Grave Robbers

#538

Grave Robbers

As a university student, I worked during the school year, in Memphis, selling pre-need cemetery property. I learned more than I ever wanted to know about death and cemeteries at this job, at one of the South's largest cemeteries. The cemetery in whose mausoleum, Elvis was interred before being moved to Graceland. Often, because of family disputes, a body was kept out at the mausoleum for a long time before burial...such was the case with Judy Garland and Kate Smith.

Cemeteries are a source of intrigue to the living. In Charles Dickens, Tale of Two Cities, Jerry Cruncher was a grave robber. None of these events in the past, compare to present day grave robbers.

The most shameful inept agency in all history is the United States Veterans Administration. It is so large and obviously so out of control. There are sixty thousand veterans living in south eastern north Carolina alone. Several Veterans Administration lawyers have been sent to prison in recent months for their part in the fraud of dead veterans families, getting their hands on the proceeds due veterans families at their death. Connie Hanson got almost five years in prison for stealing one million dollars from thirty three veterans. A patient care group has defrauded veterans out of prescriptions claiming to represent the VA, getting private information such as credit card numbers. Congressmen and Senators can act so indignant about the treatment of Americas veterans, but they do nothing to change the system. Not one penny of interest has ever been payed to a veteran when his benefits were not correct. I can speak with certainty this totally blind, 100% disabled service connected veteran, medical officer with field rank has never received anything but a hard time from the VA. Delay, deny, and hope for you to die, is the montre for this organization. And even in death, you cannot expect fair treatment. In the American experience, next to slavery, the greatest shame of this nation is its treatment of disabled veterans and handicapped citizens, and as the case anytime you appeal to any government agency, you always get back the same letter in which anyone can dictate written on expensive paper by an expensive computer and an over payed bureaucrat, “we cannot handle your particular problem, we advise you to get an attorney.”

Not until recent years, has a veteran been able to appeal to the VA with his own personal attorney.

Americans voluntarily pay their taxes...it is a voluntary tax system...you voluntarily fill out the forms and make payment. Of course, you always know that IRS has the clout and the jail cells awaiting if you do not dance to the tune in which they play. America has always depended on the patriotism of its citizens to fill the ranks of the military. More than ever, particularly for those who have served, particularly for the families of those who are buried, American young men and women are becoming less willing to put everything on line for their country...knowing full well, how little it is appreciated. Talk is cheap, and we all hear the chatter from advertisements telling how much veterans are loved.

A friend of mine, who I payed to drive me to a veterans hospital, and who witnessed my treatment at the hospital spoke of the big sign hanging in the hospital which read, “our veterans come first.” He knew what I had given up going through so many years of school so I could give care in a military hospital. He knew I had waited thirty years for a VA housing adaptation allowance. He knew that my pension had never been correct. He knew that I had been scorned by the Chief of Staff of the hospital for making a suggestion (“we are just waiting for you to die”). Over and over again, on talk radio and every other form of media the VA is scorned for ineptness. It is evident that they simply do not care...that there is no congressional oversight.

Our nation has a fascination with stars, movie stars, ball-team stars, even media stars. Millionaires who just run up and down a ball court, or who can hit a ball with a stick or club. Does the public not realize that if it were not for the men and women, mostly from poor or minority homes, who have met the challenge, and have defended this nation, there would be no room for their great financial gain and notoriety and celebrity of stars.

Do not ever confuse celebrity with accomplishment. In my long life, I have known many accomplished people whose names were never in the headlines, who were payed very little for their work. In the movie, Diary of a Country Priest, we find such a person. A priest whose frugal lifestyle and simple commitment was a matter of amusement to young people. One of my greatest heroes, was a WWII Army nurse who came back from the war with an illness that could not be diagnosed according to military nomenclature numbers. She went before many appeals boards, many claims lawyers, but never could establish a pension for this non-descript harassing medical involvement. She died, still working a mediocre job as a private nurse in private homes never having been recognized in any way for her service on foreign battlefields. There is no chip in the computer that will recognize the fight that this writer starves himself through eight years of university education to come out, immediately commissioned and wound up as a totally blind veteran unable to practice his profession. But the nurse and I are the fortunate ones, we came back alive. Think of the millions who lie buried, 126,000 on foreign soil, and then the VA lawyers, such as happened recently, go to prison for banking to their personal accounts money due to dead veterans families.

None of us, stars or the insignificant, are role models for the world. It just takes one man plus God and anything can be accomplished. George Muller of England, cared for 9,720 orphans living day to day by faith. Faith that the money would come in that he could care for these children. Thomas A Kempis, just one man, plus God, wrote the book that has thrilled millions, “Imitation of Christ.”

A newspaper headline in WWI read, “Great Battle Won, Only One Man Killed.” For the family of this one man, his life was over and theirs would never be the same again. How easily we forget the horrors of war. Vietnam is now in its third generation from the horrors of agent orange. Still there are mutations, children born without an arm, a leg, an eye. It will take a long time for the people of Iraq to recover from depleted uranium. I have traveled through Afghanistan several times. The first day of the war, I said on radio, “I don't believe the people in the Pentagon have seen the Hindu Kush...some of the worlds most vicious mountains, difficult even for helicopters.” I remember the people riding on donkeys, herding goats. I have photographs, taken thirty years ago at the boarders of Afghanistan and Pakistan, showing migration from one country to the other poverty stricken peasants, all their belongings and sacks on their shoulders, barefoot with barefooted children. Dale Carnegie, “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” would never recommend bombing with drones.

The first time I was in Russia, I noticed so many people were drunk from vodka. I said to my friend, a newsman with WOR, NYC, “if I lived here I would stay drunk too.” I believe people everywhere are looking to escape. This week, in Connecticut, the Eli Lilly Warehouse was robbed from the roof of 35 million drugs. I believe many young people are just swallowing anything to escape. We try to put the well worn cloak of impunity on everything. Veterans, Boards of Appeals uncertain reasons for warfare, agnosticism about country and church. Church members are much more interested in changing God, than in God changing them. Mans will and Gods will does not coincide. Perhaps the greatest robbery of all, even more depressing than the robbery of a grave, is the robbery our children experience in not having hope for the future.