Man pushes for local observance in May
Dave Gordon works with veterans every day. Come May, he’s hoping
the rest of us do, too.
Man pushes for local observance in May
Dave Gordon works with veterans every day. Come May, he’s hoping the rest of us do, too.
Gordon is the veterans’ employment services representative in the Hollister/Gilroy area. After he learned that California officially designated May as “Veterans Appreciation Month,” he sought support from county officials for local recognition and, just perhaps, a modest local observance.
So far, he hasn’t had any luck. Two requests to members of the Board of Supervisors and the county administrator’s office have gone unanswered, Gordon said.
“All I’m asking for is for us to begin an annual event and to start small – maybe the breakfast or a barbecue and a walk-a-thon,” Gordon wrote in an e-mail to county officials.
Other communities in the region have events ranging from appreciation breakfasts to parades, he said.
Meeting with veterans daily, Gordon said he is seeing increasing numbers of young veterans freshly returned from Iraq – two to three a week by his estimation. “These young men and women need and desire our help and our appreciation,” he said.
The idea behind a walk-a-thon would be to raise funds for future celebrations, and perhaps a scholarship for returning veterans, he said. A similar scholarship is available in Santa Clara County.
While the idea is Gordon’s, the execution will have to be handled by someone else.
“I work full-time, and I’m not a good organizer for something like this, so hopefully someone would pick up the ball,” he said, adding that he’d love to pitch in as a helper.
He said businesses might consider getting behind the effort as well. “For example, Lowe’s offers a 10 percent discount to veterans on special occasions,” he said. The consideration need not be large, he said, “just something to let these returning kids know that we appreciate their sacrifice for freedom.”
Gordon’s no stranger to military service. He enlisted in the Air Force in 1971 and served until he retired in 1993. During that time, he taught air crews how to safely bail out of disabled planes, piloted several aircraft and logged nearly 2,000 free-fall parachute jumps.
Personal experience and his role helping vets find employment taught him a few things, he said. The hardest lesson was to learn how often veterans are ignored.
“Go to a recruiter and listen to his talk. Then talk to a vet and see how much of those benefits he’s been able to access,” Gordon said. “We are promised almost anything to get us into the service but when we’re ready to leave we have to fight for every benefit we were promised.”
He recalled a reserve unit in California that was called into active duty for 759 days – one day of the minimum required to receive education benefits. Veterans’ disability claims take more than a year to process, on average.
Now, Gordon hopes to hear from people who want to show returning veterans that they are remembered and their contributions are appreciated. He can be reached at 636-5192.
Gordon summed up simply: “It’s the right thing to do.”
