His story could have ended in a jail cell or in a grave.

But Ramsey County, Minnesota, sometimes offers veterans facing jail time an alternative: Get treatment, get therapy, get weekly drug tests, get working on the issues that landed you in trouble in the first place.

"I am the luckiest guy. The most fortunate guy," said Jeff, a retired Army major; a husband and father; and a graduate of Ramsey County's veterans treatment court.

He came into the program bruised by the less-lethal rounds the deputies used to subdue him, wracked by pain from the wear and tear of 24 years of military service, and haunted by post-traumatic stress, nightmares and undiagnosed mental illness.

"I would not have made it," said Jeff, who now volunteers as a mentor to other veterans in the program. He asked that his full name not be used. "They saved my life."

There are veterans in pain in every county in Minnesota. Not every county has the resources to set up a veterans courts of its own.

The Minnesota Legislature could change that.

The Veterans Restorative Justice Act would expand the veterans court program to the whole state, offering a second chance to veterans who qualify and who are willing to put in the work.

The bill passed the Minnesota Senate unanimously last year.

This year, it passed the House.

They just can't seem to pass it into law.

The idea has the support of Republicans and Democrats, prosecutors and public defenders, veterans' groups and victims' rights advocates.

But a ferocious debate over who should qualify for that second chance sank the bill in 2020 and could deadlock it again this year.

After early bipartisan support for the legislation last year, a group of lawmakers balked, concerned that a diversion program could act as a get-out-of-jail-free card for violent offenders and domestic abusers.

This year, the Republican-led Senate passed one version of the Veterans Restorative Justice Act. The DFL-led House passed another. The differences between the bills would have to be hammered out by the conference committee rushing to pass a raft of veterans and military affairs bills through the Legislature before the session ends in a few weeks.

Sen. Jason Rarick, R- Pine City, who sponsored the Senate version, pushed for changes that would exclude more violent offenders and give victims and prosecutors more discretion over who gets a second chance.

"Veterans who come back and have experienced things through their service that most of us, we can't even fathom … we need to offer them services to help," Rarick said. "I think this is one step in being able to help."

There are 16 county veterans courts in a state with 87 counties. Ramsey County's has been operating for nearly a decade.

"It's not a get-out-of-jail-free card," said Donn Lindstrom, a Navy veteran who coordinates the mentor program at the Ramsey County veterans court.

Not every veteran makes the most of this second chance. Some wash out and end up serving significant prison time. But around 90% make it through the program and fewer than 1% reoffend.

"Veteran treatment courts save lives," he said. "Twenty-two veterans a day die by suicide [nationally]. So the more that we can help them, the better off the community as a whole is going to be."

Rep. Sandra Feist, DFL-New Brighton, sponsored the Veterans Restorative Justice bill in the House this year.

"This isn't just something nice that we're doing for veterans," she said. "When people engage in the rehabilitative path, they are having multiple meetings per week, they are being forced to confront their past, they are being forced to seek the treatment they need. It is a much harder path" than just sitting in a jail cell.

Instead of sitting in a jail cell, Jeff spent time in an inpatient treatment program, followed by weekly court appearances, drug tests, counseling sessions and peer support meetings. But he came out the other side feeling better than he had in years.

Watching the bill go nowhere last year was hard on him.

Now he worries that passing the Senate version might actually be worse than doing nothing.

The violent offenders the Senate bill would disqualify, he said, would include someone who had threatened sheriff's deputies with a weapon. Someone like him.

"I'm a firm believer in 'no veteran left behind,' " he wrote in a recent letter to members of the American Legion. "Make no mistake; if the Senate VRJA version passes ... veterans — just like me — will be left behind."

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"Do you want to get out of the military?" she recalled the JAG military lawyer asking her when she tried to file a complaint.

"I just got here," said Amorette, now 44 who was 21 at the time and just beginning her career.

She blocked it out — and the fear and repressed feelings resulted in a downward spiral of depression.

Life threw its own set of curveballs to Joshua Hight, who in 1997 served in the medevac unit at Fort Riley, Kansas, helping to evacuate the sick or wounded to hospitals, which left him with nightmares.

Both suffer from post traumatic stress syndrome and struggled to acclimate to civilian life after discharge.

They were homeless for a period, which left a lasting impression.

But in the middle of their own bumpy journeys, the two met in 2010 and found strength in one another.

"Our attitudes were, we are going to make this work no matter what," Joshua Hight said.

On Saturday they'll get a tangible lift in honor of their service in the form of necessary home improvements.

House of Heroes Connecticut, a nonprofit organization that provides one-day, no-cost household repairs and upgrades for veterans around the state will help aid the couple.

"This is what House of Heroes is about, helping our military veterans who have put their lives on the line for our freedoms," said Dennis Buden, senior consultant for House of Heroes.

Amorette joined the Navy in 1997, following in the footsteps of her mother and father who both served.

That first year she said she feared that if she spoke about the assault, she would be booted out of the Navy.

In 2001, after having her son, Matthew Hale, she decided to return home to Connecticut to raise him and stay with her parents.

Leaving the only life she knew of structure in the Navy proved difficult for the single mother. During her first job at a grocery store, she said she was told that her military service did not matter.

Talking about those incidents still causes her pain, but she moved forward, earning her degree in foodservice in 2008 from Manchester Community College.

In December 2009 she began working as a food service worker, preparing meal trays for patients at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in West Haven. Little did she know her life would change that next month when she would meet Joshua.

Like Amorette, Joshua also came from a military family and his service, from 1992-2003 in the U.S. Army took him on 50 lifesaving missions at Fort Riley, Fort Drum, New York, and a year in South Korea.

Speaking about his time in the service, Joshua's face becomes animated and speaks with pride in his voice.

"I was blessed with the fact that I was in the business of saving lives, not taking them," the 48-year-old recently said.

Serving as a crew chief, he saw the aftermath of accidents, the images raw and unfiltered in his mind to this day. He is prone to night terrors as a result, but Millie, one of his service dogs, is there to stir him when that happens.

He said he was overwhelmed by the experiences, and after becoming honorably discharged in 2003, he fell into substance abuse from 2007 to 2009.

Joshua decided to return home and get help from the VA in 2010, with nothing but a duffel bag full of his belongings and a hope for better days.

That is when Amorette caught his eye.

The two formed a fast friendship.

"We just put everything out on the table, so there were no secrets," said Joshua — nothing but honesty.

The couple took it slow, helping each other through more turbulent times and homelessness.

Joshua gave up his VA voucher for housing so Amorette could get an apartment in Hartford in 2010. The couple married three years later and in 2015, they bought a house in East Hartford.

And now, Amorette said, she can speak freely of her past.

"I come from a family of strong and courageous women and I have to carry the torch," she said.

HOUSE OF HEROES

WHAT: Amorette Hight, a U.S. Navy veteran, and her husband Joshua Hight, who served in the U.S. Army, will be honored for their service Saturday.

DETAILS: House of Heroes Connecticut, a nonprofit organization that provides one-day, no-cost home improvements for veterans around the state, is collaborating with the Glastonbury Rotary Club to conduct home repairs at the couple's East Hartford home today. Work includes sheetrock repair, a kitchen window replacement, floor and bathroom repairs and landscaping. The couple will be the 144th and 145th veterans — and fourth and fifth in East Hartford — to be served by the nonprofit organization.

___

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The Commissioned Officers Association of the U.S. Public Health Service alleges that when the design was completed years ago for the National Native American Veterans Memorial, the USPHS and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps should have been included.

The memorial, which opened in November, includes plaques with the seals of the Navy, Army, Air Force, Coast Guard and Marine Corps. The lawsuit, filed in March in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C., seeks to have the seals of the commissioned officers' groups added.

Not being on the memorial makes public health service members who are Native American feel "marginalized, unimportant, disposable and forgotten," said retired Navy Capt. Jacqueline Rychnovsky, who is also executive director of the Commissioned Officers Association of the U.S. Public Health Service.

A spokeswoman for the museum said it had no comment.

About 280 Native Americans and Alaskan Natives serve in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. They make up about 6% of the corps and represent the highest percentage of Native Americans and Alaskan Natives of the other uniformed services, according to U.S. service statistics.

Public health service and NOAA corps members have a history of service dating to World War I. They serve as doctors, nurses, scientists and engineers in assignments overseas and on tribal reservations. Many have also cared for those sick with the coronavirus and administered the vaccine.

Rear Adm. Brandon Taylor, who has served in the USPHS for more than 23 years and is a member of the Seneca-Cayuga Nation in Oklahoma, said many Native American tribes view their "citizens who have served in the armed forces as warriors."

"We may not carry weapons, but we fight," Taylor said. "We are public health warriors. We fight in the silent war against disease, and we fight every day to promote, protect and advance the health and safety of our nation." Not being recognized on the American Indian museum's memorial, Taylor said, was "very disheartening."

The suit says the exclusion of Public Health Service and NOAA commissioned corps veterans reinforces a misconception that the two branches "are not 'the real military,' continuing the stigma" they say their members often face.

Rychnovsky, a member of the Osage Nation of Oklahoma, said Native Americans who have served in the two corps "have earned the right to be acknowledged on the memorial alongside their sister services." Not including them, she said, is "an egregious oversight and unequivocally discriminatory."

She also said there is enough space at the memorial to add two more plaques.

Still, officials said, any changes to the memorial might not be easy.

