Iowa veteran waits 37 years for a check in the mail

Robert Reyes is a 96-year-old World War II veteran who lives with his wife, Wanda, in a one-story, 1,100-square-foot home on Des Moines’ east side that he built with his brother in 1967.

The carpet is dated orange shag, and wood paneling covers the walls. The exterior needs new siding, and the garage door has deteriorated. The Reyeses don’t have a clothes dryer, so they hang their clothes up when one of his two daughters doesn’t take in the wash.

Nearly every spring, his basement filled with water, so he would apply for assistance to get it pumped out until daughter Carolyn Nelson bought him a wet vacuum.

His Social Security and small pension combined for less than $2,000 a month, so he was scraping by.

“We worried whether they could buy food or medicine, so there were times they skimped on their pills to make them last longer,” Nelson said. “We had to help them out.”

Then Reyes got a December surprise in the mail.

A check for $3,245.28 from the U.S. government. The veteran’s disability compensation for his hearing loss from the war will come every month from now on.

He has been waiting for it for 37 years.

“I can buy something now and catch up on stuff I neglected,” Reyes said. “If it wasn’t for my kids, I’d have been in trouble. I was fortunate to have two kids that worried about their dad and mother.”

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What changed since the first time he said he went downtown to ask the Department of Veterans Affairs for compensation in 1981?

“They finally listened to what I had to say,” he said.

Reyes said he would go to the VA offices in Des Moines and show them his honorable discharge papers. But the U.S. Navy record of his service from 1942 to 1945 was lost in a fire, he said.

VA officials confirmed there was a fire in a Kansas City government office in 1973 that destroyed many military records but couldn’t comment on what held up Reyes’ claims because of confidentiality laws.

In recent years, the VA nationwide has encountered a backlog of processing 470,000 denied claims that can take years or decades to resolve, according to the New York Times.

VA records show that less than 2.5 percent of the pending claims are from World War II veterans.

In August, Congress passed a law to streamline the process and to hire additional processors to clear cases within four months.

Reyes gives credit to President Donald Trump for signing that law, although VA officials doubt the new law has had an effect that quickly. The new appeals process was launched in early November.

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It may be a case, as Reyes says, that someone finally listened to his story. And it’s a story of a hardworking blue-collar veteran who for decades wasn’t asking for much but a hearing aid.

He grew up the son of a father from Spain and a mother from Mexico. His grandfather died in the Spanish Civil War.

Reyes was happy to do his work delivering caskets in Des Moines. In September 1942, at age 22, he signed up for the Navy as World War II was raging.

One of six brothers fighting in the war, he was aboard a PC-593 ship that rocked in the south Atlantic seas during a hurricane, tilting so extremely in the swells that he looked straight down into the water far below.

During the war, he sent letters and a sailor hat to his young nephew in Des Moines because all the young boys wanted to emulate the fighting men. The same day his nephew Fred Reyes got the letter, the boy’s uncle died in the war. His mother was so upset he never wore the Navy hat in front of her.

But what makes Robert Reyes emotional today is the ship of men who volunteered to take their place on a dangerous patrol and never came back.

“I think about it all the time,” he said, stifling an unexpected sob. “Them poor boys.”

Reyes spent most of his time in the bowels of the ship tending loud motors, and when he got out of the service after the war ended in 1945, he suffered hearing loss that has gotten worse with every passing year.

One thing he learned during those years is that “the country is the people.”

War service wasn’t so much a thing he prized as despised that it was needed. He went about raising a family, earning a living as a trucker and building his house.

He did take a trip or two to the VA for medical checkups and got hearing aids that were too cumbersome to wear. But as his hearing worsened, he applied for disability compensation. That's when he was told his records were burned in a fire, and they needed more proof of his service record.

“Here’s the papers,” he said, showing his honorable discharge certificate.

They said it wasn’t enough, so he went back a few more times through the years and got the same answer.

“Generally, cases don’t take 35 years,” said Ryan Dickson, change management agent with the Department of Veterans Affairs in Des Moines. “Without knowing his situation, I would say each veteran’s case is different and maybe they don’t have a diagnosis of their condition or proper medical records or they don’t have a copy of their records.”

Reyes said he tried to find people he'd served with, but they were all dead.

Then his young nephew showed up this fall. Fred Reyes lives in Storm Lake now and also suffers hearing loss from his military service in the 1950s. He still has that Navy sailor hat, and handed Reyes the letters his uncle sent him from 1943.

“He couldn’t believe it. He helped my dad out in later years when he needed help, so I’d do anything for him,” said Fred Reyes, his voice breaking with emotion. “After all these years, he’s getting help.”

He took his uncle down to the VA in September, determined to help him clear up the situation.

“The man listened to me. We talked and talked, and he asked questions, and we talked some more,” Robert Reyes said. “All my life, I tried to treat people like people. That’s what he did.”

In December, the first check arrived. It hardly set off a party. Reyes said he never asked for anything in life he didn’t deserve.

“Better sooner than later,” Reyes said, chuckling. “I’m going to buy a dryer.”

A decent hearing aid might be in the future, along with some home repairs and enough money for nine prescription medications for him and his wife, whom he said he was lucky enough to marry 74 years ago.

“It’s sad to me that all these years he’s been scraping by when he could have used this money before,” said his daughter Marilyn Josephsen.

But Reyes said he’s not going to start “complaining about the system.”

“I got money in the bank now and the pressure is off, especially when the taxes are due,” he said. “But you wonder how many other people could use the money.”