With the recent opening of the Veterans Affairs clinic in Rio Grande, Johnny Walker, COO of the Disabled American Veterans Department of New Jersey, said that things are looking up for vets who call Cape May County home.
The new center means that veterans no longer need to drive to Philadelphia, or even to Atlantic City, to undergo more extensive treatments. Walker said that the new center would not have been possible without the extensive work done by Vincent Kane, Director of the Wilmington VA medical center in Delaware.
Walker said that the new center is a huge step-up from what the County previously offered, which was a small VA clinic on the Cape May Coast Guard base. He said, “The old place was so small, and it couldn’t do a lot of things that needed to be done… Now, a lot of needed services are being done at the new clinic in Rio Grande because it is three to four times the size of the previous one.”
He commended the new center for helping many veterans get access to COVID-19 vaccines before they were easily available. He said, “They did a premiere job when it came to vaccinations; they did a marvelous job, and then they, towards the end, started to accept spouses and caretakers of the vets because they had the extra doses. We can’t express enough how great the center is.”
Walker has been an advocate for veterans in New Jersey for much of his life; he is involved with the promotion of “Edison 64,” a documentary that focuses on a then-segregated high school in Philadelphia that was home to the most Vietnam-related deaths in the country.
Walker said that the film is important because it highlights both the great sacrifice these Americans made and brings to light the terrible racism that plagued schools.
He said, “They had more fatalities, more KIAs in that high school than any high school in the country. It was an astronomical number. The school was a predominantly low income, black high school in north Philadelphia. The documentary is to honor these 64 students. But it’s also to tell the story of what was going on in the 60s in those schools. There was a ton of racism. It was really heavy… there was a lot of anger and a lot of gang fighting… Many of these kids joined the service to get out of that environment, to learn a trade, and to make a better life for themselves. Unfortunately, 64 of them didn’t come home.”
The documentary premiered in Ocean City on November 6th, and at the Cape May Stage on the 8th and the 9th.
Walker said that, because of an aging veteran population and because of the pandemic, Cape May County has far fewer registered veterans than it once did. “Eight years ago we had 48,000 members of the Disabled Veterans… As of this past January, we are down to 19,000…” He encourages younger veterans to join; the more veterans that are registered, the more funding the state will receive from the federal government for veteran care, Walker said. “It’s better for everybody.”
