That's better

We were moved by a news article this week telling the story of Jennifer Lowy's three-year feud with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for the pension of her late husband, Sgt. Daniel Lowy, her high school sweetheart to whom she was married for 33 years. Dan served in the U.S. Army and after coming home he developed cancer caused by exposure to toxic smoke from burn pits maintained by the U.S. military at dozens of overseas bases where soldiers lived and worked. The Lowy family poses for a photo in November 2019, four months before Dan Lowy's death. Back row, left to right: Sons Ian, Nicolas and Joe. Front row, left to right, daughter Abbey, Dan and Jennifer. Provided That she and her family were even put through the ordeal, the sickness and the suffering — and the financial ruin — remains a baffling mystery. That any veteran under any circumstance would be subject to such cruelty after serving their nation is anti-American, or should be. The devastating illness Dan suffered as a result of his service to his country was also devastating to his family, his wife, their sons and daughter. By the time Jennifer Lowy, a manager at a local retail store, received a foreclosure warning from her mortgage company in January, she felt her world closing in. She feared she would be homeless. With the unwavering support of two local veterans at the Erie County Veteran Services Office, Chuck Solander and Mike Lang, Lowy was granted a Dependency and Indemnity Compensation pension, saving her home from foreclosure. This June, the mother of four adult children and military widow received her first pension payment, took a deep breath and said she was, for the first time, able to properly mourn the loss of her husband. She wept. Her children wept. Those two bearded veterans who stuck by the family and refused to settle for the "No" responses from the VA, they wept too. Readers who learned about their story wept. The Register reported extensively about the PACT Act, a bill approved in 2022 after another long ordeal — more than 50 years dating back to the Vietnam conflict and Agent Orange — that expands health care benefits to more veterans and their families. The VA has added 20 burn pit and toxic exposure presumptive conditions as a result of the PACT Act. There are so many veterans to truly thank — in a proper way — and others for making that happen. In a politicized climate, a partisan cesspool full of acrimony and distrust, in Washington, U.S. senators and U.S. representatives came together after a fierce showdown on the steps of Capitol Hill, to approve the Heath Robinson Honoring Our PACT Act, named after an Ohio National Guardsman, who like Sgt. Daniel Lowy, succumbed to illnesses brought on by his service to his country in 2020. It was an amazing show of solidarity — finally — when the PACT Act gained final approval in August 2022, made possible with overwhelming bipartisan support. Opponents to it were "flipped" when veterans, their families and others — including Sandusky resident Susan Zeier, the mother-law of Sgt. Robinson, comedian and advocate Jon Stewart and others — refused to leave the grounds of the Capitol until it was passed. Zeier, by that time, had been lobbying Congress for passage for more than five years, and Rosie Torres, whose husband suffered from similar, life-threatening, service-related toxic exposure illnesses, had been fighting for longer than that. Torres is the founder of Burn Pits 360, a veteran advocacy group that never stopped fighting and was decisive in getting it approved. We were there. We reported about it in detail and often. And we also know that U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, was willing to fight hard for veterans. He was in it for the long haul, and he, too, was unwilling to take "No" for an answer. As a member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, Brown pushed, cajoled, charmed, demanded and finally got the nation's attention and helped make passage of the PACT Act happen. His leadership was focused and precise. We learned about this story and wondered aloud — how many Sgt. Dan Lowys and how many Sgt. Heath Robinsons there might be? Thousands? Millions? It is the price of war and the debt we owe. Thanks to the commitment of so many, it is finally a reality that the nation is required to pay it. In the journalism business we like to say, "keep up the good fight." We stand with veterans and their families and the people who helped get this done.