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Amanda Landwehr, 26, of Prior Lake, Minn., joined the Army National Guard at the age of 20. “I wanted to do something beyond going to college, and the National Guard allowed me to pursue my education and serve at the same time,” she said.  Landwehr was deployed to Djibouti, Africa, where she worked base security. She recently completed her six-year service with the National Guard.   Landwehr is currently working toward her Doctorate of Psychology with an emphasis in Clinical Psychology at Nova Southeastern University. After she completes her doctorate, she plans to work at the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs where she can be a support system for struggling veterans. “Veterans are a population that I can truly empathize with and I would like to do what I can to help.” As she pursued her dreams, she realized she needed help to fund her education. Landwehr discovered the VFW’s “Sport Clips Help A Hero Scholarship” while she was researching potential scholarships. “I would like to say thank you to the people who made this scholarship possible as it really helps to relieve the financial burden of graduate school,” she expressed.  Landwehr’s advice to veterans considering pursuing their dreams through education is, “There are a lot of scholarships available. You should seek out whatever resources necessary to help you succeed."

Nick Guerrero was behind on utility bills — the electric company shut off power — and car payments until the VFW stepped in to help. Guerrero, who deployed four times during the Iraq War, said support through VFW’s Unmet Needs program helped him get current on bills and purchase groceries. “The grant saved us from falling further down the rabbit hole,” Guerrero said. “I was in a point of my life where everything was collapsing around me, and if it wasn’t for the existence of this program, I don’t know where my family and I would be in this very moment. I cannot fully express my gratitude in words for this nonprofit to be there when we needed the help desperately.” Guerrero served with the 1st Bn., 17th Inf. Regt., 172 Stryker Bde. (2005-06 and 2006-07) as an infantryman and with the 1st Bn., 18th Inf., 2nd Armd. Bde. Combat Team, 1st Inf. Div., (2008-09 and2010-11) as a combat medic. He was medically discharged March 27, 2015, for PTSD, anxiety, depression, psychosis, anger disorder, paranoia and TBI. Guerrero said his wife, Ana, found out about the program from a veteran who had received an Unmet Needs grant. He applied in September and was awarded the grant in December. To anyone in a similar situation, Guerrero said, “Don’t hesitate to give the VFW a call and ask for the help.” “It’s wonderful to know people out there care and are willing to spend a couple of minutes of their lives to do something special for a veteran…Our families are very grateful for the assistance you provide when the veteran is in a crisis,” Guerrero said. VFW’s Unmet Needs program helps America’s military families who have experienced unexpected financial difficulties. The program, supported by Burger King franchisees, provides financial aid to assist those with basic life needs in the form of a grant — not a loan. Since 2004, Unmet Needs has given $10 million to more than 8,800 military and veteran families. In the current fiscal year alone, the program has assisted nearly 4,000 service members and veterans.

After serving over a year in Iraq as an Army police officer, Ashley Meiss came back home to Ogden, Kansas in June 2010. She had been honorably discharged after becoming pregnant with her first-born child, a son. Six years and a second child later, Ashley was in college and working a part time job while living with her husband Chris Meiss in Ogden, Ashley’s father Tom Lewis told Dateline. Everything seemed normal, Tom said. He lives in North Carolina, but spoke frequently to his daughter on the phone. In November 2016, Tom and his wife began to sense a shift in their daughter’s personality. “We started to see signs of stress, depression and anxiety,” Tom said. “[Ashley’s mother and I] were talking to Ashley every other day to see how she was doing. Ashley thought it may be signs of PTSD.” Just one month later, the signs became more apparent when Ashley called her mother, panicked, saying she thought someone was in the backyard stalking her. “The police responded and said they thought she was having a nervous breakdown,” Ashley’s father Tom told Dateline about the December 2016 incident. Ashley was admitted to a hospital in Manhattan, Kansas for observation while her parents drove from North Carolina to pick up her and her kids. “As we are driving back to North Carolina, Ashley was in the car behind me. We are going through Topeka, Kansas, and we stop at a stoplight and Ashley gets out of her car and starts banging on my SUV saying, ‘There is a bomb in there,’” Tom told Dateline. “She was admitted to the VA hospital in Topeka for about two weeks. Then in January, I picked her up from there and drove her to North Carolina where her kids had been staying with us.” Tom says that during her stay in North Carolina, Ashley, 31, had shown signs of improvement. She had been seeing a therapist, her father said, and was regularly taking her medications. She seemed to be on the mend. Tom says his daughter and the children stayed in North Carolina until July 2017, when they returned to Ogden to be reunited