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Uncovering Disability Benefits for 11.25 Million Veterans
VA estimates there are approximately 17.6 million living veterans, while about 6.34 million receive service-connected disability compensation. That leaves roughly 11.25 million veterans—about 64% of the veteran population—not currently receiving disability compensation.
The modern DoD-VA Integrated Disability Evaluation System, or IDES, did not begin until 2007 and was later expanded worldwide. IDES primarily serves service members referred for possible medical separation or retirement; it is not a universal disability evaluation for every service member leaving the military. Millions of veterans separated before this integrated system existed, and many others left service without ever entering IDES.
VA has also documented claims filed 10 to 20 years after discharge, and some veterans have waited roughly 30 years before ultimately receiving service-connected benefits. The evidence does not show that most veterans wait 30 years, but it clearly shows that long delays are real.
Meanwhile, VA has obligated approximately $13.84 billion toward electronic health record modernization, with an independent lifecycle estimate cited by GAO of approximately $49.8 billion. VA also continues to spend billions on construction and infrastructure.
Those investments have created vast amounts of electronic medical and service data. DoD and VA already possess service treatment records, deployment histories, occupational information, exposure records, diagnoses, surgeries, traumatic injuries, hearing loss, chronic illnesses, and VA medical histories.
The call to action is straightforward: use that data to identify veterans who may have been missed.
VA should systematically identify veterans who are not receiving disability compensation but whose existing records show strong indicators of potentially service-connected conditions. Those veterans should then be proactively contacted, offered an expedited evaluation, and assisted through the disability claims process.
Before additional billions are committed to technology overruns or unnecessary construction, Congress and VA should evaluate whether those dollars could produce greater value by directing resources toward eligible veterans and putting compensation directly into their households.
The question is no longer whether the government has the information.
It does. The question is whether VA will use it.
Of the 11.25 million veterans not currently receiving disability compensation, how many have documented service-related conditions that have never been fully evaluated?
Congress should require VA and DoD to answer that question—and act on the results.
The Torch Has Been Passed
I did not think this day could come. Even after my son raised his right hand, a part of me never truly believed I would one day watch him become an active duty service member.
I recently hung a Blue Star Service Flag in my window. It is a daily reminder that the next generation continues to answer our nation’s call, accepting personal risk for a higher calling.
As a young boy, I knew I was meant to serve. Throughout my Army career, I rarely thought about the danger. The mission always came first. It wasn’t until I was saying goodbye to my own children before deployments that I began to understand where the real burden was carried.
Today, I see that burden through different eyes.
I used to reassure my family by saying it was more dangerous driving to the base in Atlanta than serving in the area of operations or on a forward operating base. At the time, I believed it. It was easy to say because I was the one going.
It is different when it is your son.
Modern warfare is different with these drones. But Information is still limited, uncertainty is constant, and the waiting can be relentless. Yet one truth has never changed: the hardest part of military service is often carried by the families who remain behind.
I have always been proud to serve my country.
Today, I am equally proud—and humbled—to be the father of someone who has chosen to do the same.
The torch has been passed. My prayers now travel with him, his wife, and every family waiting faithfully at home.
Is This What Healing Feels Like?
Lately, I’ve been asking myself questions that don’t seem to have answers for.
Does everything eventually become routine?
Does everything that is new eventually become old?
They call it the “daily grind” for a reason, don’t they?
When does something lose its luster?
And perhaps the harder question…when do we?
The past year has changed me in ways I never expected. Losing my wife after watching her fight with every ounce of strength she had, trying to raise my daughter, helping fellow veterans navigate a system that often overwhelms them, trying to build a business with purpose—it has all been meaningful. Yet, at times, it has also been exhausting.
People sometimes tell me how strong I am.
The truth is, strength isn’t the absence of questions. Sometimes it’s simply continuing to put one foot in front of the other while carrying them.
Why do I struggle to feel purpose on some days when I know my work changes lives?
Why does my soul sometimes feel quiet instead of alive?
It isn’t that I lack free will. Every day I choose to move forward.
It isn’t that I cannot love. If anything, loving deeply has become both my greatest gift and my greatest source of pain.
So what is it?
Is my tank full—but filled with sand instead of water? Have years of responsibility, military service, loss, caregiving, and simply surviving filled every available space until joy has difficulty finding room?
Or is it something simpler? Is my brain still healing from grief? Are the chemicals that shape emotion simply trying to find their balance again?
I honestly don’t know.
What I do know is this: purpose doesn’t seem to be something we find once and keep forever. It fades. It changes. It asks us to search for it again and again.
