To the editor:
Each year as we approach Veterans Day and the onset of the holiday season, I am reminded of our beginnings as an organization. It is a story worth telling again and again- a story we must always remember and honor.
On the 11th hour of the 11th day in the 11th month of the year 1918, the tent was struck and the dogs of war again tethered. Peace returned to the world when the Germans signed the Armistice. The war to end all wars, World War I, was finally over and it was time to rebuild.
While the nation rejoiced at the ending of the war, it also devastated more than 200,000 Americans in uniform who were wounded in the carnage of World War I. The evidence of the destruction of war was all about the men’s transition from the military to civilian life. Many of those men, mostly young men, had lost arms and legs, were paralyzed, blinded, had lungs seared by toxic gases, and minds shattered by the horrors they had endured. They, too, had to rebuild their lives.
Unfortunately, the efforts to rebuild their lives were more often dashed then not. Recession, a surge of discharge veterans streaming into an already limited workforce, reducing production as a result of the war ending, and soaring unemployment drained and eventually crippled the American economy.
With no VA and sadly underfunded programs requiring veterans to navigate excessive paperwork and a nearly impenetrable maze of bureaucracy, veterans found themselves in serious need of change to promote the cause and needs of America’s disabled and their families.
At the Ohio Mechanics Institute, a training school for disabled veterans in Cincinnati, the OMI Disabled Soldiers was formed in attempt to address issues facing disabled veterans. One of the local leaders they sought counsel from was Judge- Elect Captain Robert S. Marx of Cincinnati. Like themselves, Captain Marx was a disabled veteran who had been wounded the day before the Armistice, during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.
It was during a Christmas party hosted by Judge Marx for nearly a hundred OMI veterans that the idea to form an organization to do something about the mess the government had made of its programs for veterans and actually start building their lives for America’s disabled veterans and their families. The seed would grow into the Disabled American Veterans of the World War (DAVWW) and, later, the DAV was sown in that fertile soil.
As you honor all veterans on Veterans Day, I ask you to recall what disabled veterans have built over the years and what we are building today and into the future. Recall it with pride, because you and others like you are building better lives for America’s disabled veterans and their families every day.
Duane F. Getzmeyer