JOHNSON COUNTY, Ind. — Last year, President Joe Biden signed the PACT Act into law. It expanded health care benefits for veterans, including screenings for toxic chemicals they were exposed to while in the service.
But many veterans, including some here in Indiana, aren't aware of the help and care now available to them. It's why the staff at the Veterans' Administration Roudebush Medical Center in Indianapolis are bringing those resources and assistance right to our Hoosier veterans.
"There are a lot of vets who need help," said Thomas Clark, a Korean War veteran now living in Greenwood.
Inside the Johnson County Armory, veterans from all branches of service filter in the doors. Thomas Clark served in Korea.
"I always tease everybody and say, 'Well, I really didn't do anything, just ran out in the woods and let everybody shoot at me,'" Clark said.
His buddy, Steve Decot, served in Vietnam.
“I was with a Cobra gunship unit in Pleiku, in the central highlands of Vietnam. We flew gun support special forces Green Beret into that area and also right up close to Cambodia and Laos,” Decot said. "It was a little rough. Yeah, a little rough. Lot of friends of mine got killed."
In the decades since coming home, neither has ever had a toxic exposure screening.
"No, no," Clark said.
"I've not been screened for Agent Orange at all," Decot said.
But even without a screening, Decot knew he had been exposed several times.
“With the aviation unit, I also flew door gunner, and so we flew a lot of areas around Vietnam and was exposed when they were spraying Agent Orange to defoliate the areas and forest, so I was exposed to it several times," Decot said.
He remembers the smell of Agent Orange and the feeling it left on his skin, a memory that's strong in his minded decades after coming home from Vietnam.
"The side effects, a lot of it's pretty rough," Decot said. "I got peripheral neuropathy in my hands, my feet, arms and legs. Like you stick your finger in a light socket and you get a shock, that's how my hands, arms and legs feel all the time, 24/7."
But back then, it wasn't his main priority.
"Keep myself alive and get home," Decot said. "At that time, you didn't know. I came off a farm in central Wisconsin. I didn't know anything about it. I knew they were spraying it but didn't know the side effects of it. That was the bad thing after you got back and you found out through the years, bad stuff."
Now, Decot, Clark and other veterans are eligible for toxic exposure screenings and expanding health care benefits for the very first time. Made possible through the PACT Act, which was signed into law last August.
"This act is probably the most impactful law that has been passed for veterans in the past 70 or 80 years. It affects millions of veterans nationwide and probably 200,000-300,000 right here in Indiana alone," said Mark Turney, chief of communications at Roudebush VA.
Turney explained that the changes to expanding health care benefits for veterans is a huge change but not many veterans don't know about it. And, he said, it's needed, not just for those who served in Vietnam but in many other wars and other parts of the world, too.
“The PACT Act specifically deals with Agent Orange for Vietnam veteran era and then, a toxic exposure such as burn pits. I know when I was in Afghanistan, everything was burned. Sometimes you didn’t know what it was, you just burned it because there was no other choice. That led a lot of toxins out into the atmosphere. We breathed them in,” Turney said.
To ensure veterans in central Indiana know the resources and health care they can access, the staff at VA Roudebush are hosting resource and benefits fairs like the one at Johnson County Armory, bringing the help right to the veterans directly.
It's care that's needed for so many who served our nation.
Decot and Clark both agree, they're grateful the VA staff here aren't letting these new health care benefits slip through the cracks.
"They're just great people. They know what they're doing and they always make you feel welcome," Clark said.
And hopeful, too, that this is the start of getting the care they need and deserve after our nation's veterans gave so much to protect our country.
"I'm hoping this will get me a little further in and see where we go from there," Decot said.
"As a veteran, this means the world to me," Turney said.
The next resource fair with toxic exposure screening will be held Saturday, May 13 at the Brownsburg VA Clinic, 557 Pit Road from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. PACT Act briefings will be held at 10 a.m., 11 a.m. and at noon.
Click here for more information about the PACT Act, visit the Roudebush VA Medical Center or call 317-554-0000.