Opinion
Today’s homeless veterans reflect Depression era
“I work for a governor who cares about you and wants to maximize your benefits,” David Dupuis recently told a veteran at the Nazarene Church at 10th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in Oklahoma city.
Dupuis is a veterans service officer with the Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs and works with Oklahoma veterans who are seeking benefits from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He works out of an office in the Veterans Hospital, but in recent weeks he has been devoting his lunch hour on Fridays to assisting veterans who come to the Nazarene Church for a free meal.
The Friday luncheon at that church begins with an uplifting homily delivered by Rev. Lance Schmitz, who also advises the attendees that Dupuis is in attendance, and that he will be available for any veterans who wish to speak to him. Usually several veterans approach Dupuis’ table after they have finished eating, and the veterans service officer begins to put their names and supporting information on applications for benefits forms.
Most of the veterans do not have mailing addresses, but they leave phone numbers of friends and relatives with whom they keep in contact. Several of them say that they can pick up mail at the City Rescue Mission.
According to Dupuis, the majority of the nation’s homeless veterans have served in combat in the first Gulf War or in Iraq or Afghanistan, and many of the veterans he encounters at the Nazarene Church are combat veterans.
To observe Dupuis’ interaction with veterans is to receive a tutorial in the various programs operated by the USDVA for those who have served and the documents that are needed to apply for them. There is often a visible camaraderie between Dupuis and the veterans is reflected in the military jargon they use as they speak of units, military regulations and commanding officers. But the majority of the attendees eat their meal in somber silence, and some of them carry sacks that may contain the full extent of their worldly goods.
Rev. Schmitz appears to know many of the attendees, and speaks to them with kindness and warmth. While some of them have alcohol or drug problems, Schmitz reports that many of them were leading normal, middle class lives before they lost their jobs as a result of the recent economic downturn.
The National Endowment for the Humanities has a program known as “We the People” that this year is sending a book titled “Picturing America” to thousands of schools across the nation, seeking to familiarize students with American history through the use of photographs. One of the photos is titled “Migrant Mother” and was taken by Dorothea Lange in 1936 during the Great Depression in a pea pickers’ camp in California.
It features a woman with a deeply lined face holding two children who have turned their faces away from the camera. According to the material contained in “Picturing America,” the woman in the photo was a full blooded Cherokee Indian from Oklahoma who had just sold the tires on her car to buy food for her seven children. After the picture appeared in publications around the nation, the Roosevelt Administration sent 20,000 pounds of food to California migrant workers in response to widespread demands that something be done to alleviate their suffering.
There are men and women with similarly lined and worn faces at the Nazarene Church lunches, and it is possible that in time a photographer will immortalize their sadness in film.
WILLIAM F. O’BRIEN is an Oklahoma City attorney.
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