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Texas Air National Guard Boots Sick Soldier
Continued from page 2
Published on July 29, 2008 at 11:09am
In a July 15 e-mail, Captain Steven Lowenstein, who was investigating Franco's complaints, wrote Thormin and other command personnel asking about their characterization of Franco's return to duty as "an oversight and miscommunication." In a subsequent e-mail, Thormin said Franco "has been on continuous duty much longer than he should have been, he has been on borrowed time." Franco says he didn't understand how there had been any miscommunication, his name was on the weekly slide show in Commander Lanny B. McNeely's office detailing who was on sick leave and medical hold.
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Margaret Downing
Jennifer and Jason Franco are trying to figure out how they've going to survive.
Subject(s):
Texas Air National Guard, military bureaucracy, service-related illness, loss of health insuranceOn July 18, when he went to copy his personnel records from his file in Thormin's office, some pages were missing, he says. Office personnel went into Thormin's office and found the missing pages on her desk, including the e-mails about the SF600 request and medical re-evaluation. That same day, he received a sealed file from the medical office that was supposed to contain all his medical and dental records. When he opened it later, he discovered the SF600 was not there.
On August 14, he met with Command Chief Priscilla Leger, who told him his medical request data had been entered into the wrong system by Tavira and that none of the e-mails mattered because of the mistake. He asked about the missing paperwork, and was told by Leger the next day that it had been an honest mistake that medical personnel made copying his files.
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Jason Franco used to run all the time, he says. He was always outdoors, playing basketball, always physical. Now he avoids the sun like the plague.
He used to make about $4,000 a month. Now the VA gives him $1,152 a month, of which $500 goes to support his daughters from his two prior marriages.
He's been turned down twice for SSI benefits from Social Security and has recently hired a lawyer to try to turn that around.
In 2003, he and his wife bought a house on Highway 3 to be near Ellington. They also were able to buy an acre of land out in Rosharon for sometime later; he wanted his kids to have a bigger backyard to run in.
The house is standing empty, the land undeveloped and both are about to be foreclosed on. They've already had one vehicle repossessed and may soon lose another. His wife's salary is about a fourth of what he used to make, and they don't make enough money to pay for the insurance premiums on their son.
He says he's been told his jaw is in a constant state of deterioration. He has another lump there that he thinks should be biopsied.
They live now with her parents. As Franco puts it, they've lost everything; it's like they're back in high school again, starting all over.
He's written letters to Congressmen Gene Green and Nick Lampson, both of whom wrote letters to the military on his behalf, and nothing happened.
In the year since he's been out of the service, Franco has made two stabs at other jobs. He tried to be a car salesman and lasted one week walking the lot in the sun. "It felt like I was there six months."
He went on a trial run for the next place, a uniform delivery business. He figured he could deliver uniforms, but when he got on the route with the driver, "they had those big old rubber mats like from stores from outside people walk on, some are five to seven feet long and heavy and that day he had over 100 to deliver. Nah I can't do that."
He's a high school graduate without any college. He thinks he could be a real estate agent because he could rest during the day and work when he felt able. He went to classes, studied all the material, but "there are some credit issues," namely the car that got repossessed right after he had the cancer treatment, and he's "on hold" awaiting clearance to take the state and national tests for a license.
According to a couple of Guard veterans who talked with the Press, the Guard has always had its rules and expects its people to be able to decipher and adhere to them. One described it as a well-oiled machine that works fine as long as you don't attempt to get in its way. He wondered if Franco had met all his deadlines to respond to his notification that he was being dismissed and followed up on all the appeals open to him. The other said nobody explained anything to him when he left the Guard 15 years ago; they just refer you to the paperwork you signed when you joined.
Maybe Franco just wasn't savvy enough to stay the course, although on the other hand he had the brains to get and keep records of his encounters with authorities.
It certainly appears from the records Franco retained that there was a certain degree of service members covering ass, faulty memories and possibly some rewriting of history.
But by his own admission, Franco can't do the job anymore. In the private world, if you can't do the job you're fired. Of course, in private business you're not usually risking your life for your country.
When he was still making the rounds of base offices, he talked to one officer who, after listening to his story, told him that "Vietnam vets didn't get anything either."
"I told him I'd thought we'd gotten better since then," Franco says.
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