In February of 1983, Roy received a letter that nearly knocked him off his feet. It came from the Social Security Administration. “This notice,” the letter began, “concerns your continuing entitlement to benefits under the Social Security Disability program.” “The law provides,” the notice continued, “that an individual’s disability period shall end if the person is able to do substantial gainful work.” The document then referenced Roy’s medical reports from his Army retirement hearings in 1976 and a conversation with a health-care provider from early 1983. “We did not obtain other reports because this information was sufficient enough to evaluate your condition.” Based on this evidence, the Social Security Administration concluded, “you became able to do substantial gainful work in February 1983. Accordingly, the last disability benefit to which you are entitled is for the month of April 1983.” Roy’s livelihood was being cut off. He was being told to go back to work.1
Roy had been enrolled in Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) since his retirement in 1976. As with many retiring veterans, he faced a choice between his military disability pay or SSDI. The decision is complicated by a formula that takes into account an individual’s rank, career earnings, and “percentage of disability.” One can receive both benefits, but SSDI payment amounts are affected by other income. When Roy retired, he was deemed 80 percent disabled, and his condition was listed as permanent. His ability to work would never improve. Based on these factors, Roy had been advised that SSDI would provide more income for him and his family over the course of his retirement.2
Despite his fame, Roy was never wealthy. He was in high demand as a speaker but rarely charged an honorarium. His SSDI payments netted his family less than $500 per month. The medal helped him earn a better living by entitling him to an additional $200 monthly stipend, but the bulk of his income came from SSDI. Now, even this meager income was something he had to fight to protect.3
In 1980, the United States Congress passed a law designed to curb SSDI abuses. After a report by the General Accounting Office concluded that 20 percent of people receiving SSDI should be ruled ineligible, President Carter signed legislation requiring reviews of disability recipients every three years. In March of 1981, the Reagan Administration accelerated these reviews, eager to curb spending on social services.4
Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign promised to curtail government spending. Reagan and his advisors were among a wave of right-wing political leaders fighting to retract Great Society programs of the 1960s—initiatives like Medicare, Medicaid, and rental housing subsidies that expanded America’s social safety net and offered unprecedented levels of aid to the poor. In fact, it was Reagan’s opposition to anti-poverty programs in the 1960s that had launched his political career.5
Reagan blamed runaway government spending for many of the financial problems of the 1970s. “I’m trying to undo the Great Society,” he once wrote in his journal. “It was LBJ’s war on poverty that led us to our present mess.” The federal government, he argued, should move aside to allow people to thrive or fail in a free marketplace. These ideas gained traction thanks to Reagan’s ability to depict some welfare recipients as poor, lazy citizens who lived lavish lifestyles funded by government excess, a trope most commonly manifested in the idea of the so-called “welfare queen.”6
When Reagan entered office, his administration began slashing spending on social entitlement programs. Part of its effort involved accelerating the review of people enrolled in SSDI. As one journalist observed, these reviews “became a virtual purge” of the social security disability rolls. The reviews increased from roughly 180,000 in 1981 to nearly 500,000 in 1982, with an expected 850,000 more in 1983. Between 1980 and 1982, the number of people receiving disability in America dropped by nearly 250,000, and the Reagan administration sought to remove another 300,000 more from disability rolls in 1983. Many SSDI recipients were veterans like Roy, who received their notices in the mail that spring.7
Roy was devastated. He felt embarrassed and hurt, even “frightened.” The letter made him feel “a great sense of shock and betrayal,” and he took it very personally. For Roy, those SSDI payments were the return for the wounds he suffered on the battlefield, the same injuries that prevented him from working. He was frustrated by the cold, bureaucratic tone of the letter compared to the realities of his condition. “If they had to spend a day in this body,” he wrote of the unnamed Washington, DC, bureaucrat who authored the letter, “they’d have a different opinion.” Maybe he could complete a day or two of labor, but he certainly could not go back to work for months and years on end. Roy decided to appeal.8
According to Roy, he went to his family doctor who submitted a medical report on his behalf. A few weeks later, the government requested that he see another physician in Houston. This physician tested his lungs and walking ability on a treadmill before agreeing that Roy was “unfit for work requiring any type of physical exertion over any extended period of time.”9
But this was not the end. Roy had to drive fifty miles to Victoria to see a psychiatrist, and he was required to appear before a judge for a hearing. It was an awful experience. As part of his evaluation, Roy was asked to remove his shirt so that the judge could examine the deep scars cut across his body. When the judge then ordered him to appear before yet another psychiatrist, Roy became incensed. “I have never felt so humiliated and angry in all my life,” he remembered. “It was at this point,” he wrote, “that things… got complicated.”10
On May 27, 1983, as Roy awaited the results of his appeal, national news broke that America’s most recent Medal of Honor recipient was being removed from the Social Security Disability rolls. That morning, the Washington Post printed a front-page story, “Vietnam-Era Hero Falls Victim to Cuts in Social Security,” reminding readers of Roy’s wartime heroics and explaining the recent denial of his benefits. That same night, NBC Nightly News ran a segment about Roy’s case. It opened with a clip showing Roy with President Reagan at the Medal of Honor ceremony and the reporter reminding viewers that “Benavidez was wounded in almost every part of his body” before transitioning to an interview with Roy in his living room. “This is just absolutely ridiculous,” Roy told the audience. “It’s salt in my open wounds.”11
