Sean C. Morgan
Agent Orange may be the face of a public relations campaign for Vietnam Veterans of America’s “Faces of Agent Orange” public relations campaign, but it was clear last week at a local town hall that it’s not the focus.
“Tonight, we have several purposes,” said retired Director of the Oregon Department of Veterans Affairs Jim Willis at the town hall, hosted by the VVA Chapter 585, Mid-Valley, at the River Center in Lebanon on May 6. The goal is to reach out to veterans, their families, health practitioners and disability-related agencies.
Agent Orange, a toxic herbicide also known as dioxin, is just one example of toxic modern warfare and the damage it causes to veterans and their families. Toxic warfare didn’t end with the Vietnam War and the use of Agent Orange. Soldiers during Desert Storm came home with mysterious illnesses, and atomic veterans continue to face health problems.
The VVA is gathering stories from local town hall meetings across the nation to put faces to the problem. In the case of Agent Orange, health impacts can linger for up to seven generations. The campaign is an effort to educate the American public, support legislation and help veterans and their families.
The VVA is endorsing Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s (D-Conn.) legislation, S1602, which calls for all veterans exposed to toxic substances and their descendants to be diagnosed and treated. The organization continues to fight for expansion of the list of health conditions, including birth defects, presumptively associated with agent Orange. Sixty-eight cancers and other conditions are already recognized.
“We needed to put a human face on the children and grandchildren,” said Mokie Pratt Porter, director of communications for the VVA. The problems still exist. Since 2005, the VVA has hosted some 72 meetings across the country.
“We’re getting so much response to this PR campaign,” Porter said. “I think we’re going to win this one if all goes well. We want to hear your stories and how Agent Orange has affected your families.”
In a video, Jack McManus, who participated in Operation Ranch Hand, which sprayed Agent Orange in Vietnam, explained the history of the herbicide. Agent Orange was used most extensively in 1967 and 1968.
At the end of World War II, military leaders came up with the idea of using herbicides, he said. The government continued research through the 1950s, and then came Vietnam.
“The enemy took full advantage of the terrain and the undercover,” he said. “The option was to clear the area so we could see them, and that was why Agent Orange was so popular with the commanders in the field. And leaders of the country proceeded to heavily invest in the chemical applications of defoliating the jungle.”
From 1962 to 1971, approximately 11 million gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed over more than 10 million acres of Vietnam.
The Agent Orange used in Vietnam was not the same what the government researched, McManus said. The herbicide used in Vietnam was more toxic.
The government took it from a controlled manufacturing process with one or two companies to eight or 10 producing it with a number of subcontractors, he said. They changed the way they manufactured it to meet production quotas. They went from blending the herbicides at a low temperature over a long period of time to a high temperature over a short term, raising the toxicity. The product was different from the specifications.
That was the basis for class action lawsuits in the 1980s against the chemical companies, he said. A judge ended those suits with a small settlement and shut off the dialogue and disclosure of what was in Agent Orange and its health effects.
Agent Orange was also used extensively in the United States around military bases, he said, saving money to clean their perimeters. It was used at bases in the Philippines, Korea and Japan.
Danielle Perry Reyes, 31, is the daughter of Reuben “Bud” Charles Perry III, who served in the Navy along Vietnam’s rivers. Years later, he suffered from diabetes and peripheral neuropathy.
Reyes believes that her illnesses and medical conditions were caused by her father’s exposure to Agent Orange. She is co-founder of Agent Orange Legacy.
“My dad really was my whole life,” she said in the video. “He was my best friend.”
He died of a heart attack suddenly at age 56, she said. “I carry the Vietnam War on my shoulders like I was there, and I wasn’t there. And I shouldn’t have to carry that and nor should any child have to carry that pain and that scar on them.”
She has numerous health conditions, ranging from hip dysplasia to arthritis, and lives on disability because she cannot work, she said. “I believe I’m sick due to my father’s service in the Vietnam War and Agent Orange.”
She wants to see doctors educated in the effects of chemicals and herbicides used in war, she said, and she would like to see a place where people can get help.
“A place where the doctor doesn’t look at you like you’re crazy because you say I have this and I think it’s because of the exposure that my father or mother had during their service in this war,” Reyes said. “I think that it’s time that they stand up and they take responsibility for what they have done to Vietnam veterans and their children and the Vietnamese, what they have done by spraying these chemicals. Day in and day out for the rest of my life I’ve got to live with this, and so will my daughter. We’re the ones that have to pay.”
Vietnam veteran Ken Holybee told the crowd of more than 200 that he was covered constantly in a variety of substances.
