Today's Veterans Radio is a replay of our program from August of 2023.
Host Jim Faust-Sollum talks about Colonel Paris Davis finally receiving his Medal of
Honor and the fallen and wounded Warriors front.
So here's Jim.
We hope you enjoy today's program.
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We're going to have a discussion today with individuals who were working behind the scenes
to get Medal of Honor recipient, Paris Davis, the Medal of Honor, which he did receive
many, many years after Vietnam, and then also an interview with some guys, real patriots,
who have been working to support veterans in their time of need.
It's a fallen and wounded soldiers fund, and we talked to some of their board members.
So listen in, both of these are interesting stories.
We want to welcome to VeteransRadio today two special guests to talk about a recent Medal
of Honor recipient, Colonel Paris Davis.
And we're going to talk to the guys who, I always refer to these kind of guys as Sherpas.
They carried a lot of the heavy load up the hill to get this accomplished, as did a whole
team of people.
But we have on Neil Thorn, an Army veteran and researcher extraordinaire.
Neil, welcome to VeteransRadio.
Thanks, Jim.
And we also have with him Jim Moriarty, a Marine veteran, did three tours in Vietnam.
He's an attorney working in the mass tort series, a lot of work with veterans and military
related causes.
He did a dozen years or so with the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation and finds himself
helping out where he can.
Jim, welcome to VeteransRadio.
Well, thank you, Jim.
It's good to be with you.
Well, you guys got connected on this project for Colonel Paris Davis back in Vietnam, 58
years ago.
He was a captain involved with the Green Brace and Special Forces.
His heroics at the Battle of Bung Son really is what launched this effort to have him recognized
and receive the Medal of Honor.
But Neil, why don't you give a brief description of Colonel Davis's exploits that I think was
a 19-hour battle?
Yeah.
So, Colonel Davis was on his second tour in Vietnam in 1965.
And he volunteered to go in to Bung Son, which to that point had been under enemy control
and we had not been able to get a foothold there.
He moved into that area, created a civil regular defense group, a CIDG group, of what they
call rough puffs.
So, they were local inhabitants that were recruited into a small army.
So, he built an army there along with his fellow Green Brace, their A-Team.
And their first action out was this Battle of Bung Son.
And Colonel Davis led that action, engaged and devastated the enemy, and also saved his
troops who he was ordered to leave his wounded at one point.
And he refused to do so.
And it was a Colonel who had ordered him to leave.
And at that time, he was a captain.
So, he refused to leave his troops.
He went out and rescued, personally rescued three of them while engaging the enemy, while
also coordinating air assets and medivacs and artillery on the site.
And it's just one of the, if you read the accounts of the battle, it is just one of
the most heroic actions I've seen.
And if I understand it right, Jim Moriarty, he was also injured during this battle.
So, he's not only recovering guys.
He's doing well.
He's being shot and injured, but again, won't leave the battlefield, even though told to.
Do I have that right?
Yeah, he was injured several times.
He was hit with grenade fragments and lost the ability to use his trigger finger.
So he was forced to shoot his rifle with his pinky, and he was shot in the leg.
And he still stayed in the fight.
So, the accounts of that battle, right at that time, noted the heroics here.
And I should mention that then-Captain Paris Davis was one of the first African-American
or Black Special Forces officers and serving in Vietnam at that time.
And this is 1965-ish, so the country is still dealing with a lot of racial issues.
But, awards and decorations in the military are all about the next guy up the line writing
it up and sending it up.
So, Neil, why don't you talk a little bit about what happened in that 1965 period about
write-ups and why it's 58 years later, and we're only now talking about him being awarded
the Medal of Honor.
First things that you do when trying to recover or look at any of these medals and awards
is FOIA all of the surrounding information.
And the National Archives had what they called the Paris State Medal of Honor Packet.
Well, we FOIAed that and got it back, and it was not a 1965 Medal of Honor packet at
all.
What it was, it was a 1969 hearing into his medals and awards in the Medal of Honor.
In those documents, we also found official testimony given to this Army hearing by his
commander, Billy Cole, that he had indeed written him up for the Medal of Honor and had taken
it to Natchirang, the fifth group headscorps at that time.
Also, we found supporting evidence that this was written up by his commander in 1965 interviews
with the reporter Charlie Black.
There are two instances of him mentioning that he'd written Colonel Davis.
So that's what led to us discovering that this was truly a lost award, that it had been
created.
The packet and paperwork had been assembled.