It was Roy who had first alerted reporters to the story. In his life as a public hero, he spoke with reporters weekly, sometimes daily. Journalists called constantly. But even as Roy spoke with reporters that March and April, he at first held his tongue about the SSDI issue. But his frustration grew as the case dragged into May. A reporter from the Dallas Morning News happened to catch him at a time when he was particularly upset. Frustrated, he just “unloaded,” he said of the conversation. “He may have thought he was interviewing a ‘madman,’” Roy remembered, “whose Social Security psychiatrists were trying to get into a straitjacket.”12
Within days, the news of Roy’s disability cutoff hit just about every major newspaper in the country. Hundreds more smaller papers reprinted versions of the story from newspaper wire services. Roy told the New York Times that the SSDI cutoff was “an insult to my integrity, to the military and to all veterans.” “I don’t want them to just look at my personal case,” he told another reporter. “I want them to understand what all veterans who fought for this country’s freedom suffer in trying to get their rightful benefits.”13
As the news cascaded, Roy began receiving mail from other veterans facing similar threats to their benefits. Veterans who had served in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam wrote to Roy to share their own stories and express their appreciation for his public response to the SSDI purges. “I had never encountered so many desperate people,” Roy recalled. “The letters were heartbreaking.”14
One such letter came from a World War II veteran whose own appeal was coming up that July. “Thanks for being on WFAA [the Texas radio station],” the former merchant marine wrote to Roy. “There is a whole bunch of us, even if they stop our checks, no one will hire us, because of our disability.” “You are not alone…,” wrote the daughter of an injured veteran from New Jersey. “Others across the country are challenging the Social Security Disability practices. I want the President to realize that he and his administration are dealing with actual people, not just case numbers.” The mother of a Vietnam veteran from Tennessee wrote, “I’m glad to know you’re trying to help others.… I can’t imagine someone like you being told to go to work,” she emphasized. “Stick to your guns! And try to get as much publicity as possible.” A Georgia Vietnam veteran wrote, “I just finished facing the same problems with loss of Social Security Disability as you are.” This man said he struggled with his mental health and was briefly “institutionalized” before finally finding work in 1983. Another Vietnam veteran from Kentucky wrote to suggest a “letter writing campaign to our Senators and Congressmen.” A New Hampshire veteran wrote, “I was shocked when I read yesterday that your social security benefits had been terminated. I have gotten over all my anxieties about Vietnam and am living a fairly normal life, but when I see what has been done by some bureaucrat to you, I am truly saddened.” A guy in Pennsylvania sent Roy a copy of his book, Social Security Disability Benefits: How to Get Them! How to Keep Them! Some people even sent cash or five- or ten-dollar checks, attempting to help Roy and his family in a time of need.15
Roy received one negative letter. A World War II veteran from New Jersey wrote to ask, “Why can’t you work and support yourself?” “I came out of service with a disability, as did many others,” stated the man, “but most of us were not willing to be cry-babies and charity cases: we hustled up educations and jobs, and didn’t consider milking the system and the taxpayer.” The man cruelly cited Roy’s “physical condition,” noting, “even though I am some older than you, and have obviously (from your appearance in the picture carried here) taken much better care of myself than you.” The letter continued, “Stop feeling the taxpayer owes you something special.” Roy was livid. He didn’t keep a copy of his response, but he kept the letter and attached a note that read, “You really told him off.”16
That May and June, Roy once again emerged as a major national figure as hundreds of newspapers published stories about his struggle to secure his disability benefits, stunning millions of Americans. It was a striking contradiction that such a celebrated soldier could lose access to federal aid. The cruelest irony was that Roy needed those benefits because of injuries he suffered in the very same battle for which he was so widely celebrated. As Roy later testified, “It seems odd to me that my entitlements were terminated by the same Administration that made such a fuss to ensure that I was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in February, 1981.”17
Pressure began to mount on the Reagan administration. Veterans and their families wrote to the White House, sharing stories of their own challenges with Social Security Disability denials. The daughter of a New Jersey World War II veteran pleaded with the president over the case of her father. “The main purpose of this letter, Mr. President,” the woman wrote, “is to petition you to reevaluate what is being done to people like my father, Sgt. Benavidez, and countless others.… Please do something to halt this insane display of bureaucratic nonsense.” Roy himself worried about Reagan’s view. “I had just gone on national television,” he reflected, “and openly defied, and probably created some embarrassment for, my commander-in-chief.”18
The Los Angeles Times published an op-ed titled “So Much for Heroes,” observing, “The incident is embarrassing to the President,” and calling on Reagan to “reexamine Administration standards that are inflicting extreme hardship on a host of other disability recipients.” “The Reagan Administration has been much too harsh,” it concluded. Nationally syndicated columnist Mike Royko told readers, “When Reagan gave Benavidez his medal, he made a lovely speech about Benavidez and other Vietnam veterans, saying: ‘It’s time to show our pride in them and to thank them.’” “Some thanks,” Royko griped. The Philadelphia Tribune mocked Reagan’s call to show greater appreciation toward veterans, snarking, “The Social Security Administration has shown its appreciation by removing Mr. Benavidez from the disability rolls.” The newspaper called for a complete halt to the “purge of the disabled.”19
