Partnership aims to connect veterans, medical help

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BY ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star

Spokesmen for four familiar groups lined up at the Capitol Monday to announce a new commitment to medical care for Nebraska veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Marie Winfrey — wearing a leather vest identifying her as a member of the much less familiar Combat Veterans Motorcycle Association Auxiliary — watched from the audience as Al Washko of the Veterans Administration and others signed documents creating the Nebraska Partnership for Veterans Care.

But the wife of Lincoln Marine Robert Winfrey, who returned from Vietnam four decades ago with what she described as “all his baggage,” felt something less than complete relief.

“It all looks very good on paper,” she said. “But I want to know how they can follow up with what they say they’re doing.”

Joining Washko to unveil the initiative Monday were John Hilgert of the Nebraska Department of Veterans Affairs, Maj. Gen. Robert Bailey of the Nebraska National Guard and Scot Adams of the state Department of Health and Human Services.

Woven into remarks prepared for the occasion were words like “seamless” and “customer friendly,” an acknowledgement of a poor track record in the Vietnam Era, and a promise to try to do better.

“We all know these words mean much more than words on paper,” Bailey said. “They represent commitment.”

The substance of commitment is making sure Nebraska vets and their families know about and access benefits and resources, including those that might address post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries.

Toward that end, Washko called attention to the opening of outpatient clinics in Holdrege and Norfolk and plans for similar clinics in Bellevue and Shenandoah, Iowa.

Other types of outreach services are targeted for O’Neill and Wayne.

“We’re trying to be closer to veterans as we open an increasing number of outpatient clinics,” he said.

Washko said it’s hard to measure how much unmet need there might be. But it’s understood that much of it is in rural parts of the state, where many of the state’s National Guard units are based.

“I can just tell you that the treatment team we have has just been doubled in size so we can be more responsive.”

As he offered his viewpoint after the press conference, Robert Winfrey, now 59, said he never would have sought help with what he experienced in 1968-69 without prodding from his wife.

“Everybody told me I was messed up,” he said, “and I told them they were full of it.”

Kurt Busch of Fort Calhoun, the Nebraska chapter commander of the Combat Veterans Motorcycle Association, said he will appreciate whatever the health care partnership can do to make sure veterans’ attempts to get help don’t turn into another stressful ordeal.

“I think it’s hard to step forward and ask for help,” Busch said. “And if you have to step forward three or four times and ask three or four different people, that makes it three or four times as hard.”

Reach Art Hovey at 473-7223 or ahovey@journalstar.com.