with Ashley’s husband Chris. Chris, a recently retired Master Sergeant in the Army, was returning from his own deployment in Iraq. “But in February of 2018, Chris and Ashley had a bit of a falling out,” Tom told Dateline. “Ashley pushed Chris, and he called the police and he put a protection order in place and filed for divorce. She didn’t fight it, and she allowed Chris to have full custody of the two kids.” Tom told Dateline that Ashley was admitted to the hospital once again for observation, but was released on February 24 to stay with friends. The following day, the family later learned, Ashley believed she heard gun shots and sirens coming from her former home, and she went over and went into the house to make sure her children were OK. “Chris, who had an order of protection against her, called the police and Ashley was arrested for violating the protection order,” Tom told Dateline, adding that he drove to Ogden to get her out of jail. She stayed with some friends in town for a few weeks before getting her own apartment on April 1, 2018, only a few blocks away from the house where Chris and the children still lived. “She started to recover and got some visitation rights with the kids,” Tom said. “Her husband was being supportive and I was talking to her every other day.” It was on May 16, 2018, during one of their frequent phone calls, that Tom says Ashley told him “she was upset with Chris, because he was planning on leaving the state to go see his parents with the kids,” and “she didn’t like that idea.” Tom says Ashley also went to see her therapist that day, and witnesses have since told him they saw her in town, alone, around 6:00 p.m. that evening. The next day, Thursday May 17, around 6:00 p.m., witnesses would later tell police they saw Ashley leave her apartment in running gear. This would have been normal, Tom told Dateline. What wasn’t normal, however, was that Ashley didn’t take her bulldog, Flicker, on the run with her. “Flicker is basically her service dog. It’s very, very odd that she didn’t take her dog,” Tom said. Ashley left her cell phone, I.D., and car at her apartment. She never came back to get them. Authorities and family members tell Dateline it’s unclear where Ashley stayed the night of Thursday, May 17. The next morning around 9:30 a.m., surveillance footage shows her walking into a nearby post office and picking up her mail. “The lady hands her the mail -- one letter. Ashley opens it, and all of a sudden her demeanor changes,” Tom told Dateline. “She becomes depressed. She is normally upbeat and social.” Riley County Police Department Detective Steve Tucker told Dateline that later that day, Ashley was also seen at a nearby community center, and then again at night at a local bar. Det. Tucker said police have spoken with two men who Ashley spoke with at the bar, but they told authorities Ashley didn’t say where she was going when she left the bar. “Nobody know who she came with or who she left with,” Tom told Dateline. Ashley has not been seen since leaving the bar, but police tell Dateline she did make a brief call to a friend the next day. “Ashley calls an old Army friend of hers -- a female friend of hers -- and says she is feeling depressed and that it’s hard going through the divorce and not being with her kids all the time,” Tom said, adding that Ashley did not say where she was or who she was with during that phone call. Detective Tucker told Dateline police began their investigation that day, May 19, after receiving calls from family and friends that Ashley was missing. Through their investigation, police tried to trace the call Ashley made to her friend on the morning of the 19th. Detective Tucker said when they attempted to do so through Verizon, they found out the call had been coming from an application that blocks the caller’s location. “We’ve interviewed anybody and everybody who has information to go along with this case. At this time, we don’t have anything to put her in a critical missing persons case,” Det. Tucker told Dateline, a classification he explained would require evidence that Ashley was putting either herself or someone else in danger. “I’ve looked through some letters that she has left and I’ve looked through her phone. While she seems desperate and frustrated, it does not seem that she would harm herself or anyone else,” he told Dateline. “She clearly had some mental health issues that could be consistent with going off somewhere. We don’t have anything to say she was taken against her will.” Detective Tucker added that authorities are “definitely still concerned about her and about her safety.” Ashley’s case is currently listed as a missing persons case at the Riley County Police Department. “Initially we thought maybe she took off for a couple of weeks. Now it’s looking like that may not be the case,” Ashley’s father Tom told Dateline, adding that she would never leave her children. “Ashley’s world revolved around her children. More than anything, she wanted to be the best mother for them.” “Ashley is the kind of person who has a huge heart. Quite literally, she would do anything for anyone,” Tom said of his daughter. Ashley’s older brother, Chris Lewis, who was on the call with Dateline and his father, echoed his father’s sentiments about his “outgoing” little sister. He added that the family is offering a $5,000 reward for any information leading to Ashely’s safe return. For more information on Ashley Meiss’s disappearance, visit the Bring Ash Home Facebook page run by the family. Ashley was last seen in Ogden, Kansas on May 18. She is about 5'4" tall and weighs about 140 lbs. Ashley has short brown hair that is shaved on the sides. If you have any information on Ashley's whereabouts, please contact the Riley County Police Department at (785) 537-2112 or Crime Stoppers at (785) 539-7777. If you or someone you know is struggling with PTSD or thoughts of suicide, please call 1-800-273-8255 or visit the Veterans section of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