The story was indeed a major source of embarrassment for a Reagan administration that had tried to build political capital through its support of the military community and with Hispanic voters by way of its support of Roy Benavidez. As some of the news stories pointed out, Reagan had invoked Roy’s name in San Antonio just weeks before the SSDI story broke, telling a Hispanic audience about “Sergeant Roy Benavidez who deserved our country’s highest award.” “If they place their lives on the line for us,” Reagan had told his audience, “we must make sure they know that we’re behind them and appreciate what they’re doing.” As the New York Times observed, “Mr. Benavidez said today that that appreciation appeared to have disappeared.”20
The Reagan administration deflected blame, pointing out that the Social Security Disability review law had been signed in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter. A representative from the White House called Roy at home, and a Reagan spokesman publicly expressed concern over Roy’s case. “The White House is sympathetic to the plight of Benavidez and all the other unfortunate victims of the squeeze created by the law,” said the deputy White House press secretary. The White House promised to use its connections in the private sector to help Roy find a job, but they were quickly rebuffed by the war hero who said, “I don’t want charity. I want what I’m entitled to under law, authorized by Congress.” “And I don’t want them just to look at my personal case,” Roy insisted, “I want them to understand what all veterans who fought for this country’s freedom suffer in trying to get their rightful benefits.”21
The publicity surrounding Roy’s disability case was just one episode in a series of public controversies related to the Reagan administration’s mixed record on veteran policies. The president certainly talked a good game. The early days of his presidency were filled with public ceremonies and proclamations in support of the troops, and he promised to build back America’s armed forces, in terms of both weaponry and public esteem. He argued against some of his own economic advisors, who seemingly despised anything resembling a social safety net, to support the rejuvenation of a new GI Bill that was eventually passed in 1984 to help attract a new class of soldiers to the military. Reagan also advocated for raises in military pay, which increased 14.3 percent in 1981, and he later worked to expand health benefits for some veterans. He was a major supporter of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, which culminated in the erection of the Vietnam Memorial wall in 1982. In his second term, he would help pass legislation making the VA a cabinet-level department.22
Reagan’s policies helped rebuild the American military in the 1980s. The unpopular draft had effectively ended with the Vietnam War, forcing the Reagan administration to design new programs to recruit soldiers into the armed forces. Even as Reagan cut social welfare spending elsewhere, he sought to cast the military as “a special and elevated category,” writes historian Jennifer Mittelstadt. “Military social welfare progressed in unprecedented fashion in the 1980s thanks to a resurgence of militarization in a nation that had long operated ‘in the shadow of war.’” Reagan’s policies helped revive public confidence in the military and secured his support among military leaders. By the mid-1980s, 85 percent of officer corps defined themselves as conservative.23
But the inducements used to recruit to the active armed forces did not necessarily benefit the millions of American veterans who had already served. The early days of the Reagan presidency saw a significant gulf emerge between the president’s pro-military rhetoric and his policies concerning veterans, the soldiers no longer in uniform, especially those who had fought in Vietnam. When balanced against his lofty statements about the military, the Reagan administration’s stance toward veterans appeared remarkably shallow and even at times openly hostile.
Just weeks after celebrating Roy Benavidez at the Pentagon, the Reagan administration proposed sweeping cuts to the VA. The idea of veterans’ benefits is older than the United States itself and runs central to America’s ability to wage war. Disabled veterans’ benefits started during the Revolutionary War, and the first veterans’ hospitals were created decades before the Civil War. The modern VA was established in 1930 and expanded after World War II with the explosion of America’s veteran population. Every war America enters requires an expansion of the VA system to serve the soldiers who are recruited to fight.24
Seeking to reduce federal spending in nearly all areas except the active military, the new administration sought to reduce VA spending by several hundred million dollars. The proposed cuts included capping disability benefits, limiting unemployment benefits for veterans, reducing eligibility for survivor benefits, ending low-interest VA loans, curtailing dental care for veterans, shuttering newly created Vet Centers that helped counsel Vietnam veterans, laying off thousands of VA employees, and restricting eligibility for veterans’ burial allowances. As one writer observed in March of 1981 of the funding cuts to Vet Centers, “Now Reagan is axing them—his Office of Management and Budget called for obliterating them by September—even as the president pins medals on Vietnam veterans.”25
The proposed cuts created a great deal of confusion for veterans. Advocates worried that VA hospitals might be subject to widespread closures and layoffs, leaving veterans, especially those in the aging populations of the World War II, Korea, and Vietnam generations, without adequate health care and mental health services. None of it squared with the pro-military boosterism dripping from Reagan’s messaging.26
Conservative commentators defended these reductions in VA support. One widely reprinted 1981 op-ed argued, “Cuts in the 1982 budget are not quite as ruthless as some would have us believe,” pointing out that cutting $700 million from a VA budget of $24.5 billion “can hardly be called cruel and unusual punishment.” “Everyone agrees that Americans injured while in service of this country deserve very special treatment,” noted the op-ed. “However, most of the VA’s budget goes not to men with service-connected disabilities but to men who left the service healthier than when they entered it.” “It’s the most overblown bureaucracy in the government,” the article concluded. The Wall Street Journal concurred, opining, “There are very few better examples than VA hospitals of how the politics of compassion interferes with rational federal budget-making.”27
