Veterans Radio – Details, episodes & analysis

Our first guest this week is Dr. Christine LaMarre

Dr. LaMarre is the Assistant Under Secretary for Health for Dentistry at the Department of Veterans Affairs. She discusses with host Jim Fausone the qualifications for dental services from VA, the availability of services, VA dental insurance program, and the 5.5 million procedures performed annually.

Jim also talks with Mark Kelm, US Army Veteran

Rev. Mark Kelm is a US Army Veteran living with Parkinson’s Disease. He shares his own story and talks about his work as a policy advocate and supporting fellow Veterans who have been diagnosed with PD.

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• Jim Fausone – Host of Veterans Radio
• Brig. Gen. Carol Ann Fausone (ret) – Legal Help for Veterans
• David Saims – Director, Washtenaw County Veterans Affairs
• Brian Hayes – Director of Communications, VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System

Join Jim and the rest of the panel for our live broadcast

Michigan Military & Veterans Hall of Honor board members V Garcia, R Near and J Dempsey talk about the military and veterans being inducted into the Hall of Honor in October 2024. They tell the stories of the dozen men and women to host Jim Fausone.

Allison Jaslow, CEO of Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), talks about veterans, the 2023 IAVA member survey, issues for women veterans, and the need for more emphasis on military recruiting. Learn more about the IAVA here.

President of the Michigan Air & Space Forces Association, Brig. Gen. Doug “Odie” Slocum (ret.), discusses his career and mission of the Michigan AFA. Learn more about the Michigan AFA here.

Carrie Filipetti is the Executive Director of the Vandenberg Coalition. She and Hans Zeiger, Jack Miller Center, wrote about the need to teach civics to our youth so they can appreciate "why their country is worth defending". She explains teaching civics can help younger generations understand the value of freedom in the country and possibly be more inclined to serve the military. Carrie talks to host Jim Fausone about the Vandenberg Coalition and the Jack Miller Center.

Documentary photographer, photojournalist, and writer Jenn Tuero "J.T." Blatty, graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 2000 and served six years as an active-duty U.S. Army officer, deploying with the first troops into Afghanistan following 9/11 and again into Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Since early 2018, she has been documenting the conflict in eastern Ukraine while simultaneously creating a photographic/audio archive of the 2014 volunteer soldiers of the Donbas (exhibited in Chicago and NYC in 2019-2020, March 2022 in Kyiv postponed due to the full-scale invasion), the revolutionaries who self-deployed during the original Russian invasion and saved Ukraine’s independence.

A 2021-2022 Ukraine Fulbright alum, Blatty continues her photojournalistic work in Ukraine and recently completed writing Snapshots Sent Home: From Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine (publication Feb 20 2024), a military memoir that speaks of her journey in Ukraine, the volunteers, and a universal bond between combat veterans around the world. jtblatty.com

Host Dale Throneberry speaks with author William Yeske about his book, “Damn the Valley,” a first-hand account from an airborne unit engaged in some of the toughest fighting in Afghanistan. Look for his book on Amazon. “DAMN THE VALLEY” was a phrase regularly uttered by the men that spent any amount of time in the Arghandab River Valley during the deployment of 2 Fury to Afghanistan in 2009–2010. The valley has claimed bodies from the troops of Alexander the Great, the British Empire, and more recently, the Russian Army. Operating in the valley was like nothing the men could have envisaged, they called it the “meat grinder.” It was a deployment that the media didn’t talk about, and the government doesn’t acknowledge. Three of the company were KIA, more than a dozen suffered life-changing injuries, and half the company had Purple Hearts—not many modern-day deployments have a 52% casualty rate. Since their return, many of the survivors have struggled to move on with their lives, and the unit has been declared at “extraordinary risk” by the Department of Veteran Affairs. No one who entered that region was left unscathed.

Dale then speaks with Scott Lopez, NVBDC member, veteran, and business owner. Scott Lopez is the CEO and Founder of Zepol Productions Inc., (ZPI) which he founded in 2009. Scott brings over 25 years of channel experience, both creating distribution-specific brands and selling multiple service and hardware lines through the channel, and is proud of his Veteran and Latino American heritage, as a NVBDC-certified, service-disabled and veteran-owned small business (from nvbdc.org). Learn more about NVBDC.