| The following column appeared in of The River Reporter on March 12, 1998. |
By Bert S. Feldman
The Recusant Reporter
Thursday, March 12, 1998
The next time you pass an American flag, be it outside a post office, town hall, county government center, or someone’s porch, take a good look at it. The blue represents the free skies over our wonderful land; the red represents the blood spilled in the defense of that freedom. The white is the peace that that blood secured.
Last December 9, the Sullivan County Legislature saw fit to downgrade those men and women whose dedication to duty was responsible for our flags flying free and unsullied.
Our veterans had to go a long way from Sullivan County to achieve these blessings of freedom. They sweated in the foul jungles of Vietnam. They froze their butts off in Pusan in Korea. They struggled ashore on the beaches of Normandy and went for "delightful" swim parties in the North Atlantic in winter. All for their families, their wives and children, for all of us.
For 50 years, the board of supervisors gave them the respect to which they were entitled. They gave them a Department of Veterans’ Affairs; they gave them transportation to veterans hospitals which a grateful country had established for them.
This past December, the legislature denied them all that. The legislators decided to save a few dollars and said to hell with the veterans.
Excepting the director, all employees of the Veterans’ Service Agency became part of the Department of Social Services, which oversees social welfare. We are now considered welfare cases.
The bus now bears the title of the welfare department instead of another word. There are some veterans who may need welfare services, but they had another title which they worked very hard to obtain. The legislature has violated our self–esteem and our respect in order to save a few bucks. Is that all our service in defense of Old Glory amounts to?
What is next? Will the veterans cemetery established in the Town of Liberty now become a potters field for the indigent dead?
The English writer Rudyard Kipling summed it up very nicely in his poem "Tommy," referring to the name Tommy Atkins, the British version of G.I. Joe:
"For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that,
An’ chuck ’im out, the brute!
But it’s savior of ’is country when
The guns begin to shoot."
Call, or write, your legislator. The address is Sullivan County Government Center, Box 5012, Monticello, NY 12701, or call 914/794–3000 ext 3300. Tell them that our veterans’ self–esteem has been violated, and that we want that which we have earned to be restored.
Our veterans, men and women alike, feel that they have earned the right to have our county say "Fare thee well," not "Welfare."