It was put in at Natchirang, and at that point it should have generated a first review and
multiple copies would have gone out.
They were going to Saigon, they were going to Sink Pack, and ultimately the Pentagon.
And no copies were ever found.
So that choke point at group headquarters at Natchirang was where we determined that
it had been most likely trashed.
Because you just don't misplace something like it.
This is about the most important thing that's going up the chain at this point.
You get to the point, I think, as an experienced researcher as you are, where something doesn't
smell right at that point, does it?
No, it doesn't.
And it's not even a small packet at that.
It would have probably been at minimum 40 pages, and even our recreated middle of honor
packet was around 90, so.
Well this gets lost, quote unquote, lost in the 1960s, and then just sort of goes away.
Nobody talks about it.
How does, and Jim Morari, why don't you jump in here.
How do you keep this alive?
This issue alive for so long.
I know you got involved about eight years ago, but you'd worked on some of these other
things, and when Neil called you up and said, hey, you want to put your talents to work
here, you said yes, but it had to be like, wait a minute, this has been cold for decades.
Well, that's only partially true.
In 1969, there was an inquiry, Billy Cole, who is a battalion commander, was still alive
at that time, and he was pushing this from the get-go, and there was, we found the orders
that they had been ordered to recreate the award package, but nobody ever saw that award
package again.
And then in 1981, Billy Waw, who is probably the most famous or the most notorious, depending
on how you look at it, Special Forces CIA guy, who was one of the people whose parents
saved, Billy Waw submitted a letter not sworn to that talked about Paris' heroics and character,
and he tried to keep it alive, and there was an Army Ranger, you know, there was a whole
platoon of Sherpas, as you'd describe them, trying to keep this deal alive, but nobody
really knew where the friction points were, where the obstacles were, until Neil got involved
in about 2014.
Neil had been working on the Barry Michael Rose Medal of Honor, rising out of Operation
Tailwind, and so Neil got involved in that with the team of, I guess, half a dozen, mostly
former Army guys that were trying to push this thing forward, and Neil turned out to
be the most knowledgeable, experienced, aware of the regulations and the problem guy, and
he jumped in with both feet and ended up really taking over the program because of his vast
knowledge.
That's when he shows up like a kitten on my doorstep, saying, well, that's this little
problem.
Sweet talked him right into it, didn't you, Neil?
Yeah, you know, like a complete dumbass, I completely forgot about the don't bottle
here for nothing.
See, he was Army, you were Marine, you walked right into it.
I knew it was time to call in the Marines.
Well, Neil, again, this is one of these things where you go like it doesn't smell right,
it doesn't feel right, what happened, how do you lose two packages of this size, and
knowing the regulations as you do, times your enemy on these because you're losing witnesses,
you're losing certifications.
Tell us about some of those hurdles.
Well, we lost Sergeant Morgan was one of the men that was on it.
He was killed three months after the action.
He was most likely one of the first eyewitnesses.
We had Billy, while Billy Wall was still surviving.
We also had the testimony of his commander, Billy Cole, who had the foresight to have
his daughter notarize it, to write it down and notarize it for him.
Plus, we had all kinds of surrounding supporting evidence, including those 1969 documents that
the National Archives are holding.
And you essentially recreated a package.
It's not the original, it's not the second go round.
It's a third package, if you will, for the Medal of Honor for Colonel Paris Davis.
But how do you get that?
Okay, I got a bunch of documents here.
How do I push that forward?
Is this where the connections help?
Some, generally, everything is required in a package.
So it's a DA41638 nomination for award.
It's got to be filled out perfectly.
You have to have signatures of anybody in the chain of command or note where they have,
if they're deceased or when they have died.
You also have to have a proposed narrative, a proposed citation.
I witnessed statements supporting evidence.
There's a whole checklist of parts that go into any medal and award packet.
Also the description of the action, the after action reviews, stuff like that.
So that's pretty general for any medal or award, any valid medal or award.
So once you get all that put together, in a general order, along with a summary, that's
when you need to find a member of Congress who is a pass-through.
So this falls under the US Code Title X, Section 1130, which is a process for lost, missing,
or downgraded medals and awards.
So then we then went up to Capitol Hill to find someone who would not only pass it through,
but we were also looking for somebody who would be a champion of it as well.
We found some, it's no problem finding somebody to pass it through.
And we got Senator Keynes and Warner's offices to do that for us.
And then it's a matter of following up with for not, which is the awards and decorations
branch, the first gatekeeper, making sure they got it, making sure they understand it,
making sure that everything is complete.