Veterans’ groups disagreed. Members of the American Legion passed a resolution at their 1981 national meeting opposing cutbacks to the VA. The director of the National Veterans Law Center told a reporter, “All these cuts leave the Vietnam veterans without any government-supported advocacy programs.” A director of a Vet Center in San Diego griped, “With the administration pulling the rug out from under these people, there’s a sense of rage and betrayal.” “The lack of compassion by those people in Washington is incredible,” lamented another vet in the New York Times. In the summer of 1981, veterans in Los Angeles conducted sit-ins and hunger strikes at local VA hospitals to protest funding cuts and a refusal by the administration to investigate the medical effects of chemical defoliants used in the Vietnam War.28
Many veterans were also affected by the Reagan administration’s policies toward anti-poverty and health-care programs. The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981 was the signature achievement of Reagan’s first year. This legislation was famous for its budgetary implications, but it was also important because it essentially repealed the 1980 Mental Health Systems Act, a law that provided additional funding to states for mental health programming and facilities—services desperately needed by veterans, one of America’s most at-risk demographics when it came to mental health, alcohol abuse, suicide, and homelessness. The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981 also reduced spending on programs like public housing and food stamps. Reagan sold his sweeping reductions as eliminating grift and waste, but these programs did truly benefit millions of needy people, including working-class veterans. The Vietnam War had been a “working-class war,” writes historian Christian Appy. But the unique needs of working-class veterans were not necessarily considered when formulating broader public policies regarding America’s working poor. Veterans were celebrated during special military ceremonies but then seemingly forgotten all over again when it came to making policies that deeply affected many of their lives.29
The most direct target of the veterans’ ire was Reagan’s choice for head of the VA, Robert Nimmo. Nimmo came to Washington, DC, from California, where he had been a state legislator and a longtime political ally of Reagan. During Reagan’s governorship of California, Nimmo served for three years as his chief fiscal officer. He was a retired Air Force colonel who had flown a B-24 bomber during World War II. He was famous in veterans’ circles for his 1979 effort to block Jane Fonda’s appointment to the California Arts Council in retribution for her 1972 visit to Hanoi to meet with North Vietnamese leaders. Nimmo accused Fonda of treason and worked to deny her the appointment. In 1981, he came into the VA with a mandate to help curtail the organization’s exploding budget, which was largely a consequence of the United States fighting three major wars in the forty years immediately preceding his appointment. He arrived at the position promising to introduce “internal budgetary controls” and “fiscal restraint.”30
After a short grace period, Nimmo’s tenure as head of the VA was rife with a series of inflammatory statements, policies, and scandals that infuriated veterans. These began when he sought repayment of services for veterans who had undergone medical treatment for health problems that he claimed were unrelated to their service. Nimmo instituted a collection process involving mailing medical bills to veterans for past services, an enormously unpopular policy, especially among veterans who couldn’t otherwise afford health care. And who was to say precisely which ailments were caused by combat? Nimmo was basically following through on budget-cutting mandates from the administration, but it was he who took much of the blame.31
In January of 1982, just six months into his term, Nimmo publicly floated the idea of ending VA medical care for veterans over the age of sixty-five. He said this at a time when the average age of twelve million World War II veterans was sixty-two. This idea had enormous and immediate implications for the millions of American veterans of World War II and the Korean War. “What has to be recognized, I think,” Nimmo told the press, “is that there are more words in the dictionary than ‘more, more, more.’” A month later, Nimmo implemented a “construction freeze,” stalling $2.7 billion in funds earmarked for new VA medical facilities. “I’m going to get tons of flak,” Nimmo recognized.32
The head of the American Legion called Nimmo’s comments on the construction freeze “totally irresponsible.” Disabled American Veterans released a statement saying it was “amazed and appalled.” Their organization’s spokesperson said that Nimmo’s “remarks would be more appropriate for the anti-veteran budget-cutting director of OMB than for the VA administrator.” The executive director of the VFW sternly admonished Nimmo’s “sentiments.” “They go beyond legitimacy of concern,” he said, “into the realm of dereliction; the breaking of faith with your duty to serve those who served their country faithfully.”33
No generation of veterans was more upset with Nimmo than those who fought in Vietnam. They were affected by all these other issues and further incensed by Nimmo’s stance on Agent Orange. During the war in Vietnam, the United States sprayed more than seventy million liters of chemical defoliants, most notably an herbicide called Agent Orange, across the forests of Indochina. Scientists now know that prolonged exposure to Agent Orange can lead to a variety of cancers and intergenerational birth defects. But Nimmo at the time dismissed veterans’ concerns, insisting that the side effects of Agent Orange were no more serious than “teenage acne.” He also refused to fund a study on the effects of Agent Orange, rejecting the legitimate concerns of millions of veterans who faced very serious health problems, even death, because of exposure to chemicals their government used in the war.34
At the same time, Nimmo spent excessive amounts of government dollars to fund his own luxurious amenities and travel. He redecorated his government office, spending $6,000 on “plush elegance” rugs, $4,000 on “wall treatments and bookshelves,” $1,400 on a coffee table and television, and over $700 on framed pictures and an office chair. He used an additional sum of nearly $8,500 to remodel his office, adding a private bathroom so he could shower and change before heading out to fancy dinners at the end of his workday. The total cost of his office improvements topped $46,000.35