The American Indian museum memorial was created through an act of legislation passed in 1994. It was meant to honor Native Americans, Native Hawaiians and Native Alaskans who served in the armed forces.

The memorial features a 12-foot, stainless steel circle balanced on a carved, stone drum. The circle is meant to represent "the hole in the sky where the creator lives," according to Harvey Pratt, a Cheyenne and Arapaho member who designed the memorial. It includes plaques to honor the five armed forces.

When the NMAI memorial legislation passed, the Public Health Service and NOAA corps weren't specifically included in the legislation's wording, officials said.

Kevin Gover, who was then director of the museum, wrote in a 2019 letter that the legislation to create the memorial mentions the five armed forces but "does not mention the Commissioned Corps."

Officials with the Commissioned Corps said they filed the suit after letter-writing campaigns to congressional leaders, officials at the Smithsonian Institution and the museum.

In 1917, the Public Health Service was made part of the nation's military forces during World War I, with members detailed to the Coast Guard, Navy and Army, according to the Military Coalition, which represents several military service groups. More than 600 of its officers served with the Coast Guard and some of them were on cutters that were "lost to enemy action" in World War II, according to the coalition.

Members of the NOAA Corps also served in World War II in a variety of roles, including as artillery and reconnaissance surveyors, as well as engineers.

Rear Adm. Kevin Meeks, a member of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma who served for 32 years in the Public Health Service, said not being included in the memorial was disheartening.

He wrote in a letter to museum officials: "We may not be an armed service, but we are on the front lines of protecting our country against disease and injury every day." 
 

Born a year before the Spanish flu swept the country, his final year included a run-in with the current pandemic, COVID-19. He caught it but didn’t get sick, according to family members.

In between he experienced one of the most fateful days in modern U.S. history, the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor that shoved the United States into World War II. A Navy torpedoman at a submarine base, Schenkelberg volunteered to drive a train loaded with the underwater missiles away from strafing Japanese airplanes. Then he ran to an armory, grabbed a rifle and started shooting back.

After the war, he stayed in the Navy for another two decades, got married and raised seven children, and eventually settled in San Diego, where he had a second career as a high school custodian.

His motto through the years: One day at a time.

“If you asked him about any of it, he would tell you he was just doing what needed to be done,” his son Patrick said. “He didn’t think it was anything special. He had a job to do and he did it.”

Born Oct. 17, 1917, in Carroll, Iowa, Schenkelberg knew hardship early on. His mother died when he was 9. The stock market crashed when he was 12, triggering the Great Depression. When he was 17, his father, a livestock salesman and grain-elevator operator, was killed in an accident.

In 1937, he followed an older brother into the Navy and was sent to Pearl Harbor and into torpedo work. On the morning the Japanese planes attacked, his shift was just ending. He was looking forward to spending the day with his girlfriend.

Of the roughly 50,000 American service members on Oahu that day, about 2,400 were killed and another 1,200 injured. More than 30 ships and hundreds of airplanes were destroyed or damaged.

The survivors picked themselves up, helped win the war and then got on with their lives in a way that’s led them to be dubbed the Greatest Generation. There is no official roster of how many are still alive.

“I would say less than 100,” said Stuart Hedley, 99, who for decades has been San Diego’s most active and visible survivor, giving talks, visiting schools and riding in parades.

That estimate includes four men with ties to the now-defunct Pearl Harbor Survivors Association chapter in San Diego. At its peak, with almost 600 members, it was thought to be the largest chapter in the nation. When it shut down two years ago, it was believed to be the last one still operating.

Hedley said it’s his understanding that Schenkelberg had been the oldest survivor in the country. Patrick Schenkelberg said various officials in recent years told him that was the case, too.

If so, it was a badge he wore modestly. At various memorial events, he routinely deflected attention from himself. “We’re still paying our respects to those who didn’t make it,” he said in 2016 during the annual Pearl Harbor Day remembrance at the USS Midway Museum.

He retired from the Navy in 1967 and worked for almost 20 years as a custodian at Patrick Henry High and other local schools. He was active with Our Lady of Grace Parish in El Cajon, collecting donations and distributing food and clothing for more than 30 years.

“He was an outstanding gentleman, very humble, and always ready to lend a hand,” Hedley said. “I’m honored to have called him a friend.”

Survivors include his children, Marlene Luedtke of Cut Bank, Mont., Karen Boyle (and husband Walter) of Round Rock, Texas, Robert Schenkelberg (Lucy) of San Diego, Patrick Schenkelberg (Patricia) of San Diego, and Carrie Harris (Spencer) of San Diego; and more than 40 grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren.

He was predeceased by his wife of 74 years, Alithea, and two sons, Barry and James.

Several of his descendants followed him into the Navy. One great-grandson, Patrick, who is still active-duty, arranged for a flag to be flown in Schenkelberg’s honor in recent days at various places in Pearl Harbor, including over the submarine base where his great-grandfather worked when the attack happened.

A memorial service is scheduled for May 6 at 10:30 a.m. at Our Lady of Grace. The family is asking attendees to wear Hawaiian attire, a nod to the colorful shirts the Pearl Harbor survivors long-ago adopted as their uniform for get-togethers.

Hedley said he will be there, leading a traditional Navy farewell known as the two-bell ceremony.

He’s had plenty of experience. When he joined the local survivors association in 1984, it had 358 members.

“Sadly,” he said, “I’ve put more than 350 of them to rest.”

———

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James L. Jordan, 32, admitted that he fatally stabbed Ronald S. Sanchez Jr., 43, a 16-year Army veteran who spent three tours in Iraq as a combat engineer. Sanchez was attempting to hike the entire 2,192 mile length of the Appalachian Trail, and had set up camp in the George Washington and Jefferson National Forest with three other people he met on the trail early on May 11, 2019. Jordan, known to trail hikers because of his erratic behavior, set up a campsite nearby, but acted "increasingly disturbed and unstable," court records state, so Sanchez and the other three decided to pack up and leave.

As two of the campers tried to leave, Jordan confronted them with a machete, and they ran away, calling police in Wythe County. Jordan chased them, court records state, then returned to the campsite and approached Sanchez and a woman from Canada. The woman told the FBI she saw Jordan stab Sanchez, and she ran. Jordan caught her, stabbed her in the face, arms, legs and torso, but she survived. She hiked six miles into Smyth County and called 911.

Sheriff's deputies reached the campsite three hours later and found Jordan in bloody clothes, and Sanchez lying on the ground nearby. Jordan was arrested and charged with murder, but by July 2019 he had been found incompetent to stand trial. He was found competent in June 2020, and the case proceeded toward trial until he was examined by mental health experts from the University of Virginia.

In a sanity evaluation of Jordan, the doctors found that he suffered from schizoaffective disorder and acute psychotic symptoms, and concluded that he was "unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of his acts," according to court records. Both federal prosecutors and the federal public defender reached an agreement that Jordan should plead not guilty by reason of insanity.

Sanchez's family, and the surviving stabbing victim, sent impact statements to U.S. District Judge James P. Jones about how the episode changed their lives. "Our family's lives have been shattered beyond words," said Sanchez's mother, Claudia Duncan. Brenda Sanchez Loera, his sister, said that "Ronald was also a great father to his two children," both teenagers. "He had so much more he wanted to do before he was senselessly taken from this earth."

The surviving stabbing victim wrote that she was "haunted by Mr. Jordan's actions," and she recalled watching Jordan "transformed before my eyes from a bewildered, confused man into a violent animal. I saw him attack and murder a good, kind man. And I remember his eyes when I tried to run, and when I looked back over my shoulder. They are burned into my mind."

Jordan's lawyers released a statement that said that Jordan "is deeply remorseful for the profound sorrow he has caused. He regrets that his lifelong battle with mental illness ultimately resulted in this trauma and loss for innocent hikers and their families." They noted that Jordan will not be released from custody until a court finds by clear and convincing evidence that he would not create a substantial risk of injury to anyone.

The lawyers also said that the mental health experts noted that Jordan had never been consistently and appropriately treated for mental illness until he was arrested and sent for psychiatric treatment.

At a hearing on Thursday in federal court in Abingdon, Va., Jones accepted Jordan's plea and found him not guilty solely by reason of insanity on charges of murder, attempted murder and three counts of assault. On Friday Jones ordered Jordan committed to federal custody "until he has recovered from his mental disease or defect."
 

Biden will nominate Donald Remy as deputy secretary for the department. Remy is a former captain in the U.S. Army, and he works as the chief operating officer and chief legal officer of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The White House touted his problem solving and crisis management abilities.

“Harnessing his strengths … Remy has been instrumental over the years in improving critical risk, [and] operational, financial and legal strategies,” a statement from the White House reads. “[He] recently has been a key leader during the COVID-19 pandemic, helping the organization and its membership traverse a myriad of challenges.”

Remy’s nomination must be confirmed by the Senate. If confirmed, he would be the first permanent deputy secretary in over a year. The previous deputy secretary, James Byrne, was fired by former VA Secretary Robert Wilkie in February 2020. Carolyn Clancy has held the position in an interim role since Biden took office.

Biden has not yet named his nominees for two other high-level positions at the VA: the undersecretary for health and undersecretary for benefits.

Before working for the NCAA, Remy was a partner at the law firm Lathan & Watkins, and he also served as deputy assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice. During his military career, Remy worked as assistant to the general counsel for the Army. He also served as a law clerk in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Remy graduated from Louisiana State University and Howard University law school.