An Air Force veteran was in serious condition on Tuesday after he set himself on fire in front of the Georgia Capitol to protest his treatment by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, according to state and local law enforcement officials. John Watts, 58, arrived at the government building before noon wearing a vest lined with firecrackers and flammable devices, then doused himself with flammable liquid and lit the fireworks, according to the Georgia Department of Public Safety. A Georgia trooper witnessed the event and put out the flames with a fire extinguisher, the department said. Watts was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, where he told officials that he was an Air Force veteran and had immolated himself to call attention to the VA system, which had apparently failed him, the department said. In a tweet, the Atlanta Police Department said he was in serious condition.     “I’m not sure what his history is there, but he is disgruntled with the VA system and is trying to draw some attention to that. He stated something to the effect that he was looking for some help,” Mark Perry, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety, told The Associated Press. In an email to NBC News, a spokeswoman for the Department of Veterans Affairs said, “While we can’t comment on the specifics of this veteran’s case due to patient privacy laws, the department is ensuring he receives the VA care that he needs.” The Capitol and Judiciary buildings were evacuated while the Atlanta police SWAT team and bomb-detecting robots swept the buildings for any explosives, law enforcement agencies said. Watts' vehicle was also inspected as a precaution. A recent VA study showed that veterans are twice as likely as civilians to die by suicide. While the reasons are not clear, psychiatrists and suicide experts say they could be a combination of lack of access to mental health care, feeling a sense of disconnection from society, and financial and relationship problems.   On June 6, President Trump signed legislation allowing veterans to receive VA-funded medical care from the private sector to minimize the waiting time that many veterans face seeking health care through the VA.

An Army veteran in hospice care with a terminal illness asked his wife recently to hold his phone for him in case anyone calls. After no one called for two hours, Lee Hernandez, 47, told his wife, Ernestine, "I guess no one wants to talk to me." "It broke my heart,'' Ernestine told The Arizona Republic. “(Lee’s) speech is not very well, so many people didn’t take much interest or want to talk to him.” To help cheer up Lee, Ernestine is asking people to give him a call or send him a text because it helps to lift his spirits. She first put the message out on Tuesday to the Arizona Veterans Forum on Facebook, which asked fellow veterans to help brighten Lee's day with a simple gesture. He soon was receiving an outpouring of prayers, phone calls and uplifting text messages that Ernestine read to him. Lee has gone blind and suffers from continuous strokes despite three brain surgeries from an illness doctors have been unable to determine, she told The Arizona Republic. The 18-year Army veteran, who served in Iraq, has been in hospice care at their home in New Braunfels, Texas. Ernestine suggests those who want to call or text should do so between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. Central Daylight Time at 210-632-6778. "Thank you everyone for your calls and support,'' she told The Arizona Republic. "I am trying to give him the best life I am able to with the help of my mom."

A ribbon-cutting ceremony took place March 1 for the new Veterans Information Center in Warwick, N.Y. The center, open to all veterans, offers and will host special events, which, Post 4662 Commander Dan Burger said will address issues such as Post-Traumatic Stress and continuing education. It also will be a place where veterans can receive counseling. “At the Veterans Information Center, we took over what were doctor’s offices, and we converted them into private counseling rooms – whether it’s for helping with benefits or giving actual counseling from the VA,” Burger said. “This is our Post, but it’s set up like a professional office building.”   Burger, a 1991 Persian Gulf War veteran and former Army captain who served with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, said the information center also will offer veterans a computer lab and basic computer courses to help veterans apply for benefits. “Some people that have difficulty accessing information, because they are not comfortable with computers, for instance – so that is something we thought we could help with,” Burger said. “We triedto identify some of the challenges people are having with their transition from the military, and help them in those areas.”

