 Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you. My name's Adam Payne. I'm the Sheboygan County administrative coordinator and co-host of this program with Bill Gehring, county board chairman, and our guest today is Jim Riesenberg, the veteran services officer. As many of you certainly are aware, Memorial Day is going to be soon upon us, and Jim today is going to discuss some of the roles and responsibilities of his department, as well as some of the very important activities that are coming up. Jim, we've got nearly 10,000 veterans in Sheboygan County, and I know you're real busy this time of year. Why don't you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself and your roles and responsibilities? Well, Adam, the veteran service office system in Sheboygan County in Wisconsin was established in 1934 in Fond du Lac County. In 1935, the Wisconsin statutes mandated that every county develop and put in place a county veteran service office. The Boycher 1080 of the Sheboygan County Society of 40 Men and 8 Horses petitioned the county board to establish such an office, and that action was taken by a county board activity in 1935. Catherine Holshu retired in December of 1986, and in January 21st of 1987, I was elected to the position, and it's been 16 years of a lot of challenge and a lot of fun. What's your office's mission and primary responsibilities? Our primary responsibility, veterans benefits in Wisconsin are governed by Chapter 45. It basically said the veteran service officer will assist all former military personnel, their survivors, and dependents with access to programs for them, and assist them with any trouble they may have accessing these programs. It covers several pages in the statute book, but that's it in about three lines. And say it even more succinctly, and I know you've got a very good mission statement. Why don't you share that with our viewers? The mission statement is quite simple. We basically serve those who served. We do that in a lot of different ways. Everybody has their own problem or their own issue, and our responsibility is to get that problem resolved to the best of our ability and in a manner that is acceptable to them and is what they were looking for. Now, to serve those who served, we are going to have another completely new generation of veterans with the terrorism and global war on terrorism in this country, as well as across the world. What do you see as benefits or challenges in providing service to them in the years ahead? Well, whenever we have a new armed conflict, it always seems that we have a new batch of veterans and a whole new batch of issues and concerns. Operation Iraqi Freedom, which started the enduring freedom, they started the global war on terrorism, it's all been busheled up into something that the government has called the global war on terrorism. And as far as the men and women who are serving now, those who have gone before them as the role of veteran, well, they'll have the same programs, excuse me. In the 15 plus years that I've been doing this, both the state veterans affairs and the federal VA have gone to great lengths to change their programs, to meet the changing needs of a changing veteran population. Obviously, the needs of today's veteran are far different from those of World War II and World War I. And along the way, I would say if we described education, health care, home loans, and the Department of Memorial Affairs, that basically would cover the entire gamut of everything that's available. And both the state and the federal, if there are a need for changes, sometimes it takes somebody with a big political stick to make some of these changes. But if there is enough need for change and enough demonstrated need for change, change has come pretty rapidly when we can prove that there is a need for change. So we look forward to the challenge of serving this new generation of veterans. So you mentioned education, home loans, health care. I know there's a number of important programs that you provide. Can you give our viewers a little better flavor for what is available? Well, I say everybody, I mean the state and the federal, both have something in one of these programs. But the federal, probably the GI Bill is probably the single most visible one. The state recently instituted the tuition and fees reimbursement for full-time. Part-time reimbursement has been around since 1935. And when you get into the loan department, of course, the biggie is the primary mortgage home loan program. Both the state and the federal have that. Under health care, the federal VA, of course, with the VA medical system, the largest health care delivery system in the free world. And also the state has programs for those who are down and out grant programs for those who are extremely needy. And as far as the Department of Memorial Affairs, well, the Memorial Affairs, the major item there, of course, is the National Cemetery System and the Military Funeral Honors Program that the state of Wisconsin offers along with the new veteran cemeteries at Union Grove and at Spooner in northern Wisconsin as well as the state veteran cemetery at the Wisconsin Veterans' Home at King. So you mentioned the VA, and then you mentioned that there are a number of coordinated or overlapping responsibilities, whether it's at the federal level, the state level, and the local level here at the county. How do you go about coordinating those different programs and services? And again, if someone's interested in learning on what's available to them or their family member, what do they do? What are their first steps? It's a challenge to say the least. What we try to do, the first thing we try to do is find out what their needs are. And when we figure out what their needs are, then we try to find out what is best for them. But the easiest way to find out as far as where to find help, as far as the VA is concerned, the old standby, the 800 number is still in existence. It's been around for quite some time, the 827-1000. And that number, it doesn't make any difference where you live in. If you live in New Jersey or Tennessee or