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He risked his safety again during a shootout in the streets of Akron.

Gary Frank, an U.S. Army Veteran and former security guard, was honored this week for his heroism during a shooting in June 2019 in which he came to the aid of a mother and her three children.

During a ceremony Wednesday at the Veteran’s Service Commission office in Akron, Frank received a celebration coin from the Veteran’s Service Commission of Summit County, a proclamation from Summit County declaring it “Gary Frank Day,” a plaque, and a $1,000 reward from Summit County Crime Stoppers.

Larry Moore, executive director of the Veterans Service Commission, said he thought Frank deserved to be recognized for heroism that began with his military service and continued after that, including during the shooting.

“That’s part of your DNA is: to assist,” said Moore, referring to Frank and other veterans. “That carries over into the community. Just because you hung up your uniform, doesn’t mean you stop serving your country.”

Frank, who served eight years in the Army and retired after owning Typhon Security in Akron, said he appreciated the accolades, though they weren’t necessary.

“I did what I did because it was the right thing to do and it needed to be done,” he said.

Frank was working a security job on June 16, 2019, when gunfire erupted in broad daylight in Akron’s Middlebury neighborhood.

Police said Akil Scott Jackson, 24, of Akron, shot Tiffany Gray, his ex-girlfriend, in the upper back after an argument. Gray crouched over her three daughters, ages 1, 3 and 4, the youngest fathered by Jackson, to protect them.

Frank, who was working security at a nearby fire station, heard Jackson’s shot and started to return fire. The distraction gave Gray time to flee to the nearby Circle K.

Jackson fired again at Gray but his gun jammed. Two men and a woman in passing cars rushed to help Gray. The two men wrestled with Jackson as a woman loaded Gray and her kids into the back of her vehicle. Jackson began firing again at Frank, police said.

The shootout ended when Jackson put the gun to his head and fired, police said.

Police credited Frank and the bystanders with saving Gray and her children.

Frank told the Beacon Journal shortly after the incident that he was motivated by a need to help the unarmed mother.

“I did it because I saw a woman needing assistance and I gave assistance,” he said.

Mayor Dan Horrigan held a news conference and gave certificates to the three bystanders who came to Gray’s aid.

Tim Dimoff, who owns SACS Consulting and Investigative Services and is a friend of Frank’s, thought Frank also should be honored for his actions during the shooting. Dimoff organized this week's event.

“I thought he deserved some equal accolades,” Dimoff said.

Frank, who said he doesn’t seek out recognition, said he was touched by the tribute.

“I appreciate their thoughtfulness in doing it for me,” he said.

swarsmith@thebeaconjoural.com

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ISELIN, N.J. (Tribune News Service) — Thanks to a new law requiring nursing homes to increase staffing levels, 78 nurses, aides and other employees will be hired at the three state-run veterans homes, where residents and families say short-staffing contributed to dire conditions and high death counts throughout the pandemic.

Interim Adjutant General and Col. Lisa J. Hou announced the new hires at a budget hearing this week, describing it as part of a plan “to enhance current programs or initiate new improvements...not just for FY2022 but looking forward to the years to come.”

“When Gov. Murphy asked me to take over the Department, it was made clear that the foremost goal of my team and every member of our staff was to immediately make changes to our operations and act to safeguard the residents of our veterans homes,” Hou told the Assembly Budget Committee Monday.

What Hou didn’t say at the hearing was the additional nurses and aides aren’t likely to arrive at the Menlo Park, Paramus and Vineland veterans homes until a year from now.

The population inside the veterans homes has declined so much in the last year that current staffing levels already meet the requirements of the new law, according to a report on the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs’ budget by the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Affairs.

The central reason behind the declining census is tragic. COVID claimed the lives of 204 veterans home residents as the virus swept through the nursing homes, prompting assistance from the Veterans Administration and the National Guard. Residents said mask-wearing was discouraged early on, so not to cause alarm.

Menlo Park was the most affected, with 103 confirmed and probable deaths, followed by 89 at Paramus and 12 at Vineland. A total of 608 people reside at the facilities today, according to state data.

Menlo Park, which is expected to add 21 jobs, needs these positions filled now, said Glenn Osborne, a retired Marine and resident council president.

“To this day and past weekend, we continue as residents to experience a lack of service due to reduced staffing, especially on holidays and weekends — as much as 40% reduced staffing as compared to the normal work week,” Osborne told NJ Advance Media.

“I was told by other staff that it is not in the budget nor was overtime authorized for CNAs (certified nursing aides) to remain for the second shift of work. This is the same excuse that we heard last year prior to this horrible pandemic,” Osborne said.

The Memorial Veterans Home at Menlo Park in Edison lost 103 residents — one in three of the people who lived there at the start of 2020. Of these, 64 are confirmed COVID fatalities and 39 are deemed “probable deaths” from the virus because conclusive evidence was not available.

The new law on staffing levels — which was enacted last fall after years of lobbying by unions and advocates for nursing home residents — sets specific limits on how many people may be under an aide’s care. One certified nurse aide may supervise no more than eight residents during a day shift, a maximum of 10 residents on an evening shift or 14 residents on the overnight shift.

Hou spokesman Kryn Westhoven confirmed that based on the new staffing law, new hires are not imminent.

“Staffing is a challenge across nursing homes and long-term care facilities throughout New Jersey,” Westhoven wrote in an email. “We are always committed to providing the best possible care for our residents.”

The cost of adding 21 nurses, each earning a salary of $78,417, and 57 aides making $43,018, is $4 million, according to the budget analysis. But the governor’s budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 includes only $1 million, enough to pay for three months.

“As admissions in our Homes increase, additional staffing will be needed; therefore, only one quarter of the total funding has been requested in this budget,” according to a question-and-answer portion of the report with administration officials.

Promoted during a department shake-up last fall after families and lawmakers objected to the conditions at the homes, Hou described the changes she has overseen. Each facility has 10 weeks’ worth of PPE on hand, has signed a contract with a long-term care facility consultant, and “called a New Jersey National Guard infectious disease nurse to active duty to assist with our efforts.”

Budget committee members spoke approvingly of Hou’s work in the six months she has overseen the department. Assemblyman John McKeon, D-Essex, called her “the change agent we hope you are...You are the right leader at the right time.”

Upon questioning, Hou acknowledged there are state and federal investigations into the care and decision-making at the veterans homes and declined to comment on them. When asked whether the results of the Attorney General’s probe would be released publicly, she said she didn’t know.

The veterans home in Vineland is slated to receive an additional 32 employees, according to the budget analysis. But Gregory Miller, Vineland’s resident council president, made no complaints about staffing shortages or living conditions when he was contacted by NJ Advance Media.

“We can always use nurses, aides and support staff as well as the capital improvements as people leave for various reasons and in order to maintain the grounds, upkeep is needed, just as with your own home,” Miller said.

“I have been here for four years, president for three and I would not go anywhere else. The staff very attentive to the residents wants and needs, from the CEO down the line. If the request is reasonable, it will be honored in a very timely manner as possible,” he said.

Menlo Park will get a new $1.9 million HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) system and $89,000 to upgrade the grounds. Vineland and Paramus will also receive $89,000 for grounds improvements.

Paramus, where 88 residents died, will receive 26 new positions, according to the budget report. A resident council representative could not be reached for comment.

slivio@njadvancemedia.com

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Fred Hickein, an Oneonta native and veteran of World War II and the Korean War, presented a pair of antique muskets — one more than 200 years old — to the Greater Oneonta Historical Society on Wednesday, April 21.

One of the firearms, which belonged to Hickein's great-great-grandfather, Solomon Yager, was originally a flintlock musket — a muzzle-loading long gun capable of firing between 80 and 100 yards — that was later converted to a percussion cap, found to be more reliable in wet weather.

Yager, who arrived in the Oneonta area in 1797 from Rensselaerswyck, a Dutch colonial estate on the eastern border of what is now the city of Albany, is also an ancestor of Willard Yager, for whom Hartwick College's Yager Museum of Art & Culture is named.

The second musket, which features a long wooden barrel with an 8-inch metal attachment for affixing a bayonet, was used as a training rifle by Edward Brewer, who enlisted in the infantry of the Grand Army of the Republic alongside his brother, Alexander, in 1860.

The family lived on what is now Woodside Avenue, which was known as Brewer Lane until 1914, according to Hickein.

The Brewer brothers reenlisted in 1864, this time joining the cavalry, Hickein said. After the war, Edward returned home with a Spencer carbine, a sword, a military belt and a pistol.

The weapons were passed down through two generations, Hickein said, until they came into the possession of his grandmother, Mabel Griffith. Before her passing, she divided the heirlooms between Hickein's father and his uncle, who each later passed them to their sons. Hickein said a cousin, who lives in Schenevus, still possesses the belt and the sword.

Hickein, now 93, said he was bequeathing the firearms to GOHS to prevent them from "getting into the wrong hands."

After the Civil War, Hickein said, many local members of the Grand Army of the Republic stored their weapons at a Main Street storefront, where they were damaged in a 1949 fire.

As the Grand Army membership died off, the singed swords, rifles and other paraphernalia were handed off to the American Legion, where they were stored on the third floor, Hickein said. Many years later, they were found to be stolen.

"I didn't want these things to disappear," Hickein said. "I thought they would be in safe hands with the Historical Society. They seem to keep track of their stuff."

Hickein served in the U.S. Navy from 1945 to 1946, and again from 1950 to 1952. "All my Navy service was on land," he said, based in Hawaii.

