Veterans Administration – Take a Number Sucker

I think it was a year or so ago when President Obama said he was going to fix the backlog problem at the Veterans Administration.  I am pretty sure he also promised to bring the killers of our Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, to justice.  I think his strategy is to say the right thing at the right time and then hope the people forget about it.  The Media is in his pocket, so they won’t remind anyone.

But unfortunately (for him) the present problems at VA have reminded the public that he hasn’t kept his promise.  So now, on cue, it is announced that Obama is “madder than Hell” over the VA allegations.  Well, that makes me feel a lot better.  The Washington Post had a cartoon a week ago Saturday in which a veteran was entering a VA office.  There was one of those take-a-number machines and sitting right next to the machine was a soldier in a Civil Was uniform!  Loved it.

When I was a young officer, Mr. Kenty, a warrant officer whom I worked with, and had been in the military for over 30 years, told me that there was only one person really interested in my military career and that was me. He started in the Army as a Blacksmith Apprentice.  He loved the day the Army got rid of their horses and he didn’t have to feed them at 0600 hours everyday.  His message about my career was clear and I did my best to keep track of what was happening to me.  I also strongly believe that the same holds true for medical care.  Especially in the military.

Upon retiring, Carole and I continued to receive our medical care through the military, always mindful that we were the only ones interested in our health and wellbeing.  A number of military families, upon retirement, got as far away from military medical care as possible.  That was their way of addressing the issue.  We learned how to get great care within the military.  The thought of using the Veterans Administration never crossed my mind.  If VA was the answer, I have no idea what the question was.

I’ve had only a few experiences with the VA.  None has been good. At the time of my retirement from the Army, I was told to apply to the VA for a disability rating.  I was also told to make a copy of my medical files before VA got them, because they would surely lose them.  They did.  Three times!  But each time they lost them, they found them.  So technically, they didn’t lose them, they were just misplaced.

This all happened 24 years ago, so I’m a little fuzzy on some of the facts.  Other parts of the experience, I remember like it was yesterday.  In applying for the VA disability, you have to list all the things that have fallen apart during your military career.  Then the VA gives you an appointment where they can evaluate your problems.  They set it up so I had five appointments in the same day.  I could receive all of my evaluations that day and be done. Sounded too good to be true.

The first evaluation was with an orthopedic doctor.  I was given a couple of forms to fill out while waiting for the doctor.  The forms were so ambiguous and confusing that I left a lot blank.  When the doctor arrived and saw that I hadn’t completely filled out the forms, he became furious with me. He was screaming at me with some Eastern European accent.  I was so bewildered that I just took it.  It was his play pen and I was thoroughly confused.  Here I had just retired  with 28 years of military service and I was being treated like a truant school child.  I thought about getting him in a hammer lock and giving him options.  But, I had come over to this strange hospital with a mission and this jerk wasn’t going to get me off track.  He eventually examined me and sent me on to my next appointment.

I made it to my next appointment which was with an eye doctor. He was young and friendly.  We chatted for a few minutes and then he asked to see my glasses (a reasonable request).  My glasses had been made in Germany which made the bifocal portion different. In the US, you can feel the bifocal portion of the lens extending from the front of the lenses.  My glasses had the built-up portion of the bifocal on the back of the lens.  The doctor noticed this and got all excited.  He asked about where I got the glasses and I explained to him that they came from Germany.  He asked if he could borrow them for a few minutes and I said, “Sure.”  He didn’t come back for an hour.  I just sat there.  I eventually went out to the receptionist and told him I was missing my next appointment.  He told me not to worry.  It would be OK.  The doctor came back as if he had been gone for only ten minutes and sent me on my way.

The next doctor concluded I had high blood pressure.  Duh!  I was delighted I hadn’t blown a leak.  The next doctor was a psychologist who asked me how my day was going.  I smiled at him and said, “Fine.”  Way back in 1962, I had a buddy going to ROTC Summer Camp at Fort Sill (I was also attending).  His car broke down three times on his trip from Missouri to Oklahoma.  He got there late and they rushed him through the physical.  Finally he saw a psychologist who asked him how his day was going.  He went into a rant about the trip down to Fort Sill.  They kept him under observation for three days.  So whenever a psychologist asks me how my day is going, I smile and say, “Fine.”  I also tell them I love my parents.

