Volunteers Sought To Honor WW2 Vets

VFW Post 1301 (Marion, IL) will host a special award ceremony on Saturday afternoon, September 12th. The Post is seeking younger veterans--post 911--to pass out commemorative medals to "the Greatest Generation" at the special ceremony.        

If you would like to volunteer to be a presenter, stop by the JALC Office of Vetrans Resources and leave your name and contact information with Derek.        

Veterans Return To Campus

Dean of Student Services Terry Crain has just released Fall, 2009, enrollment figures. As of 09/03, a total of 244 veterans are enrolled at John A. Logan College for the fall term. Of that total, 65 are women; 179 are men.  Currently we do not have a breakdown by branch of service but hope to capture that data in the future.

VET TXT and VET MAIL

We are in the process of putting together two communications systems to better communicate with you. The first is Vet Text. This will be a text message system where we can quickly get in touch with you through your cell phone by text message. This our spin-off of Vol Txt.

Vet Mail will utilize your email accounts. Anyone who doesn't have email should consider starting one. Free email accounts are available from many sources. Hotmail, Lycos, and Yahoo are just three of many free email providers. I also teach an evening class in the Social Sciences division. If I have news for the class, I send it to them as members of my email group for that class. For example, if I am called away the day of class and cannot otherwise notify the students, I will email the class with that information. That might save someone a 25 mile drive only to discover that there is no class.

You will hear more about these communications systems shortly.

Veterans' Administration in St. Louis is Moving Slowly

If you have recently tried to contact the Veterans' Administration in St. Louis to check on the status of your benefits , you have probably been automatically put on "hold". Then after a lengthy wait, you are told that all representatives are busy and to please call back another time. If so, you aren't alone. We have run into similar problems ourselves.

We have been told that there was a computer crash at the St. Louis Center and that has also slowed things down. No doubt the Center has backed up its records: this is S.O.P. for any large public organization. But benefits may be slower than usual in arriving this year.