He was commander of Oneonta's American Legion Post in 1956 and is now its oldest member. "Fred makes it to almost all our Legion meetings," fellow Legionnaire Wayne Gregory said.

Hickein and his wife, Eleanor, are nearing their 67th wedding anniversary, they said. They have four children, living in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and Oneonta.

Former GOHS Executive Director Robert Brzozowski said the Yager gun was probably manufactured in England before 1800. "It may be one of the oldest items we have," he said.

Current Executive Director Marcela Micucci said one or both of the weapons will be made part of a permanent exhibit at the History Center. "They will be seen by many," he said.

Managing Editor Robert Cairns contributed to this report.

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Coming home from deployments shouldn't be the hardest part of serving in a war, Sarah Verardo told North Carolina lawmakers on Wednesday morning. Her husband, Afghanistan war veteran Army Sgt. Mike Verardo, suffered catastrophic wounds serving with the 82nd Airborne Division.

As a result of two IED attacks in 2010, Verardo lost his left leg and much of his left arm and was left with burns and a traumatic brain injury. He has had 120 subsequent surgeries.

The North Carolina General Assembly unanimously passed legislation, House Bill 138/Senate Bill 132, to declare April 24 North Carolina's Wounded Heroes Day, which will forever mark Verardo's Alive Day — the day of the injuries that nearly killed him. The day also would recognize what he and other combat veterans have sacrificed to serve the United States in the military.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper is expected to sign the legislation.

Sarah and Mike Verardo met in high school biology class.

"It's been a very long road home," Sarah Verardo said in a phone interview with The News & Observer on Tuesday.

"There's more sickness than health at this point in our lives, and that's very, very challenging," she said. The couple have three young daughters.

"Day to day, no two days are the same. Mike does require help at home," she said. He has to sleep in a hospital bed and needs help with some daily activities.

"A good day for us is there are no massive health emergencies. ... There's a lot of limbo," she said.

Union County Republican Sen. Todd Johnson sponsored the Senate bill creating Wounded Heroes Day. He's known the Verardos for years, as they have been active in the community, Johnson told The News & Observer in an interview.

Johnson credited Sarah Verdaro for being her husband's voice, especially on harder days when his health means he might not be able to get up and talk.

"Michael and Sarah are probably some of the greatest people you will meet," Johnson said. The Wounded Heroes Day in his honor is about more than one family, he said.

"It isn't just him, it's the hundreds of thousands of people that he represents. It's the folks that have taken up that calling to go and serve," Johnson said.

Wounded veterans

House Majority Leader John Bell told The N&O that Verardo exemplifies "the best our state and country has to offer" and that he and other wounded veterans deserve support and recognition.

"I can't think of a better person to align this new day of recognition with than Sgt. Verardo who has sacrificed so much for this country," Bell said Tuesday.

In addition to Wounded Heroes Day, another bill, sponsored by Bell, is House Bill 370, "No Veteran Left Behind." It would provide local law enforcement with additional training to improve crisis intervention and services for veterans who are suffering from mental health and substance abuse issues, Bell said.

The bill includes $500,000 for the Independence Fund and its Veterans Justice Intervention Program, which is led by Sarah Verardo and based in Charlotte. Bell said they want to help get veterans the assistance they need in interacting with the criminal justice system — focusing on the first 911 call or contact with police, to help deescalate and decriminalize those experiences.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs reported an average of 17.6 veteran suicides per day in 2018, the latest data available in the federal agency's 2020 suicide prevention report.

Army Sgt. Nick Armendariz was also in the 82nd Airborne, served alongside Verdaro and was wounded in Afghanistan.

Armendariz was an infantryman deployed three times. He's now a disabled veteran who was referred to Veterans Treatment Court after a DUI arrest.

Armendariz is also involved with the Independence Fund. In a phone interview with The N&O, Armendariz said No Veteran Left Behind would help law enforcement learn to better deescalate situations with veterans who may have substance abuse issues or post-traumatic stress disorder.

He said that nobody who comes home is "broken," but he had a hard time readjusting into general society and made mistakes. He said that an incident he had with law enforcement on Veterans Day 2018 was deescalated from going "further south" by one officer, but thinks more officers would do better with more training in recognizing the signs of combat veterans in crisis.

Armendariz, who now lives in Charlotte, joined the military in 2006 at age 18, when he was living in California. His first deployment to Afghanistan was 15 months, then he came back, then deployed again for another 12 months. Then a third time, for seven months. He came home in September 2012 and left active duty as a squad leader, then served another two years in the Reserves.

President Joe Biden announced that the United States is withdrawing this year from Afghanistan after 20 years. Armendariz said that those calls are made "much higher above my head" but in his experience the military helped a lot locally and he got to witness rebuilding.

Armendariz said the latest North Carolina legislation is a reminder: "We all struggle. We all have our issues. We all have our demons we fight daily. It's OK not to be OK. As long as you recognize that there's an issue, that's kind of a first step — to reclaiming yourself."

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His "Mountain Man Memorial March" will support Gold Star Families and help preserve the legacies of fallen military heroes.

"I don't care if anyone knows my name," Linkous, stationed at Fort Benning in Georgia, said Monday in a phone interview. "I just want to make people more aware of Legacies Alive and have families in Beaver County come together to heal."

Legacies Alive, a national nonprofit with a Beaver County chapter, provides unwavering support to Gold Star Families, a title reserved for immediate families of military members who died in the line of duty.

Patterson Township's John Dudo, Legacies Alive executive director, mapped out Linkous' walking route. From Bridgewater to New Brighton, through Rochester to Freedom, then Monaca and Center Township, onward to Vanport Township, Beaver and back to Bridgewater, the route will visit significant sites like VFW and American Legion posts.

Linkous will climb steep Ninth Street hill in Freedom to visit Oak Grove Cemetery, final resting place for U.S. Air Force Combat Controller Staff Sgt. Dylan Elchin, for whom the Interstate 376 bridge across the Ohio River is named.

Elchin, a 25-year-old airman from Hookstown, died in a roadside bomb blast Nov. 27, 2018, in Afghanistan while embedded with a U.S. Army Special Operations team. He was a 2012 graduate of Hopewell Area High School.

At 8 a.m. Saturday, Elchin's grandfather Ron Bogolea and uncle Dwayne Bogolea, as well as Dudo, will step off together with Linkous for the first leg of the walk, starting from Kelly's Riverside Saloon in Bridgewater.

"Some of us will walk portions of it with him," said John Kelly, owner of Kelly's Riverside Saloon, which also will be the full-circle finish line for Linkous' march.

To watch some of Linkous' journey, here are mile markers and approximate times:

• 8:05 a.m. .3-mile, Veteran's Memorial Bridge Memorial.
• 8:45 a.m. 2.6-mile, Big Rock Park, New Brighton.
• 9 a.m. 3.2-mile, World War Memorial, New Brighton.
• 10:10 a.m. 6.3-mile, War Memorial, Rochester.
• 10:25 a.m. 6.9-mile, Rochester VFW Post 128.
• 11:30 a.m. 9.4-mile, Oak Grove Cemetery, Freedom.
• 12:45 p.m. 12.4-mile, Monaca Legion Post 980.
• 3:05 p.m. 18.6-mile, Center Fire Dept. No. 1, Brodhead Road.
• 4:20 p.m. 21.7-mile, Dylan Elchin Memorial Bridge (Vanport Bridge).
• 5 p.m. 23.7-mile, Beaver Court House Memorials.
• 5:10 p.m. 24-mile, Fort McIntosh historic site, Beaver.
• 6 p.m. 26.2-mile, Kelly's Riverside Saloon, Bridgewater.

Along the walk, Linkous will meet and be joined by members of Gold Star Families.

Because pedestrian traffic is not permitted on interstate bridges, and as a safety precaution, right before reaching the Dylan Eichlan Memorial Bridge, near the Shell plant in Potter Township, a shuttle bus will pick up Linkous and whisk him to the Vanport side of the bridge, where he will resume his walk.

The Beaver Area High School JROTC will accompany Linkous on the final leg of his march.

"That's great the JROTC will be joining me," Linkous said. "Hopefully, they'll see the importance of honoring those who have gone on before us."

The 45-year-old Linkous technically will aim to complete an athletic feat called a "ruck," where participants walk while wearing a weighted "ruck sack," a military slang term for a backpack.

Linkous has completed 26.2-mile rucks before, including the annual Mountain Man Memorial March in Gatlinburg, Tenn. He dedicated his efforts there to Sgt. Jason McClary, 24, of Export, Pa., who died from injuries sustained in the same improvised explosive device (IED) explosion that killed Hopewell grad Elchin.

Previously stationed in Moon Township, Linkous met McClary's family when he volunteered to serve as part of the military escort duty for the Westmoreland County native's funeral. Through that experience, Linkous grew more familiar with Legacies Alive and its work on behalf of the Gold Star Families.

Legacies Alive coordinates social meet-ups of Gold Star families, who find a conversational comfort level and healing connection that only families who've lost a loved one in military service can understand.

"That's what it's all about," Linkous said.

His admiration grew through more knowledge of Legacies Alive provided by executive director Dudo, a former chief engineer in the Merchant Marines, who he met when they both were refereeing scholastic basketball games in western Pennsylvania.

Their friendship forged Saturday's walk that concludes with a public gathering at Kelly's Riverside Saloon, where a deejay will provide music and, weather permitting, people can gather outdoors under the palm trees of the island-themed restaurant.