ADEL, Iowa — The assembled at the Country Lane Lodge looked a lot like the typical Iowa voter: old and white. But the Democrats of Dallas County who had gathered for their spring fund-raiser were brought to their feet by a lean man from Missouri dressed in standard-issue millennial garb: suit jacket, bluejeans, narrow tie and two-tone half boots. The speaker, Jason Kander, 37, talked about his experience volunteering for deployment in Afghanistan after graduating from Georgetown Law School, how Democrats needed to reclaim the ideals of patriotism and courage, and his new job leading Let America Vote, an organization that fights voter suppression and gerrymandering. The work just happens to take him to states like Iowa and New Hampshire. He also has a popular podcast and a book about “everyday courage” coming in August. What hasn’t he done? Win a significant office, unless you count serving as Missouri’s secretary of state. But that didn’t stop an Iowa reporter from asking him if he was running for president. “It’s something that people do keep asking me about,” Mr. Kander said. This is the season of the long audition. “We are in open mic night,” said David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama. “We are not even into auditions yet. I think this is the time where people are just trying out their material.” “After the midterms,” he added, “this will intensify very, very quickly.” Mr. Kander, along with Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., are among a group of younger Democrats — all military veterans — who are making a generational claim on a party that many see as top-heavy with leaders and lawmakers in their late 60s and 70s. The very notion of veterans in the Democratic Party was called into question this month when Kevin Nicholson, a former Marine and a Republican candidate for a United States Senate in Wisconsin, questioned their “cognitive thought process” and suggested that “to fundamentally protect and defend the Constitution” was a “conservative thing” to do. Mr. Moulton and Mr. Kander were among several veterans who signed a letter this month demanding that Mr. Nicholson apologize, saying they were “extremely disappointed to see” that he would “not just disrespect our nation’s veterans, but crudely do so as a means to advance his own political career.” The Democratic veterans’ time may not yet have come, but they are doing what budding national figures need to do, traveling the country, giving speeches to party organizations, building political networks, refining their message and building a following on social media. “I think there’s a generational thing here that people are ignoring right now,” said Anita Dunn, a former communications director for the Obama White House. Mr. Moulton, 39, enlisted in the Marines after graduating from Harvard with a degree in physics in 2001. He served four tours in Iraq, where he earned a Bronze Star, then returned to earn a joint master’s degree at Harvard in business and public policy. After winning his House seat in 2014, Mr. Moulton started a political action committee to help recruit veterans to run for office, an organization that has him traveling the country giving speeches and raising his profile. In Washington, he has opposed Representative Nancy Pelosi, 78, as the House Democratic leader. “This is the time for a new generation of leadership in our party,” Mr. Moulton said. Mr. Buttigieg, 36, who volunteered for military service in Afghanistan in 2013 after earning degrees at Harvard and Oxford, emphasizes the ways government directly affects people’s lives. He is much in demand at state party organization gatherings, and will be the keynote speaker at the Wisconsin Democratic Party convention on June 1.           Mayor Pete Buttigieg, 36, of South Bend, Ind., is in high demand for state party gatherings.CreditAlex Sanz/Associated Press “A lot of the political actions you will see from the millennial generation aren’t just a result of younger people being a little more left, but really thinking how these political choices are going to affect us personally,” Mr. Buttigieg said. “Obviously we are the generation that has done most of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.” “From a budget perspective,” he added, “we are the generation that is going to pay the bill” for the tax cut signed into law in December. They are competing for attention with the party’s mandarin wing, which includes former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., 75, and Senators Bernie Sanders, 76, and Elizabeth Warren, 68, who were shaped by the Vietnam era. There is also a tier of younger senators like Kirsten Gillibrand, 51, of New York; Cory Booker, 49, of New Jersey; and Kamala Harris, 53, of California; and mayors of larger cities like Eric Garcetti, 47, of Los Angeles, and Mitch Landrieu, 57, of New Orleans. How far any of the three veterans go in politics will be another test of the power of generational change, which propelled John F. Kennedy in 1960 and Bill Clinton in 1992. Millennials have now passed baby boomers as the nation’s largest bloc of voters, but they have few representatives in government. “One of them, and I don’t know which one, is going to light a spark and get further than any of us can think,” Ms. Dunn said. Part of the journey is coming up with ideas that separate them from Democratic orthodoxy. Mr. Moulton, for instance, said Democrats had to do more than simply oppose President Trump. “I think there will be a reckoning that America goes through after Trump,” Mr. Moulton said. He added: “A lot of Democrats will self-righteously