Arizona or Hawaii or Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands, if you call the 827-1000 number, you'll find a Veterans Benefits Counselor. And I don't think I'm going to surprise you if I say that we seem to live in a dot-com, in a WWW world. And the information is also available via the internet. And as new as it may seem, the number of internet contacts just seems like about every week or so the contacts double. So we know not a lot of the older Veterans are probably computer literate. Most of the newer ones are. And some of them even now contact, well, I read this on the website that my parents are in a nursing home and they might be eligible for something like this. So a great push and a great help in the outreach and in the public awareness effort. What if they want to contact your office? What number did they call then? 459-3053 or 459-3054. And the good thing, if you go to the internet or call the 800 numbers, they will find out where you live and make the referral to our office. Because occasionally, we find out and say, well, I called this 800 number and they said, I should talk to you. It's a great network of helping Veterans help themselves most of the time. And you mentioned the internet or website and Sheboygan County a couple of few years ago now has implemented, I think, a very nice website. It's, of course, a work in progress, but you've been very active with keeping that up to date and keeping information on that. You mentioned if they don't have their own computer, certainly doesn't mean they couldn't go to the library or somewhere like that to access that information. You just want to touch on that briefly what you've done with the website. I think I've overloaded it. It has been, it's just been tremendous. I managed to work my way now to probably about the third grade level in the School of Computer Technology. So I'm getting better at it. The county IT system has been exceptional in putting a lot of things on there for me. The important things, starting January 1st, I knew enough about it that when I had a news release, I quit faxing. I said to anybody who wants to stay on the mailing list for news releases, send me an email address, so we'll never hear from you again. So now we have, I think, 14 or 15 where news release has gone. And the important thing is, I think if you look at it at the county website today and go to the Veterans Service Office website, you'll find the Memorial Day schedule. You'll find an open letter to all men and women on active duty regarding some of the things that they can be doing before their last day of active duty information on vexillology. If you don't know anything about that, there's your chance to pick up on it. And just a myriad of things that some stay on the web county site for 30 days and then go to the Veterans Service Office page. And it's just been a tremendous asset, not only in the public awareness, but in the outreach effort, too. Well, very good. The last question I had before turning it over to Bill is, earlier you mentioned that your mission, David, is to serve those who served. Approximately, how many veterans do we have in the county and how many are we serving? I said on the onset that it's approximately 10,000. But I imagine folks would be pretty interested in knowing how many we have and how many you're serving. I would be afraid to hazard an accurate guess, because I'm not really sure. I think the graph shows roughly 10%. The graph is based on a 2,000 veteran population. So I would say the 10,000, between 10 and 11,000 would be a fairly realistic figure. It's really tough to put a handle on it. I know we do lay to rest a couple of hundred every year, so that has an effect. And the unique, I don't know if it's a unique thing, but one of the different things about the veteran population, we're getting older, but we're not getting younger. We probably will never create veterans numbers in the millions like we did after World War II. So those numbers are going down, and if we lay a veteran to rest every 40 hours, we certainly don't welcome a new one back into the county every 40 hours. So it is a declining figure, and I would say if I said 10,250, I probably would be within 100. Thanks, Jim. If Adam said Memorial Day is almost here, Memorial Day is normally the beginning of summer, vacation time, things like that. Probably most people of my age and younger really don't know what Memorial Day is all about. Can you tell me what Memorial Day means to you, Jim? Well, it's, I would guess that first of all, that it's supposed to be a day to remember those who fell on the field of battle, gave their lives in the field of battle. It's a day that I have a feeling that succeeding generations are probably going to end up believing was created by an ad agency for a sale at the mall, or it was created by the Department of Tourism to say now tourist season is open, everybody can now go on vacation. And it's a lot more than that. And I think people need to take a few minutes and probably refocus on just exactly what we are doing. I think the sad part of it is nobody has the time to do that anymore. If you find an older cemetery, you walk through there and you see someone who was 20 years old that died in November of 1917, or June of 1944, or October of 1951, or November of 1967 and they're in that 20-year age group, they've probably lost their life in the field of battle. If you look at somebody and you see somebody who's 20 years old or 19 years old and he died June 6, 1944, he probably lost his life at Normandy. And then you stop and think, what would have happened had somebody else won at Gettysburg or had the Normandy invasion failed? Where would we be today? Or if that person were 18 in 1944, what would he be doing today? How would life be for him? The sad part of Memorial Day and it's counterpart Veterans Day that I think the true meaning of the day is probably lost even before the gunpowder from the rifle volley has drifted out of the air and the echo of taps that hasn't stopped reverberating. And I think most people have forgotten what we're supposed to be doing today. That's a