"We'll be collecting donations if anyone is willing to give," Dudo said.

Linkous will be there, but doesn't plan on giving a post-walk speech. He prefers chatting with Gold Star Families. "I do appreciate hearing the stories about who it is they lost," Linkous said.

That 26.2-mile marathon through Beaver County, with a 40-pound backpack, will leave him physically drained.

He said, "It's a pretty heavy load, but not nearly the weight that family members are carrying with the loss of a loved one."

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AMVETS, the national veterans group organizing the ride, said the Defense Department has ignored its application to use the Pentagon parking lot as a staging area. For 32 consecutive years, thousands of motorcyclists gathered in the parking lot before and after the ride around the National Mall.

There are fewer than 40 days until the event, and the Pentagon hasn’t communicated its decision, said Joe Chenelly, national executive director of AMVETS.

The Pentagon “won’t even talk to us,” Chenelly said. “We’ve been trying to really be good partners in all of this and not blast the Pentagon, but we’ve gotten to point recently where we have to put the pressure on them.” 

Chenelly said he submitted an application in July to use the Pentagon parking lot on May 30 this year. He was expecting to hear back by January, but no response came.

The Pentagon’s special events office sent Chenelly an approved permit earlier this month but then rescinded the approval eight days later and said they hadn’t made a final decision. At that time, Chenelly told the Pentagon he needed an answer by April 16. 

“It’s April 20 today, and we still haven’t heard anything back,” Chenelly said Tuesday. 

Pentagon spokeswoman Sue Gough told Stars and Stripes on Wednesday that “there’s been no decision yet.” She cited the ongoing coronavirus pandemic as the cause of the delay and said the department is monitoring community spread of the virus. Masks and social distancing are required on Pentagon grounds, she said.  

“The permit request is still being evaluated in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic,” Gough said.

AMVETS has gained approvals for the event from the National Park Service, Metropolitan Police Department, Arlington County Police Department, Arlington County Fire Department, Virginia State Police and the District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department.

Tens of thousands of motorcyclists are planning to travel to Washington for a Memorial Day ride, regardless of whether they have a place to gather, Chenelly said. He’s working with the mayor’s office on another plan to host riders in the parking lot of Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium.

The stadium, in the city’s northeast quadrant, is much farther from the National Mall than the Pentagon. Hosting riders there would require the city to shut down a busy section of the Capitol Beltway, an interstate highway surrounding Washington, for about four hours, Chenelly said. AMVETS planned to meet Wednesday with city officials to discuss the plan.

In reaction to the news of the Pentagon not issuing a permit, riders have been posting online about traveling to Washington in large groups and shutting down highways themselves, Chenelly said. He worries about the potential safety risks that would pose.

“We could see chaos if it’s not coordinated,” Chenelly said. “So, we’re really concerned by that. We want a coordinated, safe, impactful demonstration where people can come, be seen and heard, and then leave.”

Earlier this month, Chenelly reached out to members of Congress for help persuading the Pentagon to approve the permit. On Tuesday, Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., sent a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin Austin, urging him to step in and allow AMVETS to use the Pentagon as a staging ground.

Mast also issued a public statement criticizing the Pentagon and President Joe Biden’s administration for interfering with the event.

“We are blessed beyond words to be citizens of the greatest country on Earth, and only live free thanks to the men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice,” Mast said. “But the Biden administration seems intent on restricting that freedom, and now, even restricting Memorial Day ceremonies.”

Rolling Thunder operated a motorcycle ride through Washington for 32 years before hosting its last event in 2019. AMVETS took over in 2020 and planned an event to replace the popular Rolling Thunder ride. It was designed to raise awareness for prisoners of war and troops still missing in action, as well as the issue of veteran suicide.

The event, now titled Rolling to Remember, was canceled last year because of the coronavirus pandemic. AMVETS has made efforts this year to reduce capacity, put space between riders and supply hand sanitizing stations, Chenelly said. 

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On Aug. 19, 2006, Barclay, who now lives in Huntsville, was on a mission in Afghanistan instead of celebrating his first wedding anniversary with his wife, Sierra. The vehicle he was in hit an IED.

Only Barclay and the driver survived. Barclay was severely burned over 47% of his body.

Through nearly 15 years of recovery and 30-40 surgeries, a non-profit called the Semper Fi & America’s Fund has been “always faithful” to him and his family.

“Once you’re in, you’re family,” Barclay said of the fund. “It’s not like they do a one-time thing and they move on.”

The Semper Fi & America’s Fund began in 2003 at Camp Pendleton in San Diego, California, where a group of Marine spouses began to organize welcome home activities for wounded Marines. Then they raised money to provide a specialized van for a Marine who was rendered quadriplegic. Eighteen years later, that local effort has grown into a national nonprofit that helps wounded Marines and soldiers and sailors from all branches of the military, and has provided $250 million in support over its lifetime.

Barclay found out about the fund in 2013, from a wounded Marine friend whose wife was a case manager for the Semper Fi & America’s Fund. Barclay applied, and he’s been part of the family ever since, he said.

He was living in hurricane-prone Houston, Texas, at the time, and the first thing the fund did for him was install a whole-home generator. Then they provided him a ductless air conditioning unit that would pump cool air directly into his room to keep his body temperature regulated. “It’s hard to do that with burn scars,” he said.

Then they landscaped his backyard, installed a pergola to keep him out of the sun, and a misting system to keep him cool so he could finally enjoy time outside with his wife and young children.

The fund has continued to watch over him wherever he’s gone. He was an Army brat and traveled all over, but his parents were both from Scottsboro in north Alabama, so he settled down in Huntsville, where he works for a wholesale insurance company.

In Huntsville, the fund installed the specialized HVAC system he needs, and partnered with Home Depot to do a makeover of his garage so that he has tools he can use with his injured hands.

The fund has also sent his kids to summer camp with other children of wounded soldiers, who share the same experiences.

“If my kids need something, or my wife, they just take care of it,” Barclay said.

Thanks to the Semper Fi & America’s Fund, Barclay is able to spend less time worrying about his and his family’s needs, and more time at the ballpark watching his kids play softball and baseball. His 14-year-old daughter, Addison, is freshman at Huntsville High School, his 12-year-old son, Quenton, is at Hampton Cove Middle School and his 9-year-old daughter, Emerson, is at Hampton Cove Elementary.

Whether it’s job training or guitar lessons or a specialized vehicle a wounded veteran needs, Barclay said the fund takes care of it.

“They think outside the box and provide things that the Army and VA don’t provide,” he said.

Visit semperfifund.org for more information.

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The Steven A. Cohen Military Family Clinic at Red Rock, which is operated by Oklahoma City-based Red Rock Behavioral Health Services and is part of the Cohen Veterans Network, opened its doors for in-person visits April 1 after a telehealth-only launch last year.

The clinic serves post-9/11 veterans, regardless of role or discharge status. It also serves family members of veterans or active-duty service members, a crucial part of the clinic's mission.

"Without our families, we just couldn't do what our nation asks of us," said Taylor Poindexter, the clinic's outreach manager and a veteran who served in the U.S. Army for over 30 years. "We oftentimes forget that the families suffer through the same trauma and the same anxiety that the actual service member does while they're serving."

Amista Chambers, the clinic's director, said the services through the Cohen Veterans Network are meant to complement and "stack hands" with services through the Veterans Affairs Administration.

"There are certain services that they can't get other places that we can help with, especially when it comes to treating the family members," Chambers said.

The clinic's staff has all had in-depth military cultural competency training so they can "speak the language" of the population they're serving, she said.

Poindexter said his own military service experience helps him bring credibility to his interactions with clients.

"It gives you that commonality where you can have a conversation about mental health care, and you can destigmatize that care that our post-9/11 veterans are seeking," Poindexter said. "What we try to do is make them feel confident that they are seeking the right services to help them get back to better and improve their quality of life."

While Lawton was chosen as the clinic's location because of its sizable population of post-9/11 veterans and their families, telehealth visits will continue so veterans around the state can access care.

Ryan Pitts, a Medal of Honor recipient and a Cohen Veterans Network ambassador, said the clinic's launch came at a perfect time as people have struggled with mental health issues during the pandemic.

During his own service from 2003 to 2009, he and other soldiers were either being deployed, or getting ready to deploy, he said.

"There really was no downtime, and that places a lot of stress on veterans. It places a lot of stress on families," said Pitts, who attended basic training in Oklahoma at Fort Sill.

Then, civilian life wasn't easier — it's "just a different type of hard," he said. Add COVID-19 on top of that, and families transitioning into civilian life had even more to worry about.

For someone on the fence about whether to seek help for their mental health, Pitts said he knows it's difficult to make that call. But it gets easier after that.

"When I served, I never wanted to fight any longer than I had to, and I would have taken any help that I could get. I don't see why this is any different," he said. "Do it for yourself. Do it for your family. If nothing else, do it for your battle buddies. Your decision to go get help may be the catalyst that spurs one of your battle buddies ... to go get the help that they need."

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Hours: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Contact: 580-771-2662 or cvn@red-rock.com

For more information, visit the clinic website at red-rock.com/cohenclinic.php.

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But the arrest data from the riot shows that allegedly criminal participation in the insurrection on Jan. 6 was far more prevalent among veterans than active-duty forces, a more difficult problem for the U.S. government to address.

