• Muncie Mayor Dennis Tyler says the U.S. should take better care of veterans
• The city honored veterans at “Shoulder to Shoulder Salute to Veterans” with a free dinner Monday.
• Chief Warrant Officer Joe Orick presented, said veterans are under fire from political leaders.
It’s time Muncie takes the state of veteran affairs into consideration, said Muncie’s mayor on Veterans Day.
“There’s a lot of things we do very well in this country,” Dennis Tyler said. “But something I don’t think we do very well is take care of our veterans.”
At the annual Muncie program, Tyler shared several statistics regarding the declining state of retired veterans. Tyler said one-third of veterans in the United States are in homeless shelters and more than 40 percent use food stamps.
The “Shoulder to Shoulder Salute to Veterans” provided a free dinner to veterans from all service backgrounds, including the Vietnam, Korean, Iraq, Afghanistan wars and WWII. A program afterward included music from the Muncie Central High School band and America’s Hometown Band as well as speeches from local politicians and military personnel.
Chief Warrant Officer Joe Orick, a retired member of the U.S. Marine Corps, delivered one of the keynote presentations. He said veterans are under fire today from political leaders who are threatening their benefits.
“Let’s not forget that during the government shutdown, the government did not pay death benefits to those veterans who had fallen in battle in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Orick said. “This money is used by the veteran’s family to travel and to retrieve the body of their loved one and bring him home and bury him on American soil. But no politician had his benefits frozen or his pay stopped.”
The state of veteran care in the U.S. isn’t perfect, but it has improved, said Jerry Griffis, a service officer for the Delaware County Veterans Affairs. Griffis works with approximately 9,000 veterans in the Muncie area.
Having served in Vietnam, Griffis said homecomings for today’s men and women are superior and that veterans have never been held in higher regard than today.
“I came back as a Vietnam vet to Muncie in 1968, and they could care less that you had been in Vietnam,” he said. “The Korean vets were the same way. Vietnam was an unpopular war. Veterans don’t pick the wars or where they are going, politicians do.”
Veterans also were honored at a Vietnam Veterans Celebration on Memorial Street and at the Beech Grove Cemetery.
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