And a first kickback is almost guaranteed with anything, because that's kind of them
doing their due diligence.
And then you address that.
So it's constantly putting together the package, getting the package submitted, making sure
it's in the channel, and then babysitting.
And this is really a labor of love for the team that's doing this.
This is a time that Jim Moriarty is putting in, this is time Neil Thornton is putting
in, other people are putting in, trying to advance this.
And you were involved in it for nine years.
Other people have been in maybe longer, but really the work over the eight, nine years,
is there a point at which you say, hey, this is going nowhere?
Or you just have to stay on it and believe that in the end you'll be successful?
We knew we were in the right in the beginning, and we knew that injustice had been done,
and it was still existing.
So the thought of giving up didn't occur to us.
So let me put this to Jim Moriarty, who probably has to dance a little less than Neil does
on sensitive issues, because Neil's, as they say, this nationally renowned researcher.
And Jim's a lawyer and a marine.
So you knew you were in the right on this because there was clearly some biases going
on back in the 60s, back in the 80s, even into the, here in the 2000s, the 2020.
I mean, do you confront those directly?
I know as a trial lawyer, a mass tort trial lawyer, you like to confront things directly.
But how do you navigate this to advance it, but confront the biases?
Jim, you're asking a pretty sophisticated question.
Well, I'm going to a sophisticated guy who grew up in Texas.
You can deal with this.
I know you can.
There's, I lived during the 60s.
I spent two and a half years in Vietnam.
I know what the military was like, and I know what the United States was like in terms of
the prevalence of racism in the 60s, in the 70s, and the 80s, and indeed today.
So the fact that the first package disappeared, it had been an accident.
The fact that the second package disappeared, now it's no longer an accident.
It's sort of like the Twin Towers.
One fell, maybe it was a navigational problem.
When they both went down, it was the deliberate act.
Neil and I nashed our teeth about this because I didn't want to make this case about racism,
but also wasn't going to take no for an answer.
So we pussy-footed around the issue when we redid the package in 2015 and 2016, where
we didn't hang our hats on the racism issue, but we tried to let the reader figure out
for themselves what had happened.
Certainly, certainly.
In 2016, and it was a unrelenting battle.
I was serving on the board of directors of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation.
Richard Spencer was secretary of the Navy.
Jim Mattis was secretary of defense.
John Kelly, who I worked for, was initially Homeland Security, and then he goes over to
Chiefs of the White House.
I had the best connections in the administration that I could possibly have, and I was hitting
on every single one of them because the idea that this man was not going to be awarded
the Medal of Honor for what he did was simply not in my vocabulary.
What I did, I went up to Mattis at the awards dinner, and I had these two chapters from
Billy Cole's memoirs that really tell the history of the Vietnam War.
Archkof's in there, Peter Arnett's in there, John Wayne's in there, Barry Sadler, the
legend of the Green Bray.
These two chapters, which are only cover of all parts of the war, really were a core
history of the war.
Billy Cole tells this wonderful story about how extraordinary Paris's courage was, and
my attitude was, anybody's got an IQ over 75 that reads this, going to realize this
guy, everything needs to get the Medal of Honor.
Well Neil successfully pushed the award out of Knox, the initial naysayer was Fort Knox,
and we got it out of there.
In fact, we later learned that the, I think it was Ray Epps, who was the acting Secretary
of the Army in 2017 or 2018, sent it out of the Army to the Secretary of Defense's office,
and that turned out to be where the real hurt was.
There was a, there were two confounding facts.
One fact, number one, is Billy Watt has spent way too many years with the CIA, and sometimes
his stories don't match.
And Billy, in his 1981 letter, which was turned into an affidavit in, I think, the early teens,
where Billy swears that Paris saved his life as he did, Billy comes out with a couple of
so-called books, one of them was Stalking the Jackal or something like that, and in
these books he tells the Battle of Bonsang, where he's sort of set out to be the controlling
hero, and he claims some guy named Reinberg saved his life.
Now, so there's two confounding facts.
One of them is that Billy Watt says at one point in time, Paris Day was saved my life,
but at another point in time, Reinberg saved his life.
That was confounding fact number one.
In fact, number two is that in 1969, four years after the battle, Reinberg is awarded
the DSC, and in his DSC citation, it says that he saved the life of a soldier.
Now keep in mind, there's 200 rough pups out there, the South Vietnamese CIDG soldiers,
and there were four Americans.
