While your Coffee County DAV (Disabled American Veterans) Chapter 90 isn’t very visible in the public eye, it doesn’t mean we’re not laser-focused on our mission of helping our veterans and their families.

DAV is one of the smallest of the national veterans’ organizations: American Legion is open to all veterans with a DD-214. VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) is more limited, to those veterans who served on active duty in a combat area. DAV’s membership eligibility is further limited to veterans who served on active duty, during a time of war, and sustained a service-connected disability.

Our mission is equally limited in scope: to improve the quality of life for veterans, primarily those who are injured and ill, and their families. While we will help any veteran in legitimate crisis, we focus on our primary mission of fulfilling our nation’s promises to disabled veterans by ensuring they receive the benefits they need and have earned with their military service.

Accomplishing this is a multi-faceted approach: DAV has legislative teams that monitor new bills and resolutions, discussing with lawmakers issues of vital importance to veterans. DAV hosts a winter sports clinic, for severely disabled veterans, to show them that they are more capable than they realize. That clinic has literally prevented suicides and changed lives. Here at the local level, we partner with organizations like Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing: a VA-approved nonprofit therapy organization that helps injured and ill veterans find much-needed peace and tranquility in the calming, focused activity of fly-fishing, at no cost to participants.

While we recently helped a local veteran and his family obtain adequate shelter after their home was condemned as no longer safely habitable, your Coffee County DAV is also helping with ongoing crises in our region. The media have all moved on to newer stories: yet in the tragic aftermath of Helene in East Tennessee and Western North Carolina, people are still living in tents as they have been for months–and it’s COLD.

DAV Chapter 35 in Bristol has become a major distribution center of critical supplies. Many area roads are still closed, if not completely gone: much of the effort now is getting those supplies to the people who desperately need them.

We remain in contact with DAV Bristol and our members are ready to carry supplies to them upon request. Your continued support Coffee County’s DAV Tennessee Chapter 90, as well as our other local veterans’ organizations, allows us all to continue accomplishing our collective mission; and we are ever grateful for the generous support this community provides.

I felt it was important to assure you that, although we may not be making headlines or in the spotlight, we’re quietly busy doing what needs to be done. Thank you again for your continued support of our dedicated efforts. 

Howard Thompson

Commander, DAV TN Chapter 90

Manchester