Nimmo also spent over $700 of the government’s money per month to lease a luxury car, and he hired a chauffeur who was paid more than $8,000 in overtime pay the first year, including time on the clock when Nimmo himself wasn’t even in Washington, DC. Nimmo spent an additional $10,422 of taxpayer dollars flying first class back and forth to California. And on one occasion, he chartered an Air Force jet at the price of $5,600 to carry him and his aides back to Washington, despite the availability of ten commercial flights that day. He did all this while insisting that veterans were demanding too many entitlements. As the Washington Post observed, “The man who is tightening the screws on the nation’s veterans evidently feels that budget cuts don’t apply to him.”36
Veterans’ groups were livid. The National Association of Concerned Veterans passed a resolution calling for Nimmo’s “immediate resignation or removal from office.” The VFW passed its own decree calling on Reagan to “reprimand” Nimmo. Stars and Stripes magazine asked, “How long will the Administration allow this self-humiliation to continue?” A group of seventeen congressmen openly called for Nimmo’s dismissal. By August of 1982, the Los Angeles Times concluded that “nothing short of a full-blown war is being waged against former California legislator Robert Nimmo.”37
The Reagan administration was deeply concerned. The president’s advisors followed the news closely and kept a file on negative press toward the VA head. In an internal memo, one advisor warned, “The Administration is about to experience a major embarrassment as the result of a call by the major national veterans’ organizations for the removal of VA Administrator Robert Nimmo.” The advisor continued, “The democrats are ready to have a field day with Nimmo.… You really don’t need this in an election year.”38
Nimmo resigned shortly thereafter in October of 1982, effective at the end of the year. After an investigation, he paid back some of the money he’d spent on his office. Reagan told him that he was “sincerely saddened to hear of your decision to leave government.” “You will be sorely missed by me,” the president continued, “[and] by the veterans you have so ably served.” Veterans’ groups did not share these positive feelings, especially after Nimmo decided to skip the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to play golf. A week later, Nimmo capped his tenure as head of the VA with a series of interviews in which he said that disability pay was wasted on veterans who should have been working.39
The Reagan administration would continue to manage damage control. Shortly after Nimmo’s resignation, it helped push a bill through Congress that provided a cost-of-living increase to 2.3 million veterans and 319,000 widows and dependents who were receiving compensation for wartime injuries. “This legislation,” Reagan insisted, “demonstrates the Nation’s continuing commitment and support for the men and women who have served in our military forces.” Reagan would continue to publicly support veterans’ causes throughout his administration, and his next pick for head of the VA would prove to be much less inflammatory than Nimmo. But when the Roy Benavidez story emerged just five months after Nimmo’s departure, it once again riled those who were concerned about cutting spending for veterans’ causes, even as the administration paid lip service to the men and women who risked their lives in America’s wars. In light of all this pressure, Reagan had to act.40
On June 7, 1983, the Reagan administration announced changes to its Social Security Disability review process. It expanded the number of people eligible for “permanent disability” to include about two hundred thousand additional beneficiaries who would be “exempted from the eligibility reviews,” reported the New York Times. Also exempted were roughly 135,000 individuals with mental health problems. The administration promised to review future cases more randomly and infrequently, instead of through a general purge, and it pledged to propose legislation that would mandate reviews of not only people currently on SSDI but also those who had already been removed. They also changed a rule that allowed payments to continue through the first stage of the appeal process rather than cutting off recipients immediately. In announcing the changes, Margaret M. Heckler, the secretary of Health and Human Services admitted, “I had no idea that the sudden, three-year review of millions of cases we then mandated might result in hardships and heartbreaks for innocent and worthy disability recipients.”41
The case of Roy Benavidez sparked these changes, as was widely reported in the media. On the day they were announced, CBS Evening News played a clip from Roy’s Medal of Honor ceremony and told viewers, “Last month the White House got personally involved in the issue when it was discovered that Roy Benavidez, a forty-seven-year-old Medal of Honor winner, had his benefits threatened even though his Vietnam wounds left him unable to bend, lift heavy objects, or stand for very long.… With that example, and with pressure building in Congress to enact changes in the process, the Secretary of Health and Human services announced changes to the process.”42
The Baltimore Sun told readers, “The Benavidez case quickened action on disability reforms,” concluding that it “seemed to have the effect of accelerating the administration’s ‘reform’ of the disability system.” “White House officials,” noted the New York Times, “had directed Heckler to correct problems in the $18 billion-a-year disability program after reading reports that her department had stopped benefit payments for Roy P. Benavidez.” “The administration,” agreed the Raleigh News & Observer, “took corrective action only after President Reagan learned about the loss of disability allowance by a Vietnam veteran on whom he had pinned the Medal of Honor in 1981.”43
Politicians and activists had protested Reagan’s disability policies since the beginning of his administration. But these calls for action were easy enough for Reagan to ignore so long as they came from Democrats and poor, disabled citizens. Roy’s story put a public face on disability reviews, offering implications not just for America’s poor but also its most deserving heroes. Roy had no idea how widespread these denials were when he took his story to the press, but his willingness to leverage his own celebrity and relationship with the Reagan administration brought a new level of clout to the public debate over disability benefits that the Reagan administration found impossible to ignore. As one staff member on the Senate Committee on Aging told a reporter, when Reagan learned of Roy’s case and saw pictures of himself with Roy in the media, “it got him going.”44
