THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 2, 1995 TAG: 9502020015
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Short : 31 lines
I was shocked and outraged after reading William Safire's commentary concerning the department of Veterans Affairs (Perspectives, Jan. 16).
I am a veteran who served during peacetime and never suffered the horrors of war. I used the GI Bill to attend Old Dominion University and graduated in 1984.
While I was an ODU student, I was also in the work-study program and provided services to Disabled American Vets at the Veterans Administration hospital in Hampton. There I met quadriplegics, paraplegics and men whose bodies and minds had been broken while serving to protect our great country and ensure its freedom.
Some of these poor souls will never be whole again. They lost their most important resource, themselves, in service to their country. Mr. Safire should visit some of the wards at a veterans hospital and see how really deplorable some of the hospitals are and how they need more money, not less, to in some way help compensate those who have given all they had to give.
LARRY C. PEARSON
Norfolk, Jan. 16, 1995 by CNB