The Silver Star citation, the interim Silver Star citation that was issued in 1965 for
Paris specifically credits him for saving the life of his team sergeant, and his team
sergeant is Billy Watt.
So in my view, there was no infounding evidence, except that Billy Watt was having a hard time
keeping her story straight, but there was so much supporting evidence, Billy Cole's
memoirs, other witnesses statements, Billy Watt's earlier foreign affidavit, that I thought
this Reinberg business was just all bullshit.
I thought nobody in their right mind would think that there's a conflict with who Paris
saved because this very Silver Star citation says it was his team sergeant.
There was only one team sergeant on the mission.
What really proved to be interesting throughout this eight year battle is I focused in on finding
the crew chiefs from the helicopters, finding the pilots from the helicopters, finding the
remaining living witnesses from the battle.
We literally, and to tell you the lengths we went to to find supporting evidence, I think
there was the New York Times story where there was a fact pilot who was describing his part
in the mission.
And the guy's name was Speedy Gonzalez.
So here's all the facts I know about Speedy Gonzalez.
He's in the Air Force.
He flies a Ford air controller aircraft, and his name is Speedy Gonzalez.
Like I'm supposed to do something with that?
Start searching.
That's computer researcher about not having the slightest clue where I'm going to find
this guy.
And all I was doing was just bitching, I wasn't making a request.
Well I go to bed and I wake up the next morning and I've got Speedy Gonzalez's name and address
and phone number on my email and it turns out he's a retired Air Force pilot who lives
over in San Antonio and I jump on the car and drive over to interview him.
Oh my goodness.
And I track down some of the Huey pilots, you know, the pushback, part of the pushback
we got is, well we need more living eyewitnesses.
And I'm sitting there going, you son of a bitch has waited 50 years until almost everybody's
dead and now you want more living eyewitnesses.
As it turned out, the Reynberg problem was the core problem because there was maybe a
single individual in the Department of Defense's office who took the position that Reynberg's
DSC trumped everything.
Now keep in mind, Neil and I have talked to more living witnesses and now disteeped
witnesses who knew about that mission and any other two people on the planet.
And nobody has ever said anything about Reynberg ever saving anybody.
Not Colonel Cole, not anybody else on the mission, not Ron Dice, nobody.
Not Paris Davis, not this 19.
We actually tracked down the hour long Phil Donahue interview with Ron Dice and Paris
tells the whole story about how this deal went down and you can't watch that without
concluding there's a guy who was there who knows what happened and who described me with
that.
Now of course you can't be awarded a Medal of Honor on your own testimony.
You've got to be awarded a Medal of Honor based on other people's testimony but it was
certainly cooperative evidence and Ron Dice was a direct eyewitness to important facts
but go ahead.
I wanted to come back to this, how do you break this loose because this thing got lost
a couple of times then it got hung up at Fort Knox for a period of years then it got hung
up in the Secretary of Defense's Office of Manpower and Reserve Affairs apparently for
three years then it got hung up in I think the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Every time it gets hung up how do you bust it loose Neil?
Well I want to answer that question because I was there when the page was blank.
We were stopped dead in our tracks in the fall of 2020.
We had done everything we knew, we had gone to everybody that had any pull, we had found
more witnesses, we had found more facts and we were up against the wall.
Now we weren't quit but we also weren't succeeding and Chris Miller gets appointed acting Secretary
of Defense and I get a call from now Major General Kevin Leahy who says look Miller
is a fifth group guy, he's a good guy, you know I had been pushing to have my son awarded
a medal for Valor for his combat when he was killed which the Army wouldn't grant because
he was supposedly working for somebody besides the Army but late he calls me and so I said
yeah let's go do something but oh by the way while we're there asking for some relief
we need to ask for some relief for Parris Davis so later he calls me back the next day
says I've talked to Miller, Miller's a good guy, he's honest like Stinkhan you know what
and he's going to appoint one of his key aides to work with you on the Congressional Medal
of Honor for Parris Davis.
So he assigns this former JAG officer to work with me, we jump back in it with both feet
and this time we confronted the racial issue with on.
It was a, I had had enough, it was I just don't want to hear, we lost the package twice
but we have no idea what that relates to, well you know that's just nonsense and that
is so incredible so we jumped in, we did a multimedia presentation and by this time
there was a team of thousands on the Sherpa team, I get a call from one of my buddies
in San Antonio or in Houston who's a former fifth group guy and he's talked a gang company
executive in Great Britain into doing graphics for us so for example one of the key points
that we had was that Parris had saved another soldier's life two months before Longsong
and had been awarded a soldier's medal, I think he's won only six, Neil would know
that six people had been awarded soldiers medal and medals for valor.
