A Personal Commitment to Our Veterans & Families

My Granny is the kind of person who holds everything together without ever asking for attention. She has always been this way. She is proud of her family and the life she built with her husband who served, and like so many military spouses, she carried that experience with her for decades.

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Even after his passing, there were parts of his service that were never fully accessed or understood in terms of the benefits she was entitled to. Around 13 years later, she moved in with me. She wanted to move back to Florida where it was warmer, and she hoped to find her own living space, but with only the Social Security she was receiving, it simply wasn’t enough.

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That is when I started asking more invasive financial questions. She didn’t believe there would be benefits that could help. I was insistent that a Vietnam veteran with 20 years of service in the Navy had earned a pension that would transfer to his widow.

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Spoiler: luckily, I was right.

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Walking through the process with her and the Volusia County Veteran Service Office, I got to witness firsthand that it wasn’t that the support didn’t exist. It was that the pathway to it was unclear, intimidating, and difficult to navigate during a time of grief. There was a lack of clear, stable guidance through the process.

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That experience has stayed with me.

 

She shouldn’t have had to wait that long to access what was already earned through service, and I’m sure she is not the only one. Many widows and surviving spouses could also be quietly carrying that same delay and uncertainty.

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This page exists because of her and because every veteran’s family deserves a clearer, more accessible path to the support they have earned.