“They told us they were spraying mosquitoes,” he said. “You’d get covered. You never knew what it was.”
He helped spray diesel, probably 100,000 gallons of it, to kill weeds, he said. He was constantly saturated in fuels, ranging from diesel to jet fuel. And along with everyone else, he swam and drank from the streams.
Two of his three children have extra bones in their ankles. His son is sterile. One of two daughters has heart problems, minor learning disabilities and social problems. His wife had to have a hysterectomy at 28 years old, something he said is common among wives of Vietnam veterans within about 10 years of the veteran’s service.
His daughter Stephanie, 39, said she started losing feeling in her hands and feet about 16 years ago, caused by overproduction of a certain enzyme in her body. She loses circulation in her extremities, and it turns her hands and feet purple.
She also has systemic sclerosis, a hardening of the collagen in her body, which causes her skin to harden and lose elasticity. Hers is limited and only affects her hands and feet, but it can also affect internal organs.
Her grandparents on her mother’s side of the family have 18 grandchildren, she said. Of those, three have disabilities, and “they’re all mine.”
Nancy Switzer of Rochester, N.Y., founder and past national president of the Associates of the Vietnam Veterans of America, said her husband was in the Iron Triangle in 1969. He is fighting prostate cancer, and at age 31, her son began suffering from heart problems, and he carries a mutated gene.
Her daughter has learning disabilities but has been able to overcome them to become a county sheriff, Switzer said. Last year, her granddaughter was born with her legs outside her hip joints. The only way to perfectly repair them would be to place her in a body cast for a year. Without it, she may have to have new hip joints at age 4, and she suffers from arthritis.
“As a spouse, when you all came home, we didn’t ask questions,” Switzer said. “We were told not to. There were reasons, but your families need to know. We’ve seen fourth generations with health problems.”
They need to know if their veteran was sprayed with mosquito repellant, Agent Orange and diesel fuel or if the veteran was near a burn pit. Families need military records and medical records, she said.
Exposure may not affect one generation, she said, but it can affect the next. Switzer noted that one of her granddaughters seems to be in perfect health, but the children and grandchildren need to be able to pass on the information to their children.
“Stop blaming yourself,” Switzer added. “You didn’t do it. The government did it.”
National VVA President John Rowan of Middle Village, N.Y., has been active in the VVA since 1978. “We’ve been working with this Agent Orange stuff since day one.”
Early on, a nurse kept wondering why Vietnam veterans kept coming in with strange illnesses, Rowan said. She was eventually fired from the Veterans Administration for sticking up for Vietnam veterans.
“It’s a myriad of diseases, none of them the same,” he said, and they aren’t easily studied and analyzed.
No one did much for the veterans early on, he said, and that’s focused the VVA ever since.
“Never again will one generation of veterans abandon another,” Rowan said. Since then, the Vietnam veterans have gotten an Agent Orange law passed, adding illnesses to the list of presumptive health conditions. Women Vietnam veterans have significantly more problems than the men, mostly reproductive.
Their work goes beyond Agent Orange, he said. Before Vietnam were the atomic veterans. After Vietnam, more than 20 years ago, was the Gulf War. The VVA is fighting for those veterans too. Gulf War veterans have the highest rate of disability among any war veteran group.
If a Gulf War veteran has a strange illness, Rowan said, the government will compensate him or her now.
With oil wells on fire and nasty explosions, toxins abounded, he said. An ammo dump exploded, releasing a toxic cloud that affected some 600,000 people. Gulf War veterans are three times more likely to contract Lou Gehrig’s disease than the those who did not serve there.
Veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq have been exposed to things the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would not tolerate at home, Rowan said. “The EPA doesn’t go with our military. They do anything they please.”
They burn everything, he said, and all veterans in modern war are exposed to toxins.
“We need to get research,” he said. “We need to get big money. We need to create a children’s crusade. We need to do for the kids what we did for ourselves 30 years ago.”
Rowan referred to a bill, the Toxic Exposure Research and Military Family Support Act, introduced last fall in the U.S. Senate, which is currently on the table for the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. It would establish “a national center for the diagnosis, treatment, and research of health conditions of the descendants of veterans exposed to toxic substances during service in the armed forces, to provide certain services to those descendants, to establish an advisory board on exposure to toxic substances, and for other purposes.”
Rowan urged everyone at the town hall to “please help us get this bill checked off by by your elected officials.”
For more information about Agent Orange visit vva.org. For more information about how to file a service-related claim for a veteran or affected family member, contact a veterans service officer. Many veterans organizations have them, and each county has one, Willis said.
In Linn County, the Veterans Service Office may be reached at (800) 319-3882.