When I help a veteran receive benefits they earned decades ago, I see purpose.
When I teach someone how to navigate the VA system so they can eventually do it themselves, I see purpose.
When my daughter smiles, I see purpose.
But even purpose doesn’t erase grief. It simply gives grief somewhere meaningful to stand.
Maybe that is what healing really is.
Not waking up one morning and feeling whole again.
Not forgetting the people we’ve lost.
Not pretending life is the same.
Maybe healing is learning that even when life loses some of its shine, it still has value. That even when our soul feels quiet, it is still there. That even when we don’t have all the answers, we can still choose kindness, service, and love.
I don’t know if everything eventually becomes ordinary.
I do know that the people we help, the lives we touch, and the love we give never truly lose their value.
Perhaps that’s enough for today.
Tomorrow, I’ll ask the questions again.
And I’ll keep walking anyway.
A Button, a Lesson 45 Years in the Making
Today I sewed a button back onto my favorite shirt and repaired a split seam in a pillow.
Neither job took very long, but when I finished, I realized I had just used a skill I learned more than 45 years ago as a Boy Scout.
My Scoutmaster, William Lee Kitchel, was a remarkable man. He was a Navy veteran of the Second World War who served aboard a battleship and was wounded during a kamikaze attack. Later, he served again, this time in the Air Force during the Korean War. He was demanding, disciplined, and believed that young men learned responsibility by doing things themselves.
Every Scout in our troop sewed on his own merit badges and patches. There were no shortcuts and no “Mom will do it.” When I earned my first three merit badges, I was handed a needle, thread, and instructions to sew them on myself.
Like so many families, my mother kept a Danish butter cookie tin that contained everything except cookies. Inside were needles, thread, buttons, pins, and years of accumulated sewing supplies. She gave me a needle, some thread, and a T-pin, and I went to work. My first attempts looked terrible, but Mr. Kitchel expected us to do it correctly. He accepted no excuses and suffered no fools. Over time, I became quite good at sewing. He even taught us traditional Seminole patchwork sewing, a skill I never imagined would stay with me for life.
Back then, I thought I was simply learning how to put patches on a Scout uniform.
Today I realized he was teaching something much larger.
The woman who quietly fixed buttons, repaired torn clothes, and mended the little things around our home—my wife, Sherri—is gone now. Today, there was no one to hand my favorite shirt to. So I threaded the needle myself, replaced the missing button, and repaired the pillow.
That shirt is my favorite because of a photograph. It shows Sherri sitting on my lap during one of our vacations, smiling with the biggest, brightest smile. It was probably one of our first selfies. Every time I see that picture, it reminds me of her joy, and it makes me smile too.
As I finished sewing today, I realized that William Lee Kitchel had taught me something without either of us knowing it. He wasn’t just teaching a Boy Scout to sew. He was teaching self-reliance, patience, pride in doing a job well, and the confidence to care for the things—and the people—that matter.
Some lessons don’t reveal their true value until decades later.
Thank you, Mr. Kitchel, for giving me a skill that has lasted a lifetime, and for teaching me something far greater than sewing.
Serendipity
There are moments in life that feel accidental at first glance, but later settle into your heart as something much deeper. Moments where friendship, love, timing, grief, and grace all quietly intersect in a way that cannot simply be explained away as coincidence.
This past week, I took my first trip in four years without the overwhelming dread or guilt of leaving my wife behind. That alone felt strange to me. For years, every decision, every outing, every mile traveled carried the weight of caregiving and concern. Even moments that should have been joyful often carried an undercurrent of worry.
But this trip was different.
I traveled to Charleston to attend the graduation of the son of one of my classmates from our alma mater. It was a wonderful celebration filled with memories, laughter, and the strange realization that time continues to move forward whether we are ready for it or not. I stayed with another longtime classmate who still works at the school, and for a few days, I was surrounded by nearly forty years of friendship and shared history.
The morning after the celebration, I woke early and sat having coffee with my friend’s wife, someone I have also known for nearly four decades. We spoke quietly in that way people do in the early morning, before the world fully wakes up.
She shared how they had recently moved her parents from Maine to live near them in an independent living facility. Her father suffers from Alzheimer’s, and her mother from dementia. We talked about the difficult reality families face when navigating those diseases.
One of the strange truths about Alzheimer’s is that, as horrible as it is, there is often a somewhat defined progression. Dementia, however, can be incredibly broad and unpredictable. Symptoms vary wildly. Behaviors change suddenly. Good days and difficult days arrive without warning. For families who have never walked through it before, it can be exhausting, confusing, heartbreaking, and frustrating all at once.