So they're doing all these graphics for us, we tracked down photographs from Ron Dice
and other people so we can recreate the mission and what we also did was we did an overlay
of what was going on in the United States at exactly the same time that Parris Davis
was so heroically serving our country.
The riots in Selma, the famous bridge that they just had the 60th and 58th anniversary
on so we confronted it head on and we did this multimedia presentation which if you
haven't seen it I would certainly encourage you to see it and we put this whole package
together in about six weeks and then Chris Miller before Trump went out of office issued
an order that the Department of Defense was to do a review of this whole process basically
to answer the question why this had been done a long time ago and so that's what busted
it loose and then the really weird deal is that after Trump left office and after the
Biden administration came in then we continued to get a year and a half of pushback.
Many Medal of Honor recipients are and they are humble men who have done extraordinary
things but they served, they knew what their duty was and they went way beyond it but getting
the award is not necessarily about their individual recognition or rewards.
It's really for the community and we were talking about this earlier Jim Moriarty on
the Getting Purple Hearts for guys and it's really about what this will mean to Paris
Davis' family, the African American community, the Special Forces community, that much larger
recognition that the Medal of Honor provides to folks.
So now you've heard the back story on how Paris Davis finally got recognized after multiple
lost packages for his heroics in the Medal of Honor.
These are amazing stories that we're able to bring to you on Veterans Radio and it's
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It has some upcoming events that you may want to participate in so go to NVBDC.org and
check that out if you're a veteran owned business.
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We'll have a few words from sponsors and then back to talk about and listen to you
and interview with Fallen and Wounded Soldiers Fund.
Military veterans touch everyone's life.
I'm guessing right now you're thinking of a veteran, a close friend, relative, maybe
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Their number again, 1-800-693-4800.
We want to welcome to Veterans Radio today a couple of the Board members of the Fallen
and Wounded Soldiers Fund, a Michigan-based organization.
It's a 501C3 been around for a while and we're glad to have Chris Cornelius as a Board member
on with us.
Chris is a veteran and actually one of the co-founders of the fund.
And we have the President of the fund, Robert Cremalvian as well.
Both these guys have been involved with the fund for quite a number of years and it was
time to come back around and talk about what they've been doing over the years and some
of the success stories and upcoming events.
Chris, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Jim, thanks for having us.
Rob, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Yeah, absolutely, Jim.
Thanks for having us and for all those who don't know, Jim has been a staunch supporter
of veterans and all their concerns and issues for many, many years.
So thank you for all the work you've done over the years.
Well thank you.
Chris, I'm going to start with you because you were there at the beginning in 2006.
Talk to us about what you saw, what the group saw as the need and what the mission and purpose
of Fallen and Wounded Soldiers Fund is.
Well, when we started, you know, it was early 2006 like you had mentioned and one of the
issues that were happening at the time there was that the time that it would take for veterans
to get their VA claims awarded was very long and we were also dealing with something I
would consider new to the VA because of the IED explosions was traumatic brain injuries.
So we kind of recognize really quickly that there's a gap there and other things too.
It's not just the TBI but sometimes it takes a little bit longer than what it should be
for a veteran to get some help.
So we just decided we're going to step together as a community and help out Michigan veterans.
Well one of the things that I always found amazing about this board and this effort was
it is all volunteer effort and it really involves the business community.
Rob, why don't you talk a little bit about who gets involved and who helps out with Fallen
and Wounded Soldiers Fund?
Yeah, and you hit it on the head.
It's an all-volunteer organization which from the first days that Chris and the other founders
created Fallen and Wounded Soldiers Fund it was always going to be about direct impact
on the lives of the veterans and their families and it wasn't going to be about any of the
other things.
Overhead costs were always going to be kept very, very low.
To this day as much as we've grown and added things we're still about 97 cents of every
dollar.
It's a little higher than that but goes directly into the hands of the veteran in need as opposed
to overhead expenses.
We have zero paid staff so we're working board.
We've got 15 board members and that's what drives everything we do.
So when you see a fast response to a veteran that's a board member that's working hard
to make sure that we do all of our diligence and get things, all the boxes checked and
then get the money out to the veteran in the way that it needs to go.
When you see an event that we put on, we're not paying somebody to do that.
That's us out there doing the hard work.