Of the nearly 380 individuals federally charged in connection with the riot, at least 44 are current or former members of the U.S. armed forces, according to service records and data compiled by The Washington Post. At least three other veterans are among more than two dozen people charged in D.C. Superior Court for crimes like trespassing and curfew violations.

Apart from two Army reservists and a National Guard soldier, all the defendants with military ties are veterans.

Members of the active-duty force have been found to harbor extremist sympathies in a series of high-profile incidents in recent years, prompting concern about the scope of the problem in the ranks. But the far larger prevalence of veterans among the cohort of those charged in relation to the Jan. 6 riot raises questions about whether the U.S. government will focus on those who have left the military in its effort to tackle extremism — and so far veterans do not appear to be getting much targeted attention.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has no dedicated program to combat extremism among former members of the military and has resisted calls to address other factors that contribute to domestic radicalization, such as online disinformation that targets veterans to inflame political tensions.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough said last month that the agency would "take a look" at what VA could do to combat extremism among veterans.

In a statement, VA said it is "among a group of agencies meeting on the topic" but that VA's scope is limited to explaining resources available to veterans, such as behavioral and mental-health care and suicide prevention.

The efforts by the Defense Department to focus on active-duty forces come as the Biden administration conducts a broader review of the U.S. government's approach to domestic extremism. In an unclassified report issued in March, the U.S. intelligence community warned that domestic violent extremism poses an "elevated" threat to the United States.

The Department of Homeland Security is stepping up its efforts to prevent domestic extremism under the Biden administration but hasn't announced any initiatives specific to veterans. In a statement, a department official said DHS "has made addressing domestic violent extremism a top priority" and is "working to expand our ability to detect and mitigate the threat of violence by those inspired by extremist ideologies."

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the Defense Department is looking into educating service members as they leave the U.S. military about extremist groups "waiting on the other side to recruit them."

"We wouldn't have the resources and certainly don't have the authorities to be checking up on veterans," Kirby said in an interview. "What we can do is take a hard look at the potential for radicalization while they're in the ranks, while we do have purview over them, and we can see what we can do to ensure they make their transition to civilian life in the most informed way possible."

The Defense Department can bring certain retired officers back to active-duty status to hold them accountable for violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the set of rules that governs the American armed forces, Kirby said, but such recalls are rare and apply only to a limited category of retirees. Very few of the veterans charged in relation to the riot would qualify to face UCMJ discipline.

———

Whether the U.S. government should focus anti-extremism measures on veterans remains a subject of some debate.

A report this month from the Program on Extremism at George Washington University and the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy, which examined the role of veterans in the riot, found that the percentage of male veterans who have been charged with crimes in relation to Jan. 6 so far is roughly akin to the portion of male veterans in the U.S. population overall, raising questions about whether veterans should be singled out for prevention efforts.

But the authors, Daniel Milton and Andrew Mines, also said that military experience has a "force multiplying" effect for domestic extremist organizations, bringing them legitimacy as well as leadership and weapons experience and making veteran involvement a greater threat. The authors found that riot defendants with military experience were roughly four times more likely to be part of domestic violent extremist groups such as the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys rather than lone actors.

The report by Milton and Mines recommended creating a new combined government task force to be led jointly by the Defense Department and VA to deal with the issue. The task force, they said, should collect data on criminal and noncriminal extremism-related incidents among service members and veterans, and use that information to refine, expand and target current U.S. government warnings on the topic.

Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said the military could consider going a step further and claw back benefits from veterans engaged in extremist activities in certain circumstances. At a minimum, she said, the government can work with veterans groups to increase awareness.

"There could be a lot more done to work with the veterans associations to take stands against extremism," Beirich said, noting that right-wing extremist groups often target veterans as recruits.

The overwhelming majority of veterans have no link to domestic extremism, and most bristle at being associated with the tiny fraction of former service members who do. But Beirich said the issue can be tackled without smearing an entire category of Americans. "I don't think addressing a problem tarnishes all veterans," she said.

Promising a restoration of lost dignity

Some veterans who found a common identity and shared values in uniform can struggle to find the same connection after transitioning to civilian life.

"So many people choose military service for connectedness and community," said Kori Schake, an expert on civilian and military relations at the American Enterprise Institute.

Nonprofit groups such as Team Rubicon and the Mission Continues have organized around the principle that veterans desire community and a sense of purpose after leaving the military — and can find it again through service to others.

But extremist groups are adept at exploiting that same desire, Schake said, and conspiracy-laden beliefs such as QAnon may also appeal to veterans looking for answers in an often challenging post-military life.

Arie Kruglanski, a professor at the University of Maryland and expert on the psychology of radicalization, said that leaving the military can challenge a person's identity.

"There is a big disparity between being glorified, feeling respected in the military, and your status as a veteran," Kruglanski said, noting there is often a big "letdown" associated with the transition to civilian life.

Kruglanski, who is conducting a study on extremism among U.S. military veterans together with the University of Southern California, said far-right and white supremacist groups can attract veterans in particular because those movements tend to valorize military activity and promise a restoration of lost dignity, all while stoking the sense that the government has somehow betrayed its citizens.

Feelings of betrayal were central to the events of Jan. 6, after President Donald Trump rallied his followers by convincing them falsely that the election had been stolen from them.

The veterans who responded to Trump's call had a wide variety of service experiences.

Most had unremarkable military duties, ranging from mechanics to warehouse clerks. The most common job was infantry, but fewer than half overall deployed to a combat zone, according to a Post analysis.

The service records of at least seven veterans revealed some evidence of misconduct, including low rank at discharge and truncated enlistments. For instance, one had been stripped of rank and kicked out of the Army with a punitive discharge after going absent without leave, officials said.

Others had more skilled and technical backgrounds, including one former Green Beret who specialized in tactical communication. Another served as a Navy Reserve intelligence officer. One Marine Corps veteran, a former helicopter crew chief, received a specialized top-secret clearance to serve in the squadron that maintains the presidential helicopter.

Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran and QAnon evangelist who was in the riot, is not included in the count. She was fatally shot by a Capitol Police officer while she was trying to breach a set of doors inside the building.

Tributaries to positive connections

One solution — a frank discussion with service members about the challenges of plugging back into society — could be added to the materials and programs that service members already receive when they leave the military, Schake said.

Civil society can also embrace veterans in a more proactive way, she said, by looking to other examples as a road map. Religious groups foster connections among refugees settling in the United States, for instance, and leaders deliberately anchor them within communities, she said.

Groups such as American Legion chapters and Rotary Clubs could act as tributaries to direct veterans to positive connections.

"It's going to take involvement of all levels of society to solve this problem," including government, nonprofits and individuals, said Jeremy Butler, the chief executive of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a nonprofit advocacy group.

The Defense Department has unique power to bar active-duty service member involvement in extremist groups and weed out those who violate guidelines, Butler said. But VA can speak about the issue, he said, and "foster a culture . . . that disavows extremism and promotes racial justice.".

The Washington Post's Ana Álvarez, Tobi Raji, Sarah Salem, Aaron Schaffer, Maya Smith and Sarah Welch contributed to this report.
 

Dan Pena, who turned 76 this year but remains a commanding presence at 6-foot-1, erupts into an expletive-infested lecture that careens between withering insults and strategies to become like him — successful in business and in life. Quoting him requires lots of bleeping.

"You, you in this room," he begins in a videotaped lesson, "you're taking your [bleeping] foot off the accelerator instead of pushing the gas pedal through the [bleeping] floorboard!"

"And we all know why; it's easier," Pena adds, shaking his head in exasperation, "and it's hard to admit you have no [bleeping] self-esteem."

With supreme confidence and politically incorrect bluster, Pena prods and pokes his students to transform them into hardworking entrepreneurs with skin as tough as rhino hide beneath tailored business suits.

It's not lost on his students that the location — Guthrie Castle, in the golfing heartland of Angus, Scotland — is not a conference center. It's his home, and when he's not delivering blistering lectures, the graying Pena lives a relatively quiet Scottish-laird existence.

It's all so improbable. Pena seemed bound for failure through his difficult youth in East Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley until he did something Americans do best. He reinvented himself.

Pena would reap a fortune in the oil industry and develop a sharply opinionated conservative nature that reflects not merely his gotta-keep-busy-to-get-rich personality, but also his us-against-them contempt for "sniveling, lazy, entitled and easily offended types who long for public approval and run for the hills when things get rough."

Not many outside of the oil industry knew his name until 1983, when Pena was featured in a Times story about a tiny number of Chicanos de oro, wealthy Mexican Americans on their way to megafortunes.

"Pena is a dream of ethnic alchemy," columnist Al Martinez wrote in the article that was part of a Pulitzer-winning series on Latinos. "Tough, smart and demanding to be heard — even his quick, flashing smile is noisy — Pena seemed destined to be rich."

At that time, Pena was bidding to buy a refinery and petroleum terminal.

"If the oil refinery deal goes through," he said, "I could either be rich beyond belief or lose everything. But you've got to dare. I won't be picked on. I'm not a victim of the sombrero syndrome. Don't try walking on Dan Pena."

The man who would own a castle started life in a modest wood-framed house in a barrio just north of downtown.

His mother, Amy, of Austrian and Spanish descent, was from Mexico, and gave her son blue eyes. His father, Manuel, who was from New Mexico, wore pistols in leather holsters, one on each hip, and became one of the first Mexican American detectives in the Los Angeles Police Department.

