could get it mailed, it happened
that the January money for me did arrive on 30 January (Thank you
very much) - but the December money is still Missing in Action. So
now its 2 months gone and the only solution in sight is to go back to
hoping again that maybe it will show up next month - in March.

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