Failing our veterans
HE WAS WAITING for us just inside the door, only a shadow of the man he used to be. He was seated in his Breezy 600, the first in a long line of wheelchairs that soon began a slow parade to a field where residents of the Brockton VA Nursing Home and their visitors were to attend a July 4th concert.
``I thought this would be military music, or marches," Harold said.
Instead, the rock 'n' roll band Dale and the Duds, decked out in jeans and T-shirts and sporting long hair, beards, and goatees, filled the air with the music of the '50s and '60s: ``Cathy's Clown," ``Duke of Earl," ``Chantilly Lace."
We sat at a long metal picnic table that had, like all the others, a silver tin can on the end for cigarette butts.
I sat next to my friend. Wearing a blue broadcloth shirt with red and beige suspenders attached to clean khaki pants, Harold still dressed the gentleman.
But Harold also wore the battle scars of his long, ongoing fight against kidney cancer, a fight that he was losing.
Fortunately, he qualified to be cared for by the Department of Veterans Affairs because he served in the Army nine years, five of them active duty in WWII and then Korea. Back then, the government promised lifetime health benefits to its soldiers. Back then, the government recognized that a kinder, gentler, compassionate nation gives something in return to its citizens after asking them to risk life and limb during combat.
Today, many of President Bush's strongest supporters call the VA a welfare system. His critics claim he is working to dismantle the VA, to ultimately privatize its services.
Bush, who sends soldiers to risk their lives every day in Iraq, strongly supports rescinding the lifetime healthcare benefits promised to WWII and Korean veterans. His proposed budgets, despite dollar amount increases, don't factor in inflation or the increasing numbers of veterans needing healthcare, and thus have repeatedly failed to fully fund benefits to the men and women who have served our country.
Consequently, VA hospitals and clinics have closed, many veterans' healthcare programs have been cut back or eliminated, entire groups of vets have been denied eligibility for service, and those that are eligible may wait months and even years for appointments and necessary surgeries at the remaining VA facilities.
But the president lectures us about the importance of supporting our troops.
Harold told me often that he was proud of his military service. We go way back, my friend Harold and I. To 1979, when we met because of our mutual interest and involvement in the Soviet Union.
Harold, who learned to speak Russian while in the Army, served as interpreter for many of the professional exchanges I established between the United States and the USSR.
We shared a lot over those years. When we lost our close friend Natasha, he sobbed in my arms. We spent many hours on the phone while he was going through his divorce, more when his only son died from a drug overdose, and many more when his only daughter died from the ravages of lupus .
There were happy times shared too. When I first visited my father's birthplace in Belarus, Harold came with me to interpret. And on one of my many business trips to St. Petersburg, Harold was there on another work-related mission, and we met for coffee in the Literary Café on Nevsky Prospekt. He confessed, with a big grin, that the Russian ladies were after him.
So on this afternoon, when Dale and the Duds took a break, my husband, Frank, asked Harold if the nurses were paying special attention to him. ``Absolutely," he answered. And he smiled.
When it was time to go, I kissed him goodbye. ``Oh, Harold, I got lipstick on your cheek," I said as I reached over to wipe it off.
``Leave it," replied the old friend I used to know.
Harold Garfinkle died this past winter. He was 84. The old soldier kept his spirits up right to the end. And the country, no thanks to this president, kept its promise.
Cynthia Dickstein lives in Tucson, where she hosts the public access TV show ``Political Perspectives." 
