Sean C. Morgan
A Sweet Home woman is the new president of the Oregon Department of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Auxiliary.
Cathy Lindsay has been active in the Sweet Home chapter of the organization since 1996 and is currently treasurer, and she managed the Veterans Club for about 11 years.
“For the past five years, I’ve been going up through the department (officer) chairs,” Lindsay said. She has been on the state department board since 2006 and is entering her sixth year as an officer.
Lindsey, originally from Southern California, has been in Sweet Home with her husband, Dennis, and their two children since about 1992, she said.
“We moved up here because we have family up here. We’ve been here in Oregon ever since.”
Lindsay’s parents had moved to Sweet Home, she said, and her father was part of the organization. She and her mom joined the auxiliary in 1996.
“I started getting involved,” Lindsay said. “I really got into the organization. I really loved what the organization was about.”
The VFW and its auxiliary are about taking care of families, Lindsay said. That’s visible in an art scholarship contest the auxiliary finished last week along with many other “odds and ends.”
It’s in the “unmet needs” program for veterans and their families, Lindsay said. Sometimes a paycheck is late for an active duty soldier, for example. In that situation, a family may need help paying some bills, like rent, food or electricity. The veterans organizations help them.
“That’s one of the major programs that we support,” Lindsay said.
The VFW and the auxiliary also provide a voice in the national government, Lindsay said. With their large memberships, they can sway politicians.
“They can shake, rattle and roll things,” Lindsay said. When the Obama Administration proposed cutting insurance benefits for returning veterans, the VFW and auxiliary went into action and met with the president. That story quickly disappeared from the media.
The VFW and auxiliary also operate the 600-acre National Home for Children in Cedar Rapids, Mich., Lindsay said. That program renewed her faith in the organization.
Initially designed to take care of orphaned children, it now takes care of full families who need help when a soldier returns from war zones. Oregon supports a house there.
“They’re allowed to live there for four years,” Lindsay said. “We are helping the families get back on their feet.”
The children are well-educated and cared for during that time, Lindsay said. Parents focus on their own education.
Half of the proceeds from the sale of the VFW’s “Buddy Poppies” go to that program, Lindsay said. The other half goes to two physical rehabilitation facilities, one in White City, where veterans are paid to make the Buddy Poppies, helping them rehabilitate their manual dexterity and as a form of financial assistance.
Outside of her work with the VFW Auxiliary, Lindsay stays busy working in home care for Senior Services, and she has two grandchildren.
As state president, Lindsay’s special project will focus on post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide prevention, she said. Suicide rates among Iraq-Afghanistan veterans has reached as high as 1,000 per day.
She wants to “make sure we have people that are there for counseling,” Lindsay said. When volunteers with veterans organizations tell them to go to a Veterans Administration facility, the volunteers need to make sure the veterans are able to get in to see someone that day – not at an appointment six months later.
If veterans were able to get help sooner, Lindsay said, “we might have saved a couple of these guys.
“My goal is making sure every veteran is helped, every veteran has insurance, every veteran has somewhere to live and is not on the street.”
The PTSD Lindsay is most concerned about contributes to some veterans leaving their families and sometimes living on the streets.
She’s personally seen the effects of PTSD, she said, and she’s also learned that veterans often leave literally to protect their families physically, noting cases where a veteran may wake up to find his wife’s throat in his hands.
They don’t want to hurt their families, so they leave, she said.
Lindsay officially begins her term as president on July 1, she said. She has mixed feelings, nervousness and excitement as she begins working on the next year’s projects, she said.
She credits the incoming national president, Sandi Kriebal of Maryland, for making sure she and the other state presidents are ready.
“Why I’m doing it and prepared like I am is because of her,” Lindsay said, noting that Kriebal is always positive and ensures others, like Lindsay, have what they need.
Lindsay is ready “to rock this state,” she said, and the upcoming leaders are “an awesome group.”
“I want to promote our veterans and promote who we are and take care of our veterans and their families,” she said, and she wants “to be an advocate for people that don’t have voices.”