A year later, after “misplacing” my file a few times, I was notified that I was being awarded a 20% disability.  That came to a little over $100 a month.  Sound great?  Well, not so great.  The $100 they award is subtracted from my retirement pay.  The only benny is that I don’t have to pay taxes on the VA money.  Whoopee!

My only other VA experience was a screw up on my part.  The year I was assigned to Northwestern University to get a Masters Degree in Criminal Law, we lived in Evanston, Illinois.  Every couple of weeks we would go up to the Great Lakes Naval Station Commissary.  We would pass the hospital on the way to the commissary.  I had messed up my knee in my previous assignment in Germany and called up to the Great Lakes Naval Hospital and got an appointment.

On the day of my appointment, I drove up to the hospital and went inside.  I found the room number of the orthopedic section and headed there.  I found the room and went in.  There was a receptionist sitting at a desk.  I told her who I was and that I had an appointment.  She said, “Well the doctor isn’t coming in today, but if you would like to sit down and read some magazines, go right ahead.  Whoa!  I headed back down to the reception section and got in line behind a young kid.  He was big as a house, but the
little woman behind the counter was very upset with him.  He had lost his medical card (and not for the first time).  When it was my turn, I told her I thought I was in the wrong place.  She starred at me and said, “Are you sure?”

It turned out that rather than going to the Naval Hospital, I had gone to a VA mental hospital.  I smiled at her, told her I was fine and that I loved my parents and got the hell out of there.

Written by PJ Rice at www.ricequips.com

Dad, The Base Ball Player

I was going through some old files the other day and I came across my birth certificate.  It’s a real mess.  I have seen enough of my Dad’s handwriting to be reasonably certain that he filled out the top part with all the particulars.  They had decided to call me Jack, so he wrote in “Jack Paul Rice.”  Then, the “Jack” was scratched out and “Jackson” was inserted high on the line between “Paul” and “Rice.” I had noticed all that years earlier.  I used to kid that if I had been the oldest, I would have been worried about my   legitimacy (back when people worried about things like that).

The thing I did notice for  the first time was the listing of my father’s occupation.  It simply said’ “Base Ball Player.”  Isn’t that something? I suspect not too many people have listed baseball player as their father’s occupation on their birth certificate.  But it also made me feel guilty because I didn’t know much about his baseball career. By the time I started to kindergarden, his career was over and it was just something that never got discussed in great detail.  I knew he had gone  to Spring Training with the Chicago Cubs when he was only 19.  He played for the Little Rock Travelers for a few years, managed and played for the Lenoir Reds and ended his career with the Albany Senators.

Dad was a catcher.  We were all catchers (my brother, Bill, and yours truly).  Dad taught us the footwork to stop wild pitches, to catch foul balls and to throw out runners bunting for a base hit. Footwork is absolutely critical.  So now, as an old-timer, I drive my wife, Carole, crazy talking about mistakes made by catchers on TV. She likes baseball, but sometimes I drive her out of the room by running a play over and over with the remote control.  One announcer said that Yadier Molina (the superstar catcher for the Cards) was such a good defensive catcher because he had confidence.  Confidence?  It’s footwork (and a rocket for an arm).

Dad died over twenty years ago and I still miss him.  After retiring from professional baseball, he became the National Sports Director for the Junior Chamber of Commerce.  He formed what was called the Jaycee League and many kids throughout the nation, ages 10 to 15, played Jaycee baseball through those formative years.

After Dad died, I obtained what would barely pass for his scrapbook. I had looked at it a few times, but never studied it.  So I decided to dig in.  What a mess.  What is so difficult about chronological order? All those great newspaper articles regarding his high school success, Muny League success and professional career glued on to pages where there happened to be room.  Some going up and down, some going sideways.  And, no dates whatsoever.  But I hung in there.

Dad played high school football for East St. Louis Senior High School. He was an All-State left end at 5 foot 8 inches and 167 pounds.  Did I mention that my Dad was tough?  They were undefeated, but lost the Conference championship because they tied two games and Granite City only tied once.  But, as my Birth Certificate stated, he was a base ball player.  While still in high school, he was playing semi-pro ball in what was called the Muny League.  He was 16 and a star.  When he graduated, he went to Alabama and caught for their freshman team.  Dad insisted that they batted him ninth, because he was a Yankee.

