Letter: VA funding is a moral responsibility

Most military recruits have not reached an age for their brains to be fully developed at the time they enlist. When we train anyone, especially those still in their formative years, to commit acts that cause moral injury, we must accept the costly long-term obligation to meet their needs afterwards.

My husband was a Vietnam veteran whose unacknowledged trauma had a heavy impact on those closest to him. Between 1978 and 2012, we cared for mentally disabled veterans in our home. On one level, the men in our home were fortunate because we lived in a lovely farm setting and we took good care of them. Nonetheless, each of them would have preferred to have a job and family, had that been possible. Instead, their military service resulted in conditions that permanently altered their lives.

Sgt. Jeffrey Hutchinson, Army Airborne Ranger and a decorated Gulf War veteran, returned from war struggling. He vomited blood and suffered from terrifying hallucinations, paranoid delusions and severe mood swings - all symptoms of Gulf War Illness. When he sought help, the institutions created to protect him ignored or denied his situation. In a psychotic state, he murdered his partner and her three children. Earlier this month, 24 years after being convicted, the State of Florida executed him.

I think about my husband, and about the veterans we lived with. I think about Jeffrey Hutchinson. Unless backed by funding for the care many veterans require and have earned, the words “Thank you for your service” sound hollow.

Margaret Hawthorn

Rindge