So the board members just come really from across the spectrum, just people that believe
in helping veterans in need.
When it comes to things like corporate sponsors and individual sponsors and volunteers and
just all those other people that are out there helping us and supporting us, that runs again
but too.
It can be sometimes it's organizations that you may think would have an interest in veterans
and helping those veterans that are in need.
But it's also that company up the road that you may or may not have done business with
but they have for whatever reason the desire to help veterans.
So that's been one of the areas that's been kind of fun to watch is just all the different
people that get involved and help and all the different stories.
People know veterans right within their lives, whether it's a brother or father, whether
it's somebody up the road that served.
Hopefully none of them have any of the issues that we deal with but we run across those
too.
A kid up the road that got hurt and I remember the difficulties he had when he returned and
had this injury and they love that groups like us are out there helping.
So we just really run the gambit across everybody here in Michigan that's really willing to
help.
We get a lot of people that realize what we do is important but also the way we do it
is so efficient.
And the fact that again going back to that direct impact, they give us a dollar, it's
going where they want it to go.
It's not going to parties or expenses or overhead or advertising or marketing, it's going to
the veterans.
So that part really helps us gain supporters and keep supporters.
Well, I think one of the things that has always worked well for fallen wounded soldiers,
Chris, is that direct support.
There's not a whole lot of middlemen, you don't give money to agencies who give it to
somebody else.
You really have a model that lets you get when necessary the dollars right in the hands
of the veteran.
Can you talk about how that works?
Sure, yeah.
We have a website that any veteran can go on to or a family member or even a friend
and contact us and say, here, this is what's going on.
And there's a phone number they can call as well on the website.
And what happens is that goes right to our distribution committee and the distribution
committee chair will call the veteran back generally within 24 to 48 hours.
From there, she gathers all the pertinent information and then every Monday that committee
meets and that's when they make a determination.
And from there, the checks are cut that week.
So you're looking at cases many times less than a week, they're getting distributions.
So it's as quick as it can be.
Yeah.
And just to kind of fill in there, I think people don't really understand how direct
we interact with veterans.
But Chris is right.
They make a phone call into the website.
It's an 800 number, but it rings directly to our executive director, Dr. Lin Phillips.
And typically, we measure response in days, not weeks or months, but really it rarely
goes past a full day where we haven't had contact with the veteran.
And it rarely goes past a week where we haven't done the sufficient amount of diligence.
And we take that part very serious.
You can call and say, hey, I'm a veteran and I have this injury and I have this need.
And we just can't take that at face value.
We have to kind of corroborate all of those things and do the, so we have to figure out,
okay, this is in fact the veteran.
They have engaged with the VA.
They do have the injuries that they stated.
They were honorably discharged.
And then we have to go back and figure out that each of these bills or whatever it is
that they need help with are legitimate.
And then on top of all that, we can't just write a check and hand it out to a veteran.
Because we can't ensure that if we're paying five different bills that all final those
would go.
99% of the time, it probably would.
But we want to be very careful with the money that comes into us from other donors.
We want them to feel comfortable knowing that it's going the right spot.
So that means we're paying bills direct.
And again, we can't wait a week or a month in many cases.
Sometimes it has to be done right away.
So this process is really fast.
And people don't realize even the end of the process, the paying of the checks, we've
got an amazing treasurer, Lynn Minish, who every night is out there making sure that
lights are kept on and things like that.
Because you've got to pay these bills.
Very few veterans come to us and say, hey, I've got like in six months, I've got this
bill that's got to be paid.
They come to us because they've exhausted every avenue they can.
They've gone to friends and family.
They've exhausted all their savings.
They've run up credit card bills just trying to keep their heads above water.
That's when they come to us.
They don't have anywhere else to turn.
So these things have to happen unbelievably fast.
And I think of all the things that our organization does, that's what I'm most proud of, is that
the undying dedication to making sure these things get done and get done fast so that
we really are helping people in a way that I think people can understand how unbelievably
fast but also how difficult that is.
Because we all have jobs and families and obligations.
Chris and I both have sat at different times in the distribution committee.
That's a weekly call, nine o'clock on a Monday.
The last thing I want to do on a Monday is listen to some of these cases because to be
totally honest, they're not fluffy, kind of like feel good cases, right?
These are all people having issues, going through a hard time.
And sometimes we have to say no.
They don't fit the mission and we do our best to find places that do fit.
And that doesn't feel great.
So it's not the best way to end your Monday night, but it's an essential function.
