PR for People Monthly May 2021 May 2021 | Page 6

for disabled veterans who had no one else to look after them.

   And the Bureau, accustomed to processing the accounts of a couple hundred new applicants annually, was suddenly socked in 1865 with more than 75,000 new applications for assistance. Those kinds of numbers persisted for many years to follow, augmented in part by Congress’s approval of additional pensions for surviving dependents to help address that brutal war’s aftermath. Adding to the burden was the detail Congress had gone into - legislators had delved into the minutiae, assigning different monetary values to a host of different injuries. If a veteran had had both his feet blown off in battle, for example, he could expect $20 monthly from Uncle Sam. Loss of eyesight rated five bucks more.

   These provisions introduced new complexities to the processing of a growing mountain of claims. The Bureau struggled to establish procedural clarity while also expanding capacity – it recruited physicians around the country to conduct examinations of the claimants in their localities. Blindness and missing feet were easy enough to confirm by a physical exam, but some other conditions were trickier to identify – or disprove. The whole process was susceptible to financial exploitation, political influence peddling, and racial and ethnic bias – but grappling with those consequences didn’t come about until decades later.

    Meanwhile, Congress continued to broaden the scope of pension eligibility over the next few decades.

   The 20th century saw more expansion and reforms. The Sherwood Act of 1912 awarded pensions to all veterans of the Mexican War or Civil War (on the Union side) when they reached the age of 62 – whether or not they were sick or disabled. This meant another exponential increase of veterans on the pension rolls.

   World War I brought about the establishment of vocational education for veterans, a new Public Health Service, and war risk insurance. These were eventually consolidated into a Veterans’ Bureau, but the Bureau of Pensions and the homes for disabled soldiers were still left as separate entities.

Finally in 1930, President Herbert Hoover used an executive order to bring all of the veteran-related agencies under the umbrella of a newly formed Veterans Administration.

   The Great Depression delivered an extra dose of despair to veterans, who were promised bonuses by the federal government – payable twenty years out. Hungry and fed-up at the same time, veterans marched on the Capitol to demand more timely payment. A riot ensued, and the upshot was that Congress began paying more attention to veterans’ issues.

By the time World War II happened, legislators were proactive in designing a comprehensive benefits package to assist the 16 million service members who would be returning home after the fighting was over. The 1944 G.I. Bill of Rights was transformational – it provided vets with funding for education, unemployment compensation, and access to federally guaranteed home, business and farm loans that required no down payment.

Wars in Korea and Vietnam followed in quick succession, which meant more tinkering with veterans’ benefits. With every war, veterans brought along a new set of issues, which prompted more research into the development of prosthetic devices, and the presumptive service connection to a range of maladies relating to radiation exposure (World War II veterans) and Agent Orange (Vietnam veterans). Post-military medicine was becoming very sophisticated, but it came at the price of many service members’ shattered lives.

   With major conflicts boiling up decade after decade, as well as a surprisingly sizable number of 19th century veterans, or their pension-eligible dependents, still living well into the 20th century (and beyond – the last American to collect a Civil War pension only passed away in May of last year), the result was that by the mid-20th century, a whopping one-third of all Americans were eligible for veterans’ benefits. Veterans advocates called for elevating the VA to Cabinet-level status, in essence to give so many people in so much need a seat at the table. That happened in 1989 during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, when the Veterans Administration became the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Civil war wounded, ca. 1863