Critics of the Reagan administration, such as the New York Times, welcomed the initial changes but, in the words of the Times’ editorial board, argued that “they don’t go nearly far enough.” Republican senator William Cohen of Maine said that the changes “will have little impact on the fate of severely disabled workers because they do not remedy the fundamental flaws in the review process.” Pennsylvania Republican senator John Heinz introduced legislation that would halt reviews until the new policies took effect. The Philadelphia Inquirer joined others in calling for a complete moratorium on all reviews.45
Less than two weeks later, Roy was called to Washington to testify in front of the House Committee on Aging, which held a hearing in response to the issue of disability reviews. Roy appeared in front of the committee on June 20, 1983. He donned his full unform, sans the green beret, but wearing all of his medals, including the Medal of Honor around his neck. The wood-paneled room was packed with media, and Roy was once again on center stage. “I am here not only to testify for myself, but for hundreds and thousands of other veterans that have been deprived of their benefits.” Roy was still awaiting the results of his own appeal. “I am here to testify because there has been a gross injustice done to me,” he told the committee. “I feel ashamed, my integrity and the integrity of the United States Medical Corps in the Army has been insulted.… We didn’t ask to go and fight a war for this country and we didn’t go fight for luxury, we didn’t go fight for money, we didn’t go fight for popularity.… I ask that this committee please assist in any way, this administration to help not only me but hundreds of thousands of other veterans.”46
Roy then submitted a statement in which he called for a “complete moratorium” on disability reviews for veterans. “I implore you,” he pleaded, “not to place those warriors who have served this country in a degrading and embarrassing position such as I have been forced to endure.” The power in his testimony lay in the marriage between his moral authority as a war hero and his own naked vulnerability as a disabled American veteran. “My war injuries will never get any better,” he admitted. “Today, as I sit before you, it is asserted that I can work because some social security official claims I can lift fifty pounds. Since May 2, 1968, I have had two pieces of shrapnel lodged in my heart. Both my arms and legs are severely impaired. I also have a punctured lung. My pain is constant.… If they can do this to me, what will they do to my fellow comrades?… Whatever actions are taken on my behalf should be applied equally to all the many other people who now find themselves in the same predicament.”47
Roy was joined by an attorney named J. Thomas Burch, himself a former Green Beret and a spokesman for the United Vietnam Veterans Organizations. Burch told of the effects of these reviews on “many disabled and Vietnam veterans.” He also submitted some of the letters Roy had received from disabled veterans and their family members. Burch noted “some actions” undertaken by the White House “since Roy’s case came to light,” but he argued, “they have not done enough.” He joined those calling for a moratorium.48
After the statements, Roy answered questions about his personal life and medical history, all in front of a panel of politicians and surrounded by cameras. These were hard questions for a proud man—strangers asking him for intimate details about his health in front of the media. Roy was poised and confident, and the politicians questioned him in a polite, respectful tone. Nearly all those who questioned Roy thanked him for his appearance. One of the congressmen, Democrat Norman Sisisky of Virginia, recognized, “I think it took a lot of courage for you to be here, and I applaud you.” California Democrat Tom Lantos apologized to Roy for “the outrage that has been perpetrated upon you.” “You were an American hero on the battlefield and now you are an American hero for the second time,” Lantos praised. “You are an inspiration to every American.”49
Most of the committee members were sympathetic. A few made sarcastic remarks about bureaucrats determining Roy’s physical condition, hammering down on the absurdity of the process by which a Washington government employee could deem someone physically able to work without so much as ever looking at the person. There was some politicking but nothing like the hard-core partisanship that afflicted other hearings. When it was over, everyone in the room offered Roy a standing ovation. He got up and walked down the aisle, giving way to the next witness, the thirty-six-year-old governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton.50
Roy’s appearance put him back in the news yet again. His testimony was covered in newspapers across America, and the New York Times featured one of his answers as their “Quotation of the Day” for June 21, 1983: “The Administration that put this medal around my neck is curtailing my benefits.”51
A few weeks later, Roy received a new letter from the Social Security Administration. In a document that included an extensive review of his medical history—including details about his wounds and disabilities, and reports from multiple physicians—a judge ruled that “the claimant continues to be entitled to a period of disability and to disability insurance benefits under sections 216(i) and 223, respectively, of the Social Security Act.” Roy had won his appeal. In doing so, he had leveraged his own fame to help create policy changes and draw attention to the plight of America’s disabled working-class citizens.52
On the night of July 12, 1983, Tom Brokaw told millions of viewers of NBC Nightly News that “Roy Benavidez, who won the Congressional Medal of Honor while a Green Beret in Vietnam, has now won back his Social Security disability benefits.” The story of his winning appeal appeared in newspapers across the country, from Guam to Vermont. Reporters and opinion writers called it justice. “I’m grateful,” Roy told a reporter. “I just hope that every other veteran is not overlooked.”53