Even after only a couple of months, I could already see the emotional toll it was taking on her.
She explained how her mother had insisted on hip surgery because she believed it would improve her quality of life, but instead, it had left her nearly immobile.
And immediately, my mind went to Sherri’s scooter.
For months, it had been sitting quietly in Sherri’s office gathering dust. A bright pink mobility scooter that no one else could ever possibly mistake for their own.
Of course it was pink.
Sherri insisted on pink.
Not just any pink scooter either. I had to drive more than one hundred miles to find one because she refused to settle for anything less than the exact shade she wanted to match her love of Lilly Pulitzer colors and style. Then she decorated it herself. She made a Lilly Pulitzer-style cover for the back seat, and because she was so tiny, we even added a piece of pink foam so her feet could comfortably reach the pedal.
That scooter was unmistakably hers.
As my friend’s wife spoke, I realized that the scooter sitting unused in Orlando could suddenly become something meaningful again.
I told her, “I have something that can help.”
It is amazing how easy it is nowadays to move something across the country. There truly is an app for everything. Within a short period of time, I found a kind gentleman willing to transport the scooter from Orlando to Charleston the very next day.
And just like that, Sherri’s little pink scooter was headed north to help another family carrying a burden of love and caregiving.
I sat there afterward thinking about how strange and beautiful life can sometimes be.
What are the odds that I would finally take my first trip away?
What are the odds that this conversation would happen over early morning coffee?
What are the odds that a scooter sitting unused for months would suddenly become exactly what another family needed?
Some people call that coincidence.
I do not.
I believe there are moments of divine intervention woven quietly into our lives. Moments where love continues moving long after someone is gone. Moments where friendship creates opportunities for compassion. Moments where grief transforms into purpose.
Serendipity is a funny thing. It often arrives carrying both sorrow and joy at the same time.
What touched me most was realizing that even now, Sherri is still helping people.
Even now, her kindness, personality, style, stubbornness, humor, and love are still moving through the world in tangible ways. A pink scooter decorated by her own hands is now going to reduce the burden on another daughter caring for her parents.
And honestly, I think that would make Sherri smile.
Life can be unbelievably difficult. Illness, loss, aging, caregiving, and grief all remind us how fragile we really are. But friendship, love, and compassion remind us that none of us were ever meant to carry those burdens alone.
Sometimes the greatest acts of grace are not the massive miracles.
Sometimes they are simply a cup of coffee, an old friendship, a heartfelt conversation, and a pink scooter finding its next purpose exactly when it is needed most.
When I think of Sherri,
The first thing I think about is her aura. Sherri had a golden aura, like a sunrise—quiet, calm, and bright, full of promise.
The first time I saw her in person was on our first date. It was at Seasons 52 on the perimeter in North Atlanta. I was sitting at the bar eagerly awaiting to finally meet her.
When I turned and saw her, I was struck by her refined, elegant presence and her physical beauty. I felt her aura immediately. I knew in that instant through her smile that there was something extraordinary about her. Yes, she was physically beautiful, but it was always so much more than that.
Long before I saw her face, I had already come to know her character through months of writing to each other through emails as we seemed so busy with life to meet. She had strength, depth, and a goodness that shined from within. I had read it in every email she wrote and this aura I felt proved it.
Her life shaped the strength that all of us came to admire. Born in Vietnam during the war in a U.S Army Hospital. She was raised in a family that through all the setbacks they never gave up on each other. Losing both of her parents in tragic accidents at a young age, she still rose above every hardship. She worked full time, cared for her siblings, and earned both her undergraduate and graduate degrees paying for her schooling herself. She never bragged about any of it as that wasn’t Sherri. She was a woman of action not words. Extraordinary in every way, yet humble enough to rarely speak of herself.
Sherri was the most patient person I have ever known, and when I say patient, I mean years, hell she was married to me. She saw the good in people even when others could not. She listened beyond words. That was one of her greatest gifts. No matter the country, culture, or language, people felt her kindness, her serenity, and her goodness. Animals felt it too. Every creature we had, naturally found their way to her. She made every living thing feel safe but she was also tough.
She was very tough, but always fair. That fairness is why she rose in positions at State Farm, where she led hundreds by her daily example of servant leadership. I still smile thinking about a day in Las Vegas working for State Farm. She was handling an accident claim for Andre the Giant. I think we all have heard of him but if you haven’t, he was a world-famous professional wrestler that stood 7 foot 10 and weighed 500 pounds. His Rolls-Royce had been hit, and he was furious that the rental car did not match the kind of vehicle he was used to driving. He demanded to come into the office and deal with her face-to-face. That poor fellow had no idea who he was dealing with. Our Sherri, never intimidated by anyone, calmly handled the situation and sent him on his way satisfied, I assume with a regular car that he was due. That was her—steady, fearless, fair, and always in command without ever raising her voice. She was strong without ever making a person feel small.