sad part of it and I don't know how to change it. There is several Memorial Day activities going around throughout the county. You'll be involved in some, can you talk about some of those activities? I will be involved. As far as planning, I'm not really too involved in that. We do get calls on protocol or flag etiquette or history or things like that. I belong to the Vietnam Veterans American Group here in Sheboygan in Elmarts with their Honor Guard and I will be speaking out at Ryan Center this year for their program. But there are programs in just about every community in the area and I think I've asked and some of them are now posted on the county website and I'm putting them up there as they come in. And I think I would encourage everyone to kind of keep an eye on the local media and find some time to go out and participate in at least one of them. Okay, placing flags on Veterans Grave seems to be one of the major things it has done right before Veterans Day. Can you tell us roughly how many flags are placed in some of that background? That's a challenge. As we're taping this, the organizations, we will probably place about almost 10,000 flags in 108 cemeteries in Sheboygan County this year. We've got 26 veterans organizations, excuse me. And several years ago, Al Sterling laid out a map. He put a peg out for every cemetery where there were, put another peg down for every veterans organization. He said, this is how we're gonna do it. And it works out quite well. Instead of one or two groups doing 15 or 18 cemeteries, everybody has a share. And if you would like, for instance, down in the Hingham in the southeastern corner of the state, American Legion and Cedar Grove, Usberg and Hingham take care of the cemeteries in their area. And down around Random Lake, the Random Lake Legion and the Random Lake VFW. If you go further west in the town of Scott out in that area, the American Legion in Adel and the American Legion in Triangle B in the Boltonville, they take care of that. And then up around Elkhart Lake, the Elkhart Lake VFW, there's American Legion in Greenbush and Glenvuella. So those areas are covered. And then over in the northwest corner of the state, at the county, rather, Howard's Grove VFW and the Franklin American Legion. In the city of Sheboygan, there's nine organizations and they pretty well, the larger cemeteries like Calvary and Lutheran, excuse me, and Wildwood, that's usually a job for a couple of organizations because I think there's well over 1,000 in both of those cemeteries. And they are the two largest ones. And then we have one cemetery at Elkhart Lake, the Sharp Cemetery, one veteran, Private Edwin Sharp Civil War. And the organizations have been really good about that. They pick up the flags. The county board has been really good about providing money to purchase the flags and the flag holders and it gets to be a rush in the next couple of days. I would expect probably by Friday or Saturday, most all of the flags will be placed. You mentioned that there are roughly 26 veterans organizations in the county. What might be the benefits for a veteran to join one of those organizations? Well, I don't know. I would venture to say that if you asked a hundred veterans why they joined, you'd probably get a hundred different answers. Some of them joined just to see it as a continuation of their services to the community, state, and nation as a takeoff from their military service. Some joined to provide support for the programs that have been designed and built for veterans because veterans organizations have long been the lobbyists and the leaders in developing and maintaining these programs. And some of them joined just for the camaraderie that's associated with the military way of life. Somebody says, the smoking lamp was lit. If you didn't know what it meant, you'd wonder what they were talking about and those kinds of things. And there are a lot of things that happen in our community, in our county, in our state and in the world that probably wouldn't happen if it weren't for veterans organizations. Are there different requirements for being able to join the different organizations? Most of them, all of the veterans organizations have a federal charter. Federal charter affords them some special tax incentives. In return, they have to ensure that every member of the organization meets the guidelines as set forth in their charter. For instance, the military order the Purple Heart, you would need to have been combat wounded and have been awarded the Purple Heart in order to be a qualifying member. So if you don't have it, don't even think about asking to join. Veterans of foreign wars, you need to have served on foreign soil during a period of conflict and have one of the prescribed combat or participation service medals. Disabled American veterans, obviously, you need to be a disabled veteran, service disabled veteran in order to join. So, yeah, they all have, and a lot of them are pretty strict about what the membership requirements are. The American Legion merely requires honorable active service during a period of armed conflict. And Vietnam Veterans of America service during the 1961 to 1975, I believe, when it ended. So, they all have requirements and they all enforce them. We do get calls quite often from the membership adjutant. This veteran wants to join our group, send him a copy of his service record so we can find out if he's qualified. And it's aggravating to some people that they want to participate but can't, but there are, I think, 56 or 58 federally chartered veterans organizations. So, there's one out there for every veteran. We've talked a little bit about the number of veterans decreasing. Memorial Day really is an important day to remember the sacrifice that our veterans have made. What do you think we can do? How can we best preserve Memorial Day? Well, and, excuse me, I would think the best way that you can say thank you is probably try to be a good citizen. Probably sound like old hat, but, you know, do the right thing. You know, there's nothing wrong with not breaking the law, I don't think. I think a whole lot