This national fight over disability benefits would continue. A representative from the Social Security office claimed that Roy’s reinstatement “proves the system works.” But not everyone agreed that the case of a single famous man signified a healthy review process for all. Within a month of Roy’s successful appeal, a dozen disabled citizens filed a class-action lawsuit over what they deemed “improperly terminated” benefits. They were seeking a court injunction to “halt further improper terminations.” By that fall, twenty-eight states had issued executive orders, moratoriums, or new review policies designed to halt or protect needy citizens from removal from the SSDI rolls. Those battles would be fought in the courts, but Roy’s time with this issue was done.54
Back in El Campo, Roy was facing another challenge. He was popular in his hometown, as he had been since receiving the Medal of Honor. El Campo had covered him in honors, and there was a special display documenting Roy’s heroics at the Wharton County Historical Museum. Roy had well-placed friends across the city, especially his buddies the Barbees at the El Campo Leader-News. And he enjoyed small privileges. People gave him things and allowed him to skip lines. Sometimes, folks announced his presence at an event.55
He was also involved in a handful of local causes. In 1980, Roy had been among the founding members of an organization called the Community Action Committee of El Campo, a group formed to “advise the mayor and city council on conditions and needs of every El Campo community” and to help locals gain access to state and federal resources they could use for educational purposes or civic improvement. The group’s goals were to help local needy families with housing, employment, and education. They ran neighborhood cleanup campaigns, helped families arrange for sewer and water line connections, and lobbied the city to make improvements in poor neighborhoods.56
Roy also had a reputation as a guy who could be counted on when a local family needed something. Chris Barbee liked to share a story about one December night when Roy learned that a poor Hispanic family in El Campo didn’t have any heat. Roy went out and bought blankets and recruited a plumber to hook up a portable heater. “I think he did a lot of that kind of stuff that probably I don’t know about, and other people don’t know about,” said Barbee. “He didn’t do it looking for praise. It was the right thing to do.”57
But Roy’s fame, and the way he went about his life, had begun to breed resentment, especially after the Social Security disability story broke in May of 1983. That same month, the local armory was rededicated as the Roy P. Benavidez National Guard Armory. Colonel Ralph Drake came to town for a ceremony that attracted two thousand guests. The city hosted a military parade, and the state legislature once again declared it to be “Roy P. Benavidez Day.” A bunch of Green Berets from Texas joined the parade. And the Texas National Guard erected a plaque honoring “a son of texas / who lives by the motto / ‘duty, honor, country.’”58
A few weeks later, one of Roy’s neighbors, a woman by the name of Kathryn Moore, published a letter in the Victoria Advocate accusing Roy of using the medal for personal gain and criticizing him for not working. “Ever since Roy Benavidez received the highest medal in our country,” the letter began, “he has been shoving it down our throats.” “It seems that his philosophy now is that the people of our city should feel honored to have him living here.… I wish he would stop using the Medal of Honor to get what he wants,” Moore wrote. “Most disabled vets, those that get less than him, have to survive on guts and determination alone.”59
Moore had been moved to write her letter by the latest wave of media coverage surrounding Roy’s disability standoff. When she began encountering these stories in late May, along with the Armory dedication, she just “couldn’t stand it any longer,” she told a reporter. “I know him. I’ve lived across the street from him for years. I’ve seen what he can do.”60
That same month, another local white woman named Billie Jean Hauser published an angry letter in the El Campo Leader-News. “I am writing this out of anger and frustration,” Hauser began. “The media coverage given to Roy Benavidez for his heroic deeds in the Vietnam conflict was really an outrage.” Hauser’s argument was that the media and city leaders should pay attention to all the region’s veterans and spend less time focusing on Roy as an individual. “The other soldiers who were there were just as brave but perhaps did not have the need to be patted on the back,” Hauser suggested. “To honor just one man for what many did is in very bad taste.”61
A handful of Victoria residents responded to Moore’s letter. A local retired Air Force veteran directly addressed Moore. “Your unjust attack on Sgt. Roy Benavidez truly angered me.… Had it not been for men such as Sgt. Benavidez, past, present and future, our letters to the editor (if allowed) could very well be written in the only language allowed, Russian, German or Japanese.” “While we were enjoying ourselves…,” wrote another local woman, “the poor veterans were fighting wars away from home, not eating or sleeping and their lives were in danger.” “What right does Kathryn Moore of El Campo have to criticize Sgt. Roy Benavidez?” “I say, Roy Benavidez, stand up for your rights,” wrote another Victoria woman. “Most people, like me, say you deserve it.”62
Still, resentment festered in some quarters of the small town. Moore and Hauser were among the very few who spoke publicly against Roy. Their views weren’t held by everyone, but Roy could sense antipathy in other quarters. Most criticisms directed toward him were made in private conversations, small-town people gossiping about one man receiving too much glory and speculating about his ability to work. “The resentment gets like dry grass,” explained the director of the Chamber of Commerce. “When something like this comes along that tends to justify the feelings of people who don’t like him, it sweeps across the community.”63
The naysayers read stories in the newspaper about Roy traveling the country, and they saw him out walking. Because Roy was told by his doctors to lose weight and exercise, he walked religiously, every day, even in the rain. Roy walked at the high school track and at Friendship Park, a little recreational area located off a central thoroughfare in El Campo. In an era of increasing skepticism over government entitlements, the people who saw Roy walking and then read about his disability claim wondered why he wasn’t working. He was their welfare queen.