She had vision in everything she did—whether it was leadership, fashion, family, or the way she could see the ripple effects of decisions four and five levels deep. I used to say if I had known Sherri when I first came into the military, I would have been a four-star general, because she had that rare ability to bring people together and lead them without ever needing the title. She was the matriarch of our family.
I relied on her so much. To smooth things, I roughed up. To make it all better for us all. Everyone asked her without knowing to do that for them. She was our Sage. She just made us better.
In the hardest chapter of her life and her life was hard; she showed us all what true strength and love looked like.
I do not think you can fully understand her character until you understand what she endured in her final years. The pain she carried, the stoicism she showed, the way she kept smiling even in the most horrific moments and through it all she was still thinking and doing for others.
When her body was gone, she endured for her family to be here for as long as she could; she never never gave up. In the middle of her own suffering, she gave counsel from the bed side and listened to all of her friends and family while telling them everything would be ok. For the last year she could not walk, Her mouth was disfigured from the malignancies. She suffered six broken bones from the pressure, eleven hospital stays and surgeries, every movement was painful but she was always smiling. The last picture I have of her was with a Reese’s peanut butter cup and her smile the day before she died.
Sherri was my Briar Rose, my partner, my example of grace, toughness, fairness, beauty, and vision. She had a way of making people feel seen, heard, and loved.
Her life was not only beautiful in how she lived it, but in how she lifted every one of us around her.
And though her physical presence is gone, her aura—the same golden aura I felt the first time I saw her—still rises with us
and will always rise with us every new day.
May she rest in peace.
A Journey to Acceptance: My Eye-Opening Experience with Medical Marijuana
I was born and raised in Miami, Florida — in the middle of chaos and change. The city I grew up in during the 70s and 80s was a powder keg of race riots, refugees, and drugs. Miami was overrun — and that’s putting it kindly. Cocaine, marijuana, and the war on drugs were everywhere.
I never touched any of it. Not once.
It was a badge of honor, a personal vow. My father was a judge, and I took pride in the discipline that kept me away from substances that, to me, represented weakness and failure. I saw alcohol as adult, social, and controlled. Marijuana? That was for the lost.
For most of my life, I never questioned that belief.
But life has a way of testing the walls we build around our certainty.
When my wife’s illness began to take over our nights, sleep became hard. She was in constant pain, and nothing — not the pills, not the prescriptions, not the endless “next options” — brought her relief without a cost. Then one night, she tried a simple gummy. She slept through the night.
That experience made me aware — painfully so — of my own hypocrisy. While she found healing through a plant I had long dismissed, I was numbing myself each night with alcohol — not to enjoy, but to stop feeling, to force sleep. I told myself it was normal, acceptable, even earned. But it wasn’t helping.
It wasn’t until I was helping a client — a veteran — through her VA disability claim that the truth caught up with me. She confided in me about her fear of admitting she used marijuana to manage anxiety and sleep. I told her what I believed: that she shouldn’t be ashamed, that seeking help isn’t weakness, and that medical care, when legal and responsible, is private and protected.
Then it hit me like a mirror.
How could I coach her toward honesty and healing while denying myself the same?
That same day, I called my wife’s physician, scheduled an appointment, and applied for my medical marijuana card. Since then, I take a gummy every night. I sleep. I think more clearly. I drink less. I feel present.
My view has changed completely — not because of politics or persuasion, but because of experience. What I once called weakness, I now see as wisdom. The real weakness was refusing to see past my own judgment.
In Florida, medical marijuana has been lawful since 2016. But for me, it only became personal when life humbled me enough to listen.
The more I experience life, the more I understand that nothing truly changes until we become aware. Awareness brings empathy, and empathy brings wisdom. And wisdom — I’ve learned — is not the privilege of youth, but the product of life lived honestly.
What will my life be like in 3 years?
I dare not answer the question.
That was my first response when someone asked where I see myself in three years. Without hesitation, fear stepped in — not fear of failure, but fear of imagining life beyond now. Beyond her.
Yesterday, my wife finalized her cremation plans. I’ve done this before — for my sister, for my father. Each time, it became a necessary transaction. Paperwork, signatures, polite condolences exchanged over a table that felt too small for the weight in the room. The funeral director came to the house. We completed the forms. She paid for her services. Efficient. Respectful. Businesslike.
