BATTLE CREEK, MI – Bob Walsh knows the world of veterans, veterans’ affairs, and the United States Department of Veterans Affairs far better than almost anyone.
He’s an attorney who has specialized for many years in veterans’ cases. And he is convinced that too many veterans who served their nation with honor are being mistreated (his own word for it was a little stronger) denied proper treatment and benefits and worse by a huge and inflexible government bureaucracy.
“I used to tell law students that the VA consisted of 99 men and women busting their asses to help vets and their families being obstructed by one VA executive in a suit.”
So much of what he’s seen, Walsh said ruefully, fits that model. Indeed, he’s seen a lot.
When he was in his early 20s, he served with the U.S. Army’s legendary 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam. Later in life, after years in which he started as a telephone lineman and became a top-flight telecommunications specialist, he earned a college degree at 30, a law degree at 40, and then worked as a staff attorney for the VA itself, “setting up the office at the Battle Creek medical center.”
Following that, it was off to Kuwait a few months after the first Gulf War ended to run telecommunications for the U.S. Army at Camp Doha for nearly three years. Being in the Middle East was nothing new for him, in an earlier career move, he’d spent much of the 1980s in Saudi Arabia as a planning and programs analyst for Aramco, before deciding to become a lawyer.
Finally, in 1994, he came back to his native Battle Creek, rented an office and began practicing law. Before long, he began specializing in Social Security and veterans cases, and quickly learned that the VA system was a world of its own, a vast bureaucracy with close to 400,000 employees who are used to doing things their own way.
When he began investigating the case in 2003 of one Keith Roberts, who had been accused and convicted of wire fraud, “I discovered that while regulations came in for adjudicating cases of benefits fraud, the VA has never followed them.”
For years, he has fought to clear Roberts’ name, so far without success or payment, since his client has had a stroke and is essentially destitute. (I wrote about this case in detail in this column on April 27, 2021) “Keith and I are worried we will both be dead before this is resolved,” said Walsh, who is a youthful 73.
Several years ago, there were hopes of reform when, in May of 2014, a retired doctor in Arizona said that veterans had died because of delays in getting care, and an internal investigation found that wait times were being manipulated. The scandal caused then-Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki to resign, and issue this stunning statement: “This breach of integrity is irresponsible, it is indefensible, and unacceptable … I said when this situation began that I thought the problem was limited and isolated because I believed that. I no longer believe it. It is systemic. I was too trusting,” he said.
Despite that, the VA still has problems, Walsh said. “I have the Karl Monkemeyer case. Karl was acquitted of the fraud allegations made against him and still does not have his benefits back,” he said. Instead, the bureaucracy stonewalls.
But the attorney and former paratrooper does his best to break down those walls. His office is a suite of rooms that look like they’ve been hit by an earthquake, with files, boxes of files, items, mementos and books stacked up everywhere, and largely military memorabilia on the walls. “It may look cluttered, but I know where everything is,” he said — and he does.
What would he most like to change about the VA if he could? That’s something Bob Walsh has been thinking about for a long time. “My proposal has two parts. First, every veteran who has a discharge other than dishonorable should qualify for pension. And it shouldn’t be means-tested,” meaning , not dependent on how many other resources the veteran may have.
His second component involves disabled veterans. “Did you know that right now it is far easier to qualify for SSI (supplemental security income) from Social Security than it is for veterans to qualify for a disability pension from the VA? I would change that.”
Also, “the tax-paying public might want to have an answer to a question I often pose: If the Veterans Benefits Administration has the same number of offices and employees it did 20 years ago, why is the claims backlog still three years when the number of veterans in the country has fallen by millions over those years?”
Bob Walsh knows he’ll never get rich doing veterans law. He estimates he’s put in more than $100,000 worth of work on one case he’s never likely to see a penny from. Sometimes, even when he does win a case and gets someone’s record cleared or benefits restored, his client is too bitter and demoralized to even say ‘thank you.’
But it is what he was meant to do. “Retire? He’ll retire when they carry him out of the office when he’s 95,” said Michael Jordan, a retired attorney who has worked with him on a few cases. He knows very well that his friend wouldn’t have it any other way.
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