"When Chicago mobsters came to town back in the 1940s, my father and other guys would meet them at the train station," Pena recalled. "Then they took them up to the Hollywood Hills, where some were severely beaten."

It is said that Manny killed 11 people in the line of duty and was prone to take the law into his own hands.

(The senior Pena later left the LAPD to work with a secret unit of the CIA, according to Pena and historians. He oversaw an investigation into the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles and personally controlled the classification and use of every bit of evidence collected.)

"My father was a cold and brutal man," Pena says, "and I was out of control as a kid. In grammar school, I tried to drop an aquarium on a teacher's head from a second-story window. But by the grace of God, he moved. It hit him on the shoulder and dislocated his collarbone."

His family moved to upper-class Encino when he was 10 so that he would be raised among high achievers.

Pena insists that his path to success, power, and money started in grammar school, when he was forced to wear a dunce hat.

When he got home, Pena said, "my father beat the hell out of me for getting in trouble at school."

To hear Pena tell it, all the scolding "made me tougher."

His teenage years went by in an alcoholic haze punctuated by run-ins with the law. Relatives joked, "If Danny ever focuses all that anger on a career, he'll be a multimillionaire."

They were right.

Pena traces his desire to make money to an Army hitch in Europe, where he saw American tourists flashing rolls of cash, staying in posh hotels and dining in 4-star restaurants.

After leaving the Army as a 2nd lieutenant, he earned his bachelor's degree in business administration at Cal State Northridge and took a job with a real estate investment company in 1971. By year's end, he had been appointed sales manager with a six-figure salary and had cleaned out the department by firing 50 salesmen — a job he said had to be done. It earned him the name Hatchet Man.

When that company failed, Pena became a stockbroker, and then a financial planner. At 26, he replaced his Volkswagen with a Rolls-Royce.

He began looking at oil in 1982, when a friend became rich on soaring petroleum prices. Within months — driving himself "like a wild-eyed madman" — he founded Great Western Resources Inc., a Houston-based energy company, with an investment of $820 — and a bravado that made some competitors want to see him crushed.

A decade later, he was Great Western's chairman, president, and chief executive officer, presiding over a company with $450 million in market capital.

He was already living in unapologetic opulence — vacations at European resorts, chauffeured Mercedes limousines, alligator-skin cowboy boots — when he was perusing a magazine featuring luxury-lifestyle products. He had just finished a routine 10-mile run near his home in Palos Verdes when he spotted "an ad for a castle in Scotland that was up for sale."

"I knew from my Wall Street days that if you wanted to do business with financial institutions, you had to prove to them that you didn't need their services," he suggested in a tip sheet titled "33 Secrets for Success." "So, the castle was to become the perception which would cause the business community to realize that we didn't need their help since we had already arrived, which, of course, we hadn't."

He was unprepared, however, for the responsibilities that came with a 450-year-old castle. "Something breaks down every five minutes around here!" he groused in one of several interviews over Zoom. "It costs about $100,000 a month to maintain this estate because this place eats money!

"I've got broken pipes, ceilings falling down, wallpaper peeling — and a rug that's been on the game room floor for 300 years!"

But maintaining the estate "has meant employment for locals and work for local businesses," said the Rev. Brian Ramsay, minister of nearby Guthrie Parish Presbyterian Church, and a neighbor of Pena's for more than three decades.

Pena supports local charities as well, but keeps it quiet. "During the present pandemic, for example," Ramsay said, "he provided PPE and sanitizing for local volunteers and very generous donations to food banks in the Angus area."

On a personal level, Pena "is always completely honest, which is both refreshing and sometimes challenging," he added. "He is not one to mince his words nor suffer fools gladly, but I have also seen glimpses of deep affection for those he loves and a strong sense of justice, which show the depth of his personality.

"A most interesting character, indeed."

That no-holds-barred personality also contributed to his departure from Great Western in 1992, when he was ousted by the board of directors. To hear Pena tell it, they were fed up with his flashy lifestyle and penchant for discussing controversial corporate matters with the press.

Beyond that, the company's stock price had plummeted during the Persian Gulf War. Rumors had floated that the company's largest investor, the Kuwaiti Investment Office, needed cash and was preparing to dump Great Western to get it.

"The board members complained that I should have known that Iraqi forces were going to invade Kuwait in 1990," Pena said. "Hell, man, the CIA didn't even know that was going to happen."

Pena sued Great Western for breach of contract, among other accusations. Great Western countersued, alleging mismanagement, breach of fiduciary duty and negligence.

A Houston jury in 1993 rejected Great Western's claims and enforced Pena's roughly $5-million golden parachute.

Then Pena reinvented himself. Again.

This time, it meant conducting business philosophy courses, what he calls the Quantum Leap Advantage, at Guthrie Castle.

Pena maintains that he could not care less that a lot of people are offended by his views and teaching style.

"I only have three regrets in life," he says, without significant remorse. "I'm a combat-trained Army officer who never saw combat. I didn't set my goals high enough — former Texas Gov. John Connolly once said I should have been the first Mexican American president. And one night when my mother was ill and afraid that she was dying, I yelled at her, 'God damn it, mom, stop crying! You're not going to die!' She died the next morning."

It sounds contrived at times. Some former students have accused Pena of luring vulnerable customers with false promises of profit and success.

But Pena's acolytes often speak of him in nearly messianic tones. His "trillion-dollar man" moniker, he says, refers to the wealth amassed by his students.

"Driving onto the castle grounds for the first time was like approaching an energy of greatness," said Dustin Plantholt, a documentarian who recently completed a film about Pena.

"True, some people get very emotional when he looks them in the eyes and screams, 'You're a wuss; a disgusting [bleeping] cry baby,'" Plantholt said. "Eventually they realize that he's drilling into their weak sides so that they can toughen up and start to stand up for themselves."

Among Pena's first students was Ruben Navarrette, a journalist and Harvard graduate who, as he puts, "did not go on to make billions of dollars."

"My wife says I worship the ground Dan walks on — and she's probably right," Navarrette said with a laugh. "He is a wise, old world-class teacher who can turn an ordinary person into someone extraordinary."

Then there is Hector Padilla, 46, a former police officer turned real estate broker who was already worth $5 million when he took Pena's program in 2015.

Padilla, president of HP Capital Investments Inc. in Inglewood, was only half kidding when said, "People go to Dan when they need an ass-whipping more than a hug. And, like many others who made it through his program, I have a love-hate relationship with him."

"I sent him an email after I bought my first Rolls-Royce," he recalled. "His response: Good for you, pendejo [dumbass]. You can do better than that."

Pena recalled that he drove his Rolls-Royce to Lincoln High School, hoping to inspire the students, "and the kids there didn't give a [bleep]."

He maintains L.A. ties — his brother, Vincent Pena, 61, is deputy chief of the Los Angeles County Fire Department — and has a cab driver's memory of Southern California's streets and districts.

Pena's legacy projects include an athletic scholarship at Lincoln High. A year ago, he added $100,000 to the reward offered for information on the wounding of two sheriff's deputies shot in Compton.

Given the pandemic and hip and knee replacements, he spends most of his time at his castle. He relishes the warm memory of when his father came to Scotland.

"My father came to visit me at the castle," Pena recalled. "Looking up in awe at the crystal chandeliers hanging from a vaulted ceiling, he shook his head and sighed, 'C'mon, Danny, tell me this isn't from drug money.'"

"Nope," Pena replied. "Just oil and stocks."

Then they were off on a grand tour of the castle and its treasures, including a wine cellar featuring a bottle of 60-year-old Macallan scotch that cost Pena $14,000.

Then there's the huge oil painting in a gilded frame that Pena had commissioned: it's a strapping Scottish nobleman — albeit with an unusually dark complexion — on the heath with a stalwart hunting hound at his side.

"That's me," Pena said with a smile. "I'm a Mexican American in a Scottish castle. But around here, people treat me as an American rich guy."

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Her oldest son, Jacob, was dead.

A telegram from the United States Marines said the 18-year-old private was killed in action but divulged little else. The ongoing Pacific campaign meant Jacob would be buried in a temporary grave in the Tarawa atoll, where he and more than 1,000 other Marines and sailors died fighting the Imperial Japanese Army.

Weeks turned into months and into years. The military finally admitted it couldn't find Jacob's burial place. His name was etched at the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii.

Jacob's family tried to honor him for the rest of their lives. Grace opened a diner named after him in Boyle Heights and kept his letters, newspaper clippings of his death and his medals — a Purple Heart and Silver Star, among others — in a cosmetics case. His four siblings shared stories of their brother with their own children, some of whom joined the military.

Nephews who never knew their tío tattooed their arms and legs with his name and face and years of life.

Grace died in 1974, and Jacob's siblings followed until only two, Isaac Cruz Jr. and Ruth Soto, were left. Tears eventually dried, replaced by a longing for closure the family assumed would never come.

Then, in April of last year, Ruth's daughter, Ruthie, received a phone call at work: Jacob was coming home.

The news was so impossible to believe that she hung up mid-conversation to gather herself.

Born in Arizona, Jacob Cruz moved to Boyle Heights with his family in the 1930s. As the oldest son, it was his job to help out his single mother, a Mexican immigrant who worked as a cleaning lady at White Memorial Medical Center. She had to give him permission to enlist since Jacob was only 17 and a junior at Roosevelt High School.

"She didn't want him to sign," Ruth said, "but he said, 'I have to go to protect all of you.'"