So to me, that's what I'm most proud of is the dedication and the speed by which we do
things.
Well, and Chris, Rob touched on it a little bit and we're talking to Chris Cornelius,
who's a co-founder and board member of Fallen Wounded Soldiers Fund and its president, Robert
Grimaldi.
But Chris, he touched on it.
A lot of this is just basic needs.
I mean, you're helping a guy out, generally a guy, women I'm assuming as well.
But you're helping out with basic needs.
Talk about those basic needs.
Well, I can give you a quick example of just one case if you like.
Go right ahead.
So we'll just call him Mr. L. So Mr. L came to us years ago, but this is a very common
scenario for us even to this day.
So he's 100% VA rated right now or service connected right now.
He was in an ID explosion, suffered PTSD, TBI, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injuries
and needed help with the mortgage.
They were facing evictions.
So some of the needs, and this is where it gets really sad is that diapers.
He just needed diapers.
He needed baby food, food and electricity.
And at the time he called, he was using old t-shirts as diapers for his kids.
So he received the VA rating, but the check hadn't started and the military paid stop.
It was 18 months that he was without income.
So we took care of all his bills.
We took care of him, his family, his kids.
And that's what we're still doing today.
And these are, as I said, just sort of basic needs.
The stuff the rest of us don't maybe think too much about it.
And that is food, clothing, shelter over your head.
Hey, if your car breaks down, you can't get to work or you can't get to the medical clinic
anymore.
I mean, this is really basic stuff, isn't it, Rob?
Yeah.
I mean, it's rare that somebody comes to us for something that's frivolous.
It's happened over the years and that's not our role.
It's the very, like you said, basic things.
Sometimes people come to us or homeless.
And so we try to get them into, we had a woman and her daughter just a couple weeks ago that
were living in their car and then trying to find shelters here and there.
And neither one of those are unbelievably safe places for a young woman and her daughter.
And so we were able to find temporary housing for them, if you will, in a hotel.
And then we're able to get them housing after that.
But basic things like that.
But then it does go into things like just trying to get assistance for food or for keeping
the lights on, mortgages.
So I can't tell you how many times we get involved where somebody is two or three months
behind on their rent and they've gotten eviction notice.
We wish they would have come to us a month earlier so we would have more time to sort
of work through things.
But again, they never come to us until they just can't cope with what's going on and
keep up.
And so it's never for anything frivolous.
It's almost always for the very basics of the basics.
Cars, rent, food, diapers, formula for the baby, things like that.
And unfortunately, with inflation and all those, the pinch we all feel at the grocery
store, veterans aren't immune to that.
They have the same issues we have.
So prices are going up across the board.
So that hurts too when they're on assistance of whatever level.
And so those things take a bigger bite out of the budget, which means there's less money
available to keep the lights on or whatever it may be.
During COVID, we had a lot of veterans that just weren't set up to have three kids at
home on their current Wi-Fi.
They maybe didn't have the equipment or the available network to sort of log into.
So those kind of things came up.
We certainly weren't prepared for that in a sense that we didn't think that was coming.
Nobody did during COVID.
But we had to then sort of pivot and respond to different kinds of needs.
But those are the things.
It's just keeping their heads above water, keeping them able to be in homes, keeping
lights on, things like that.
And we'll note one thing that we've done really in just the last couple of years that's been
exciting as we opened a veterans housing center in Canton, Michigan, in a partnership with
Canton.
And again, keeping overhead and unbelievably low, but having the ability to get the veterans
into a housing center, but also to have a community of veterans that have gone through
the same issues they've had and a place to meet and talk to other veterans in an area
where everybody's been in that same exact spot so they can talk through issues.
I can't tell a veteran what they're feeling.
I've never been through what they're going through.
But other veterans that have, they can have a different conversation.
So those kind of things have been very helpful, especially post-COVID era.
But you're exactly right, Jim.
It's never anything frivolous.
It's always just basic, basic needs.
Now, we're going to reach through veteransradio.org here.
We're going to reach nationally an audience that's going to hear for Fallen Wounded Soldiers
Fund for the first time.
But Chris, why don't we explain in your mission, what's your geographic territory?
How does a veteran, if you will, qualify for reaching out?
So for us, they're either a Michigan resident deployed or they are a current Michigan resident.
So that's, and the veteran, honorably discharged.
And then what we do is, like Rob was saying, we do help out with immediate needs.
If you don't mind, I just want to include one other thing was that we also help when
there's an injured, you were on the board at the time when we had some injured veterans
they were deployed and something happened.