of people would be a lot happier. But, you know, other than if you have the time and you want to volunteer your services at some place like a nursing home or at the Wisconsin Veterans Home or down at the VA hospital, there's always a need for people, you know, I think just at the King Veterans Home last year, 78,000 volunteer hours. That's a lot of hours for people to volunteer. And there are probably individual veterans who would, things like transportation to a hospital or transportation here or there, things like that. But I think overall for the majority of the people, probably the best way thing to do is make sure that we don't fritter away the thing that these things that specifically the way of life that these men fought for and some of them died for, men and women. It's a big world out there. It's a tough world out there, but I think each one of us individually could try and make it a little better so their sacrifice will not have been in vain. Good advice, Jim. One of the smaller departments that we have in Sheboygan County, we've got 23 departments and Veteran Service Offices, one of the smallest with two employees. One of the areas we haven't touched on is the Veteran Service Commission. Why don't you briefly tell our viewers the role and responsibility of the commission. Veteran Service Commission also exists by statute and the primary mission of the Veteran Service Commission. Everybody gets down on their luck once in a while. And the primary role of the Veteran Service Commission is to provide temporary financial assistance to qualifying applicants. The qualifying applicant would be the same as it would be if they were going to apply for a state or federal Veterans benefit. And our commission and each county has a commission. Each county operates in its own. Every county does what they feel is best for their area. And in Sheboygan County, the temporary assistance, three months in a calendar year for the basic necessities of food, clothing, and shelter. We've done a lot with the commission over the years. And it's just another one of those things that Veterans usually don't find out about until they've just about hit bottom in their personal life and when they come to see us. I usually try to explain to people we have a three tier set up here. If your condition is strictly temporary and the commission can help you, then that's the end of it, that short term, that's three months. If you're temporary and it's long term, gonna be more than three months, well, then we have the state grant programs that we can work on. And if it looks like it's gonna be long term and probably a permanent issue, then we'll go to the federal programs. And federal programs do take a long time. And if we can get somebody started, get them, help them a little bit, at least get back on level ground with the commission. We can get a grant application started through the state if they qualify and moving up just a little bit. And if something that we can do as far as the federal VA and get them a long term program, then we'll have this whole operation will probably take nine to 10 months. But we've done something to help somebody and it gets to be a long and aggravating process. But we do the best we can. The most frustrating part of all of this is waiting. And I think we've probably all been in that situation. And then all of a sudden when you're down and your luck and everything is going against you, the wait is even longer. What seemingly you say, well, it's probably only gonna take three months. Well, three months to somebody who's down and luck could be a lifetime. But the frustrating part of most of the federal programs as people get so aggravated, they walk away from it because they don't wanna deal with it. Having had the pleasure to work with Jim now for a little better than four years, certainly if you're in need of assistance or more information, I strongly encourage you to call the VA number that was on your screen earlier or to contact Jim's office. Because Jim certainly, I know, has gone above and beyond the call of duty in the past and will so in the future to help people get the assistance and information that they need. And we appreciate the work that you've done with us and for us, Jim. No problem. We only have a couple of minutes remaining. As you think about the year ahead, is there a key goal or key objective that you're looking to achieve or work toward? Send money. I think as we work our way through this budget year and this calendar year and look ahead to 2004, I don't think it's a secret that we're probably all going to have to try to do as much or more with less. And I don't really see that as a great problem. What we've done specifically in the office, we will be putting in hopefully this year yet the Veterans Information Management System to increase our overall efficiency and that type of thing. If we get that and that's gonna help a little bit. Another goal, and this has been an ongoing goal since 1987 to be able to continue to provide service to our clients in a compassionate and professional manner. Very good. Well, thank you very much, Jim, for being our guest today and thank you for joining us. Next month, our guest will be Dean Ray Hernandez who's going to talk about many of the improvements that are occurring out here at UW-Shabuigan, whether it's nearly $1.8 million in infrastructure improvements or the new science addition that Bill Gehring and others just broke ground for recently. There's some exciting occurrences out here and we hope you'll join us then. Until then, I hope you'll have a chance to think a little bit about upcoming Memorial Day and perhaps participate in one of the activities. And if not, whether it's saying thank you to a veteran or dropping a note or as Jim said, just being a good citizen. God bless and thanks for joining us. You know, it doesn't even matter what I think or what I believe, you can't be heard. The whole system, it's rigged from top to bottom. An honest voice in politics? There's no chance of that. At least that's what I used to think about politics. 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