He wrote dozens of letters while at infantry training at Camp Elliott in San Diego in 1943, all addressed to "Ma + Family" and usually signed "General Cruz."

Jacob teased his oldest sister, Esther, about her love of hair dyes and asked for pictures of her newborn son. He asked his younger sister, Olga, to send him home-baked chocolate chip cookies. He threatened Isaac Jr. with a "kick in the Axis" if he didn't stop bugging their sisters, and he told Ruth, "Don't forget to write every day from now on."

The teen was short — barely over 5 foot 6 — and lean, with a stern face that made him seem far older than his years.

"He was terrific," said Ruth. "Just so responsible but loving. A happy-go-lucky guy."

His last letter came on Oct. 29, just before Jacob's division shipped off to the Pacific theater.

"Please don't worry about me Mother, because I am fine and healthy," he wrote. The last six words were bolded.

On Nov. 22, Jacob and his company found themselves under a heavy counterattack during the Battle of Tarawa. It was his first day of combat, and he ran ammunition boxes to gunners on the front line until two bullets struck him down, killing him instantly, according to a letter his sergeant sent to Grace months later.

The sergeant added this detail: The morning of his death, Jacob spent his down time under the shade of a coconut tree reading a Bible.

He and the other American casualties were buried in shallow graves with hastily built markers that Navy Seabees soon replaced with white crosses. A letter to the Cruz family said the military would try to retrieve his body "upon cessation of hostilities."

But in the rush to win World War II, the locations of many graves were forgotten. An Army review board in charge of tracking down the bodies of fallen troops declared Jacob "non-recoverable" in 1949.

The news shattered his mother and siblings, said Alta Vargas, the daughter of Isaac Jr. — even more so because they had grown up without a man in the house.

"When they lost him, it was like they lost their father," she said.

Grace regularly attended the Memorial Day service at the All Wars Memorial in Boyle Heights that honors the many Mexican Americans from the Eastside who have served in the military. She always made sure to take her grandchildren to learn about their uncle, said Mike Mahar-Soto, Ruth's son.

"She'd go up onstage, and they'd give her a corsage," said the 61-year-old Glendale resident. "Then she'd say a couple of words about my tío Jacob, about what a good boy he was."

When Grace died, the cosmetics case with Jacob's letters and other ephemera went to another grandson, Isaac III, Alta's brother. He recently shared its contents at his home in Maywood.

"She always had a smile when she talked about my uncle," said the 70-year-old as he opened the frayed box. "She was just happy to talk about him."

He carefully unfolded yellowed newspaper clippings and took out his uncle's letters from brittle envelopes. Preserved in plastic slips was the original telegram — "DEEPLY REGRET TO INFORM YOU..." — announcing Jacob's death, along with condolence messages from Marine officials, Roosevelt High's principal and Los Angeles Mayor Fletcher Bowron.

A certificate signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt assured Grace and her children that Jacob continued to live "in a way that humbles the undertakings of most men."

The lofty words were right, in a sense. He turned from son to brother to legend to myth with each passing generation.

"My dad would tell us that my uncle was a hero, but we just never realized the extent of it," said Alta, 66. She envisioned visiting Tarawa, but the logistics were too hard. "We were just little kids and would just think, 'Oh yeah, our uncle. So sad that he died at such a young age.'"

"I know he was good," said Isaac III. "He took care of everybody. He was already a man by the time he died."

As for Jacob's two surviving siblings, their memories of him were warm, if vague.

Ruth talked to Jacob on the phone before he shipped out but can't recall the conversation or much about her brother. She was only 11 when he died and admits her memories mostly begin after that painful day.

Isaac Jr., who was 14 at the time, had more stories: How the two of them walked along train tracks looking for iron scraps to sell and make money for their mom. Jacob's love of sports, especially baseball and football. The time he tried to go steady with a Russian girl, but her parents didn't approve because Jacob was Mexican.

During basic training, Ruth recalled, "he'd come back on the weekends from camp with his dirty clothes."

Now 88 and living in Glendale, she wore dog tags with a photo of Jacob in uniform. A fabric painting of him hung in the dining room. A display case with copies of his medals and citations stood on an end table.

"Jacob had a job for everyone except me, because I was the baby," she said. "I never forgot him."

Neither had the military.

Advancements in DNA and forensic technology have allowed the military and private groups to identify remains and return them to families across the country. In 2009, Isaac Jr. and Ruth donated DNA samples at the request of military officials.

For decades, investigators had sought the plot where Jacob was buried.
Known as Row D, it became "lost in the scheme of everything," said Jordan Windish, an osteoarchaeologist with History Flight, a Virginia-based nonprofit devoted to finding and repatriating missing American servicemembers.

Windish and her colleagues suspected Row D was under a house built in the 1950s in Tarawa, now part of the Republic of Kiribati. For a decade, the local housing commission declined their requests to search underneath its concrete foundation.

A storm destroyed the house in 2019, and the commission finally let History Flight dig.

They unearthed 32 servicemembers, including Jacob. He still had his boots on. His remains were shipped to a military laboratory in Hawaii on the Fourth of July.

Scientists with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency identified Jacob through dental records and the DNA that Isaac Jr. and Ruth had donated a decade earlier.

Ruth confessed she "always had hope that he was alive somewhere," so when her daughter Ruthie told her the news last April, she couldn't believe, even decades later, that Jacob truly was found.

"I thought that it was a dream," she said, "and I'd wake up, and [his body] wasn't there." Her voice cracked as tears welled in her eyes. "Seventy-seven years is a long time."

Because of COVID-19 restrictions, the Cruz family delayed Jacob's return until November. The winter surge convinced Isaac Jr. to delay just a couple of months more.

On March 24 at the Los Angeles International Airport, a contingent of Marines, Los Angeles police officers and airport workers stood silently alongside the Cruz family as the flag-draped casket descended from an airplane.

Mike pushed his mother in a wheelchair so she could be the first to welcome back Jacob. She gently touched the casket with her hand.

"To have a sibling that still remembers one of these soldiers is rare," said Windish, who accompanied the family that day. "Ruth was holding my hand and looking into my soul. She kept saying, 'Thank you so much for bringing my brother back.'"

Jacob's hearse traveled to Guerra & Gutierrez Mortuary in East Los Angeles with an escort provided by Patriot Guard Riders. Law enforcement and firefighters saluted from overpasses on the 105 Freeway. The motorcade drove by Plaza Mexico in Lynwood, where a giant marquee flashed Jacob's photo with the words "A Hero Remembered Never Dies."

The following day, Jacob's family packed into vans provided by History Flight for his funeral at Los Angeles National Cemetery in Westwood. Cousins who hadn't spoken in at least 20 years sat next to one another.

Now, they talked nonstop about their uncle Jacob.

"It was kind of shocking to see how affected everybody was," Mike said. "Not that I thought others didn't care. I just didn't know how large my uncle loomed in these various households."

It was Jacob's birthday — he would have turned 96 that day.

He received a three-volley salute and a helicopter flyover. A niece sang the gospel classic "His Eye is on the Sparrow."

When she hit the final line — " I know he watches over me" — a wind blew over the wreaths near the grave.

Jacob's sister, nieces, nephews and their children grieved doubly that day.

The week before, Isaac Jr. had died of complications from a fall at his home in Boyle Heights. He was 91.

One of his last outings had been walking into Guerra & Gutierrez to arrange a wake for his brother.

© 2021 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

But the efforts of Revolutionary War descendants will be sure Pvt. Ephraim Wheaton is more visible, according to the Lansing State Journal.

The Pvt. Ephraim Wheaton Chapter of the Michigan Society of the Sons of the American Revolution is dedicating a plaque to Wheaton at the North Stockbridge cemetery where he is buried. A roadside marker will be placed along Highway M-36 and will be among the few in the state recognizing a Revolutionary War veteran, chapter genealogist Jim Moses said.

Wheaton, who was born in Connecticut, served in George Washington's army and witnessed a key moment of the Revolutionary War: British Gen. Charles Cornwallis' surrender at Yorktown.

"He was only a private but still," Moses said. "It was kind of a neat thing for us to learn about him."

Wheaton is one of five Revolutionary War veterans buried in Ingham County and among the 356 interred in Michigan, though many are unverified, according to the Sons of the American Revolution.

Moses said he hadn't found any record that Wheaton fought in any of the battles but still played a key role by relaying commands in the fife and drum corps.

"The fife and drum people had certain things they played to tell the troops what to do," Moses said. "Above the noise of the battle you could hear the music and know what the next command was."

Wheaton enlisted in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1781.

Aside from the surrender at Yorktown, Wheaton served in the battles of Kings Bridge, Fort Washington and Philadelphia.

Wheaton was discharged at West Point in 1783.

After the war, Wheaton and his family moved to New York, where he worked as a shoemaker, then known as a cordwainer, and farmer.

Wheaton abandoned New York for Michigan Territory, seeking less expensive and more expansive farmland he could leave to his heirs. In 1836, Wheaton was one of the early settlers of Stockbridge, moving to the area shortly before the township was formally incorporated.

Wheaton died on April 27, 1853, and was buried in North Stockbridge.

When the Greater Lansing chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution formed, it seemed fitting to choose Wheaton as its namesake, Moses said.

The dedication ceremony is at 11 a.m. April 24 outside the North Stockbridge Cemetery. The Sons of the American Revolution will dedicate the roadside marker and place a plaque at Wheaton's grave.