And so we help bring that family together, incur that cost for them and say, hey, we're
here, you just focus on getting better.
Bring the loved ones around that you need and we'll take care of that.
We had a soldier that was out at Fort Custer, two soldiers and a treat fell on them.
And one was very, very, was injured very badly and we helped his family heal.
And then the real nice thing is that, like with Mr. Elm, he called up probably, I think,
it's probably 12 years later and gave us a great thank you.
You know, he left a voice message that was just beautiful, thanking us from the bottom
of his heart.
So the impact that we have on these folks, it's life changing for them.
Oh, absolutely.
And I want to give some, you can't do this work without financial resources.
And Rob, I'd like you to give some shout outs to some of the sponsors who've been helping
the fund all these years to make sure that you can do the very good work we're talking
about.
Yeah, I mean, you starting to get into there's just so many of them.
Some of the some of the larger sponsors and that's called more well known nationally.
I mean, General Motors GM here in Detroit has been a huge sponsor of us for quite a
few years.
You know, you get into a lot of other companies like, you know, Aero strategies that, you
know, Jeff Steyer's been a supporter since day one, I think, and still is a supporter.
You know, Chris as a as a head of our corporate sponsors, I don't know if you want to jump
in maybe some of the ones that from day one through now, but I mean, there's, you know,
if you go to the website, just as an aside, they're all kind of listed there as well.
But that's the great thing about this organization is there's been so many people from across
the board.
And a lot of them have been sponsors, right, Chris, back me up here, 16, 17 years in some
cases.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, we still have some of the original board members.
We had some of the original sponsors.
We've had major pharmaceuticals, Cardinal, pharma, pseudocals, IFRAT, great, great supporter.
We have Aero, as you mentioned, Trilomed has been a supporter for years.
And you know, I feel bad for just not grabbing off more.
No, no, it's an unfair question.
But I bring it up because if you want to help out, if you want to help veterans in this
direct reach out approach, then you got to help with the finances and the sponsors do
that, but also participating in events.
And one of the reasons we're talking is you have some upcoming events.
Rob, you want to talk about those events?
Yeah, you're exactly right that we can never raise enough money, right?
Because when we raise, we, you know, there's always need out there.
And I know people might say, well, you know, the war is over.
We're not seeing it in the news.
But the kind of problems we're seeing today are the ones that, one, are a little harder
to diagnose sometimes.
You know, things like traumatic brain injury and things like that aren't always the easiest
for the physicians and the doctors to diagnose, especially when they're longer term issues.
But also, you know, we're seeing a lot of, you know, again, those debilitating injuries
that are just building up.
And so the need's actually bigger than it was, and it's for longer time, right?
Each of that we're helping tends to be a little bit longer than before.
So, you know, we do have two events coming up on September 11th.
It's our annual September 11th, remember, it's golf outing.
And then, and that'll be held at Shenandoah Golf Course here in the Detroit, Michigan area.
And then April 19th is our annual gala.
And so that, you know, we typically get a good crowd there anywhere from, well, we sell
out.
That's always the goal is to sell out of wherever we're going to be.
And either one of those, you can find on our website, fwsf.org.
And if you're unable to attend or if you're listening now and you like the mission, you
like what we're doing, but you live someplace outside of Michigan, you know, it's easy to
donate as well.
There's a donate button on that front page.
When you first get to the landing page of the website, you can click there.
And that's a pretty easy process as well.
And any of those three certainly helps.
And if you're in the area, absolutely would love to have you out at the golf outing coming
up in a few weeks, like I said, September 11th.
And you know, you can meet some of the board members, but you can also meet some of the
people we help that'll be there at the event.
And then just learn more about the organization.
Happy to sit down with anybody that's there and kind of walk them through what we do.
Certainly glad to have the opportunity to talk to Rob Gramalde, president and Chris
Cornelius, board member and co-founder of Fall Unwounded Soldiers Fund to get a little
bit more about what they do.
Check us out at veteransradio.org or Facebook.
We always need your financial support as well.
And Dale will be back next week with more stories and more interesting things to talk
about.
We always try to bring you stuff that maybe you don't hear somewhere else or you're not
going to get in the general press.
So we search high and low for interesting stories and people to talk about and certainly
getting a chance to talk about what goes on behind the scenes in obtaining a Medal of
Honor as was done for Paris Davis is really interesting.
So I'm Jim Fossone with Veterans Radio and until next time on Veterans Radio, you are
dismissed.