Lori and I attended the ceremony held by the VFW on Saturday in which they renamed their post in honor and memory of Fred Ettleman. When Ettleman was murdered, he was the Post Commander. Today I got an email from Officer Roger Schneider of the Pueblo Police Department.
It said, “ There isn’t a change as of now. Sounds like it would be very beneficial if people involved, or witnesses, would come forward and talk.”
I’m not exactly sure what that meant other than perhaps there continues to circulate theories as to who and why Fred Ettleman was shot in the King Sooper’s parking lot. If you have one of those stories, please share it with the Pueblo Police Department.
You never know where the exact thing they need will come from.
But that’s not really the message of the Viewpoint today. During his prayer, Chaplain Donald Shumake sent out a plea for younger members to the VFW. He shared that, as the members age, it becomes harder and harder to get the things done that they would like to do.
Shumake cited several nearby towns that no longer had a VFW because they had just died away.
According to an article in an AARP (American Association of Retired People) publication, the VFW has lost a third of its members over the past 20 years.
A thousand posts have closed in the past decade. The average age of members is 67 and more than 400,000 members are over 80.
The majority of our local members fought in Vietnam, a war which just celebrated its 50th anniversary last summer.
According to Doug Goodman, 72, commander of Post 1771 in Lafayette, Colorado, younger veterans don’t realize what the VFW had done for them.
'It's a game of numbers with Congress,' Goodman says. 'The more you have, the more they listen.'
From a high after World War II of 1.5 million members, numbers are again shrinking. The number of people fighting in recent wars are less and the participation rates are only about 15 percent from the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.
But, the national clout of the veterans isn’t the only thing that we have to lose. Over the years, although I didn’t serve in the military, I have developed relationships through the paper that have enriched my life.
Local veterans like Tom Howard, Jerry Collins, Bob Eden, now deceased, John Freeburg, Jimmie Porter, and others have shared stories with me that give me an appreciation, not only of what they went through, but of who they are.
I watched some people I knew back home in Western Kansas go to Vietnam and not come back the same at all. Several of them went to my church and I knew them well enough to feel the pain and anguish they were going through.
An associated press story that I read today said that the number of suicides among the U.S. military members AND their families dipped slightly in 2022, as the Defense Department tries to build prevention and treatment programs to address what has been a steadily growing problem over the past decade.
Young male troops still make up the vast majority of the suicides at 93%. And 70% of the time troops use a firearm.
Twenty-two veterans per day commit suicide in our country.
Those statistics came from the analysis of 21 states from 19992011. The average age of veteran suicides in that study was nearly 60 years old.
Why should you care? Because with all of the problems we have as a country, we still enjoy more freedom than any other country on the planet. And the reason we do rests squarely on the men and women who have fought for our country overseas; who achieved great things often in spite of politicians, enemies, horrible conditions on the battlefield and having to watch friends die.
New members needed. And maybe saying thank you, as well.