What they didn’t see was his body. The clothes he wore covered a body once described as a “walking roadmap [of] scars.” They didn’t see the “agonizing pain” that he fought through with every step around the park. They didn’t see the arthritis plaguing his spine, hips, and knees, and they didn’t see the tiny shards of metal that still occasionally popped out of his skin. They didn’t see that he couldn’t “use his left arm,” a judge had concluded during his appeal, “for much more than to guide things for his right hand,” or that he couldn’t sit for more than an hour, or that “metallic fragments” still floated in the cells around his lungs and prevented him from normal breathing. They couldn’t possibly see that his ventilation capacity was about one-third that of a normal adult male. They didn’t see the years of doctors’ reports that were “as thick as two Bibles,” Roy once said. It was the doctors who insisted that he walk every day. He’d die if he didn’t. These naysayers just saw him walking and concluded that he should get back to work. “If this man saved eight men all by himself,” Kathryn Moore insisted, “surely he can master any job offered him.”64
Roy’s detractors wrote about him as if he had led some great privileged life. Roy was enjoying a moment in the sun, but parts of his life to that point had been extraordinarily difficult by virtually any measure. As an orphaned, Hispanic boy growing up in Great Depression–era Texas, he had worked since he could walk. Unlike many of them, he didn’t have an opportunity to finish high school and gain a civilian’s trade or inherit a family business. He found his calling as a teen by joining the military, signing up for a lifetime of fighting because he saw no other opportunity. That decision twice led him to death’s door in a faraway land. And Roy did work. He served in the way that President Reagan asked him to, by speaking to tens of thousands of people for free, even at personal cost to himself. “If he can go to Washington and be all over the country giving speeches,” said another local critic, “he can work.”65
Some locals were weary of the attention he received. His fame made him synonymous with the town itself. Many Americans had only heard of El Campo because they knew about Roy Benavidez. He overshadowed everybody; from an outsider’s point of view, he overshadowed the whole town. “He’s got the worst PR I ever saw,” one anonymous interviewee told a reporter. “The paper overexposed this guy. Nobody wants to hear about it any more.” The head of the Chamber of Commerce suggested, “There is something in human nature that makes it hard to watch another person get the glory.… He left here a poor unknown Mexican and came back a hero. Some people resent that.” Other comments still targeted Roy with racist vitriol: “He’s still a Mexican fighting man who bites the heads off chickens,” said another anonymous interviewee. Much had changed since Roy was a boy, but he believed racial prejudice still played a major role in the bubbling resentment. “I don’t mean everybody,” Roy told a reporter about local racists, “I’m just talking about that 10 percent or so, those people who remember the old days and resent it that some of us [Hispanics] have made it to the top.”66
In August of 1983, the Sunday magazine of the Dallas Times Herald ran a cover story on Roy titled “A Hero Without Hometown Honors.” The reporter interviewed Roy’s friends and foes alike, along with Roy’s personal physician. Some agreed only to anonymous interviews. The journalist uncovered a stunning range of reactions toward the El Campo hero. “The feelings here go from hero worship to animosity,” said a local businessman. “Roy goes to the White House and meets with generals and presidents. A little town like this kind of gets outdone.” Roy told the reporter that he was thinking about leaving El Campo. “He doesn’t want to,” read the story, “but he’s tired of fighting.” “If he does leave, there are those who will say it is a result of a tragic misunderstanding between a community and its most famous citizen,” the reporter concluded, “a rift fed by jealousy and pride, and deepened by television cameras, magazines, and newspapers eager to turn Benavidez into some kind of superhuman patriot.”67
Despite some misgivings, Roy and Lala decided to stay. They wanted to remain near their families in the place where they grew up. Roy would just have to live with it. He had a thick skin but also a chip on his shoulder. Roy had good friends in town, but he was leery of the jealous whispers that stalked his life there. He was undoubtably a national hero, but there were local conflicts over his iconography. Roy had to adapt in every situation as everyone from the president to his neighbors felt empowered to batter about his identity in their judgments about his life. His outside fame didn’t directly affect his neighbors; they were just weary of hearing about him for their own reasons. His paranoia about his local role was part of the reason he so enjoyed being out on the road.