I recently spent the day Jim Dao from the New York Times as he profiled Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs, Eric K. Shinseki, while he was in North Carolina visiting the VA Hospital in Durham, as well as dedicating a memorial at Duke University for alumni killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. You may remember Shinseki from the run in with then Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, over the number of troops needed for the invasion of Iraq.
Shinskei also met veterans from Vietnam and the current wars in the Middle East, including Jonathan Kuniholm, pictured above, who is working with the DOD on prosthetics research in hopes of finding money to help advance the technology, which is quite dated by this point. Kuniholm is an Iraq veteran with the Marines and lost an arm in a roadside bomb explosion. Listen to his Fresh Air interview here.
After working with soldiers and families over the last couple of years on my War At Home project, it was really interesting to see how politics and the administration fits into the whole picture of care for returning veterans and families and I was pleased to find Sec. Shinseki open to ideas and seemingly willing to listen to the concerns of veterans, both old and young, over what they feel is lacking or needed for their care.
It was a whirlwind day full of meetings and speeches, one had to work hard to keep up with the Secretary, but very fun and enlightening.
Read the whole profile here
Full edit of the photos here