claim victory and try to lord it over the Republicans and say, ‘See, we were right all along,’ and that will be bad for the country. What we really need is Democrats who can be leaders and also uniters who can help the country heal after Trump.” Each of the men frames an appeal that they believe will play to party strengths on the coasts and in urban areas, but also in the traditional Midwestern battleground states. “The Republicans have actually done a good job of tapping into the anxiety people are feeling,” Mr. Moulton said. “But it also shows that Democrats have tremendous potential in places that people are hurting by showing a real path forward.” Mr. Kander, who lives near Kansas City, raised a common worry in the Midwest, that its young people do not return to their hometowns because they see so little opportunity. “We’re Democrats,” Mr. Kander said. “We give a damn. How did we ever let people convince us that was a weakness?” Mr. Kander’s travels have taken him to dozens of states, and he now delivers a polished version of a stump speech, complete with applause-ready lines. “We understand that patriotism is not about making everybody stand and salute the flag,” Mr. Kander said as the more than 225 people in Adel stood to cheer. “Patriotism is about making this a country where everyone wants to.”        Representative Seth Moulton, 39, Democrat of Massachusetts, started a political action committee to help recruit veterans to run for office.CreditTom Brenner/The New York Times None of the men have a traditional résumé of a candidate for national office. But Mr. Trump may have rendered such qualifications unnecessary. Instead, they emphasize their military service as evidence that they can connect with multiple constituencies. “People who serve in the military get a different vocabulary for talking with other Americans in a way that is less and less true in civilian life,” Mr. Buttigieg said. “You have to spend time working and eating and living with people who have radically different life experiences from you and very different politics.” Representative Gerald E. Connolly, 68, Democrat of Virginia, said that the three were trying to “broaden the base” of the party. Mr. Moulton, he said, brings his military service, but also his “impatience for change within the party.” “He has been outspoken in challenging our current leadership,” Mr. Connolly continued. “I think his challenge is whether you can channel that into effective coalition building to forge something by way of a movement.” Mr. Connolly was largely admiring of Mr. Moulton, but also underscored the friction that his bucking of party leadership has revealed. Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist who helped fashion Mr. Clinton’s rise, said that Democratic aspirants should look at Jimmy Carter’s campaign in 1976, when he rose from being the relatively obscure governor of Georgia. “What Carter did was he understood the moment,” Mr. Begala said. “There was such disgust from Nixon and the lack of ethics, and he ran counter to that, to the imperial president in style and Watergate in substance. I think that’s the model.” But it may well be that Democratic voters will want the polar opposite of Mr. Trump, namely someone with ample experience at governing. No member of the House has been elected president since James A. Garfield, in 1880. No mayor or person running an outside political organization has ever been directly elected president.

Mark Walker, American Legion deputy director of Veterans Employment and Education Division, was awarded the Jerald Washington Memorial Founders’ Award on May 31, in a ceremony at the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans (NCHV) annual conference in Washington, D.C. The award is presented to an individual who “embodies the spirit of service and sacrifice” displayed by the award’s namesake, the award is the highest honor given in the homeless veteran assistance community. A veteran of the U.S. Air Force, Walker has dedicated his career at The American Legion to bettering the lives of America’s veterans. “It is no exaggeration to say that he is responsible for the great interest and deep commitment to addressing veteran homelessness that American Legion expresses,” states the award citation. Walker has travelled the country advocating on the behalf of the homeless veteran population, encouraging others to look at homelessness as a priority. He has been instrumental in securing the passage of resolutions that enable the Legion to advocate on behalf of homeless programs. “Mark Walker has dedicated his professional career to ensuring that veterans are afforded every opportunity to overcome homelessness,” said Louis Celli, American Legion executive director of Government and Veterans Affairs. “He has worked extensively with ’at risk‘ veteran populations, and is a trusted advisor to local, state and federal leaders as they develop and implement programs designed to support veterans who need help finding permanent housing. Mark deserves this prestigious recognition and The American Legion is proud to stand behind Mark as he receives this award.” The award is named after Jerald Washington, a Vietnam veteran, who returned home to Tennessee following the war and dedicated the rest of his life to serving veterans, especially those who had difficulties returning to civilian life. Washington served as one of one of NCHV’s leaders until his death in 2001. Other recipients of the award include Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Dr. Jill Biden and former VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.