When Dad was 19, while playing in what was called the Trolley League (another semi-pro league covering Illinois and Missouri), he was observed by the Chicago Cub manager, Charlie Grimm.  Grimm liked what he saw and invited Dad to Spring training with the Cubs on Catalina Island.  Spring training with the Cubs at 19.  Heady stuff. Most of the players took the same train from Chicago to California. Dad joined them in Kansas City.  One article I read said that “Puffy” Rice was all over the train with his checker board “looking for victims to play him.”  He never lost.  Did I mention that Dad was competitive? 

After Spring Training, Grimm farmed Dad out to the Little Rock Travelers.  He was with them for three years and then moved to Columbia, South Carolina and into the Cincinnati Reds organization. He caught for the Columbia Reds in 1937 and 38.  In 1939, he was catching for the Waterloo Red Hawks in the Illinois-Indiana-Iowa League.  In the 11th inning of one game, the opposing catcher interfered with Dad’s bat.  That should have automatically given Dad first base.  However, the umpire insisted that he didn’t hear anything.  Dad told the umpire that he knew he was blind, but that was the first admission from the umpire that he was also deaf! Dad got the rest of the night off.

In 1940, Dad was the player/manager for the Lenoir Reds in the Tar Heel League (managing at the age of 26).  You know you can go on line and find out all about the players for the Lenoir Reds in 1940.  It turned out he hit .329 that year.  He had also been designated a scout for the Cincinnati Reds.  The next year, he was the player/manager for the El Dorado Oilers in the Cotton State League. He hit .348 for the short time he was with them.

Dad was relieved of his duties as El Dorado manager and became a free agent.  A Cincinnati scout named Frank O’Rourke notified the Albany Senator’s manager, “Specs” Toporcer that Dad was a free agent.  He said, “Don’t know whether you can sign him to a contract, but if you can you will get a better than fair catcher.”  He did sign with the Senators and we drove 1,600 miles in three days to join the team in Elmira, New York.  Keep in mind that there were no interstate highways.  And, you could figure that a tire would fail every 500 miles.  Mom used to say that back then, I would scream every time they took me near a car.  After that experience, at age three, I now understand my actions.  

Dad’s lasted two years with the Albany Senators before his career ended.  Back then, catchers didn’t wear hard helmets behind the plate (in fact, nobody wore what is now called a batting helmet). Today, catchers look like hockey goalies behind the plate.  I always believed that Dad got hit by what we called a “second swing.”  The batter swings and then the bat comes around a second time and whacks the catcher in the back of the head.  The catcher is protected back there by a soft baseball cap.  But it turned out to be even worse.  Albany was playing Wilkes-Barre and Wilkes-Barre had a man on first base.  The runner on first attempted to steal second base and Dad moved forward to collect a low pitch.  At that moment, the batter swung the bat and hit Dad behind the right ear. They carried him off the field and he was in the hospital for over a week.

Dad did recover enough that two weeks later, he pinch hit against
Elmira.  The pitcher for Elmira was none other that Sal, the Barber, Maglie, who gained his nick-name with the Giants, by giving out close shaves to the batters.  He nicked Dad in the midriff.  Here’s another little side note for baseball 
aficionados.  Dad’s roommate on the road with the Senators was Ralph Kiner.

Dad’s vision was never any good after the bat hit him, at least not for a professional baseball player.  So he retired when I was four. However, I did get to see him play once when I was eleven.  My brother’s Jaycee team (ages 14 and 15) had invited a team from St. Louis to come over and play a practice game.  The team that showed up consisted of 18, 19 and 20 year olds.  So they worked out a deal where Dad and the assistant coach (a Muny League pitcher) would play for my brother’s team.  The only thing I remember about the game was Dad batting.  What a beautiful swing.  It was lightning fast.  I was so excited.  The pitch came and Dad swung and the ball went straight up in the air.  When it finally came down, the shortstop had caught it.  I was crushed.  I was sure he was going to hit the ball a long way.  The good news is that I am no longer eleven and all I can see now is that beautiful swing. He was a great dad and he taught me the footwork, but he couldn’t teach me to swing a bat like him.  Not many people could

Written by PJ Rice at www.ricequips.com