It’s best to do this before it happens, they say — so there’s one less thing to cause anxiety and pain.
But is that really true? Or is it that I just didn’t want to do this again?
Because the truth is, no matter how many times I’ve faced loss, I still don’t know how to prepare for it. I can manage logistics, but not emotions. I can sign the papers, but not the permission slip to move forward.
When I think about the future — traveling, my children, my new grandbaby — I feel guilty. There’s a horrible tension between the yearning to be free and the desperate wish for this stage of life to never end. How do you reconcile wanting relief and wanting permanence at the same time?
Maybe that’s what being human really is — living inside the contradiction.
We spend our lives trying to control time, plan for tomorrow, build systems, write goals. But life keeps reminding us it doesn’t belong to us. It moves with or without our consent.
Three years from now, I don’t know where I’ll be. Maybe I’ll be standing somewhere new, lighter but not the same. Maybe I’ll still wake up some mornings expecting to hear her voice. Maybe I’ll finally find a kind of peace in the not-knowing.
Because the truth is, none of us can control life. We can only honor it
Where will I be in 3 years…..
The Front Lines of Cancer
Yesterday, we reached acceptance. Not surrender — not quitting — but an understanding: this cancer is incurable. It continues to spread slowly, like a snake coiling itself around its prey.
And yet, in the middle of it all, there is beauty.
Our youngest is in high school now. She wakes up on her own, gets ready, eats breakfast. She is excited about life. She’s playing lacrosse, wants to go to practice, wants to do well in school. It’s such a good time.
The other night, my wife told her that she wanted her to have her wedding ring. Tears came, but then laughter too, as our daughter said it was too small for her finger. Somehow, the moment turned to a joke about making it into a “grill” for our dog with the terrible underbite. This is life and love — sorrow and laughter tangled together.
This weekend, our oldest came home. She’s about to start graduate school after years of working. She asked her mother, “Are you going to die?” My wife, steady as ever, said: “I will — but I don’t intend to do it soon. You need to go to graduate school and live your life. This is your dream. Keep going.” Then she gave her the diamond pendant we had made from her mother’s stone. They cried for hours.
One of our sons is getting married in October and then heading into the military. We already have our plane tickets and hotel. No setbacks. We will be there. We’ve become experts in travel planning and stress mitigation, as Sherri can only manage about two hours of chair time a day. No setbacks — we so want to be there.
And then there’s our granddaughter. Just 18 months old, already going down slides. We watched the video of her laughing all the way, and it filled us with joy.
It is a wonderful time.
That might sound strange to say, but it’s true. In these trying days, every moment of laughter, every milestone, every piece of ordinary life feels even more precious. The weight of suffering sharpens the beauty of joy. And when you know that time is short, you hold tighter to the moments that matter most.
Understanding Anticipatory Grief as a Caregiver
I’ve spent a lifetime wearing uniforms — first in the military, then in business — but no uniform could have prepared me for the one I wear now: caregiver.
My wife is still here. She still smiles. Still laughs. Still says “I love you” with the same strength that got her through childbirth without a scream and once drove a screwdriver bit through her hand with nothing more than a calm “ouch.” But even with all that strength, I know what’s coming. And somewhere along the way, I realized I was already grieving.
It wasn’t denial that kept me from seeing it; I saw every scan, every new medication, every tear. It wasn’t anger that overwhelmed me, though I’ve certainly felt flashes of frustration — at broken systems, unanswered prayers, and my own helplessness. It was something quieter. Slower. A gradual ache of knowing that the woman I love is slipping away in pieces.
That’s what anticipatory grief is — mourning someone while they’re still alive. It’s showing up with love and purpose even as the shadows grow longer. It’s grieving not just the final goodbye, but the thousands of little ones along the way: the goodbye to traveling together, to her independence, to her baking and cooking in the kitchen.
I’ve come to understand that the five stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance — aren’t a straight road. They’re more like a roundabout we circle again and again. And while Kübler-Ross introduced them to describe how patients face terminal illness, caregivers like me feel them too — just in advance.
Right now, I live somewhere between acceptance and heartbreak. I’ve accepted what’s coming. But each day, I still fight to create joy, dignity, and presence. We watch movies in the car so she doesn’t have to get out. We eat takeout in the bed because she cant sit at the table. I hold her hand not just in sickness, but in the holy weight of being here — now.
If you’re walking this road too, know that grief doesn’t wait for death. And love doesn’t wait for perfection. You are doing holy work, even when your hands feel empty.
Let yourself grieve. But also — let yourself love, fiercely, while there’s still time.