For Lindsay Gutierrez, leaving the military didn’t bring an end to her service. It’s just as likely that an end to her reign as Ms. Veteran America won’t bring an end to her advocacy on behalf of her fellow veterans. A scholarship softball player in college, Gutierrez took the military route after graduating with a theater degree, serving in the Air Force from 2010-2016 with deployments to Qatar and Djibouti. After leaving the military, Gutierrez became a veterans advocate, winning the Ms. Veteran America title in October of 2017 and using that platform to speak out on women veterans’ issues. She’ll continue to do so after putting that title behind her, sometimes wearing a Legion cap. Gutierrez recently was elected as commander of American Legion Post 336 in Lakeland, Ga., AND as second vice president of the post’s Auxiliary unit. Gutierrez, who now lives in Georgia and is studying to be a social worker, talked with American Legion Social Media Manager Steven B. Brooks about her military experience, serving as Ms. Veteran America and how The American Legion can help women veterans transition into civilian life. Steven Brooks: How did you end up in the Air Force after graduating from college? Lindsay Gutierrez: My grandfather … had planted this seed in me a long time ago. He had always talked to me and my cousins about joining the military. And my grandfather on my mother’s side was also Air Force as well. So it was kind of one of those things that I feel it was instilled in me at an early age, but it really wasn’t emphasized to join the military. My grandfather kept saying, ‘You should go into the military’ – kind of joking, but kind of serious at the same time. So I got my degree in theater but nothing was really happening. I moved out to California and it was the same thing. Every time I tried to do what I wanted to do, I was just hitting roadblock after roadblock. Then that little bug in my ear from my grandfather said ‘Go join the military.’ It was in May of 2010 I finally decided that I was going to talk to a recruiter. And everything just really started from there. Q: What did you get out of those six years in the Air Force? A: They really helped me to find who I was, and it really helped me to mature in a way that I wasn’t expecting. I told myself, ‘This isn’t me. This isn’t something that I can do.’ I had all these doubts. Knowing how … everyone was supporting me … I felt like I wasn’t just doing this for myself. I was doing it for them. I felt like I really owed it to people. I saw mentors of mine – senior NCOs, NCOs that were my direct supervisor – doing everything possible to set me up for success. So I was trying to do my best to also set others up for success when I became that supervisor. I realize now … whenever you’re helping others, there’s always so much more that can be done. And you realize that your voice really matters. I truly see the importance of using your voice. Q: Is that desire to use your voice what led you to competing for Ms. Veteran America? A: Absolutely. It was during this really crazy time during my transition from active duty to now dependent. My first date back stateside was my first day in Georgia was my first day as a civilian. Here I was not just coming back to an unfamiliar home (after) being away from America for the last five and a half years. I had absolutely nothing other than my husband and my pets. I was trying to make something of myself, and I was feeling weird about what I was supposed to be doing. Coming across Ms. Veteran America, I realized there was something out there for women veterans to be able to empower and help those who don’t have that voice. I completely doubted myself for this. I didn’t think I was the right person for the job. I realized it was just getting out of your comfort zone (and) talking to people. You realize you have a lot more in common with others than you think. And what I found out was a lot of people that I encountered – men and women – we’ve all at some point kind of felt invisible. That motivated me to want to get out and make a change … and put the veteran platform up as high as I could. Q: What have these eight months as Ms. Veteran America been like for you? A: It’s been such a whirlwind. I’ve met people I’ve never thought I’d be crossing paths with: the first woman four-star general of the military, Gen. (Ann) Dunwoody. I’ve met so many incredible, empowering women. And on top of that, to meet some pretty significant names outside of that. It’s really been an eye-opener to see how much support is around whenever you open up your heart and mind to wanting to receive that. I think … as veterans, we try to say ‘We’ve got it. We can do it. We don’t need that help.’ But the truth is that we do. And whenever you start telling people your story – and that’s what I was doing with Ms. Veteran America – they really saw it … ‘That’s exactly how I felt.’ Q: What led you to joining The American Legion? A: I wanted to try to get involved with veterans orgs because we were new (in Georgia) and I wanted to start reaching out and meeting new people. Probably around (May 2017) is when I found out the Lakeland post had been reestablished. I went to their meeting and really spoke about what I was doing (with the Ms. Veteran America competition). From there, I decided to join. I felt like it was just one of those things where I needed to be involved. I thought that the Legion had done so much for me already, I want to be able to give back to them. And when I found out I was also eligible to join the Auxiliary, I definitely took advantage of that. I understand both sides. I know what it’s like to be a military spouse because my husband’s active duty. And I know what it’s like to be active-duty military and a veteran. I can bring both of those experiences to the table. Q: And how did taking on a leadership role at Post 336 happen? A: I had seen that there were (offices) that were going to be open. I was interested and thought this was really important. I started looking at the jobs … and actually put my name in for secretary. I emailed our judge advocate, and he emailed me back and said, “This is great, but you’re a commander.” I was like “wow.” I felt really honored. I agreed, and I got the position, and here I am. Q: What do you think The American Legion can do at the grass-roots level in assisting with homelessness and other issues facing women veterans as they transition from the military to civilian life? A: We have to talk about the issue instead of brushing it off to the side and pretending it doesn’t exist. We’re talking about a very valid and real situation that’s happening across the country. Being part of the Legion allows us that cohesiveness as veterans to understand, “You have a real story. I have a real story. Here’s what we can do together.” By bringing that to the light and encouraging each other that this is something we need to bring to the light … the Legion is very integral in bringing awareness to this cause, especially at the grass-roots level. Because that’s where change is going to start.

WASHINGTON — Eleven major veterans’ organizations have announced the development and adoption of a Veteran’s Creed. The participating organizations presented the creed at an event on Flag Day, June 14, at 1 p.m. at the Reserve Officers Association headquarters at 1 Constitution Avenue, NE, Washington, D.C. The Creed is the result of extensive discussions and consultations among the group that began last fall at Georgetown University. It is meant to inspire veterans to continue to serve and lead in their communities and our country, and to continue to make a difference in our world. Eleven major veterans’ organizations, including the VFW, sign the newly created Veteran’s Creed during a ceremony in Washington, D.C., on June 14. The creed is meant to inspire veterans to continue to serve and lead in their communities and our country, and to continue to make a difference in our world.      “The Creed will help prepare veterans for their productive civilian lives,” said Dr. Joel Kupersmith, Director of Veterans’ Initiatives at Georgetown University. Echoing his comments are Gen. George W. Casey Jr., former Army Chief of Staff, who said “I believe the Veteran’s Creed could remind veterans of what they miss about their service and encourage them to continue to make a difference in their communities and across our country,” he said. “We need their talents.” Each element of the Creed is rooted in shared military tenets, the missions of participating veterans and military service organizations, and in the altruistic ethos of veterans themselves.  It is also meant to remind Americans that the principles and values veterans learned in the military – integrity, leadership, teamwork, selfless service – can greatly benefit our country. “In the Army I lived both the Soldier’s Creed and the NCO Creed,” said John Towles, Director of National Security & Foreign Affairs for the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S. “Both set a path for who I was as a member of the Armed Forces, and served as a constant reminder of my obligations as a leader to those on my left and to my right. As veterans, we must realize that our service does not stop simply because we take off the uniform. Many of us struggle to find our place once we leave the military, but now we have a new set of watchwords to guide and remind our brothers and our sisters in arms that our mission is far from over.” The eight-point Veteran’s Creed is: I am an American Veteran I proudly served my country I live the values I learned in the military I continue to serve my community, my country and my fellow veterans I maintain my physical and mental discipline I continue to lead and improve I make a difference I honor and remember my fallen comrades Along with the VFW, other participating veterans’ groups include AMVETS, Disabled American Veterans, HillVets, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Military Order of the Purple Heart, Paralyzed Veterans of America, Reserve Officers Association, Student Veterans of America, Team Rubicon Global and Wounded Warrior Project.