Saturday’s annual Veterans Day observance has special significance in Florida, which has 1.5 million veterans, including more than 100,000 in Northwest Florida.
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With so many veterans in the state and region, there’s an emphasis on helping military veterans access all the benefits they qualify for.
At the local level, County Veterans Service Offices are often the tip of the spear.
Santa Rosa County’s Veterans Service Office is tucked away in an office complex near the County Auditorium in Milton. Bells hanging on the door provide a welcoming sound for veterans who want in-person assistance.
Laurie Schulze is the county’s Veterans Service Officer. She's accredited through the Florida Department of Veterans Affairs and American Legion. This means she knows what she’s doing. It’s helpful — and often required for the job — to be a veteran. Schulze served eleven years in the U.S. Navy.
“I can really relate to these veterans that come in, and I have a picture of my boot camp picture up on the wall,” she began. “When they come in and they see that, it really puts them at ease, and they know that they're in the company of another veteran.”
The goal of the office, established by the Santa Rosa County Commission, is to assist veterans and their dependents in securing all of the benefits they’re entitled to, by serving as a liaison between the veteran and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The primary job of the staff is to help veterans file their disability claims.
“So if they have an injury that happened on active duty and they have a diagnosed disability and it's chronic and continuous, it happened in the service, but it's still bothering the veteran now; or maybe it was an accident and they've got arthritis now due to that accident,” said Schulze as an example. “We help that veteran collect all of his evidence, make sure it's all together, and we help file the paperwork for him.”
The Santa Rosa office, set to receive more than $321,000 in the recently approved budget, is reporting just over 13,000 veteran interactions thus far in 2023, compared to approximately 8,400 all of last year. Most of the interactions across the county’s three locations, including Milton, Gulf Breeze, and Jay, were conducted via phone and email appointments.
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Okaloosa County, with the highest percentage of veterans in the region per capita — about 15% based on 2023 estimates — provides services through offices in Shalimar and Crestview with a budget of just over $295,000.
There are two people qualified to file VA claims in a single Veterans Service Office in Escambia County, which reports around 40,000 military veterans, the largest number in the four counties of Northwest Florida.
“For example, I filed 80 to 90 claims a month on average for the last five years, and that is just me,” declared Lisa Horan, one of Escambia’s two Veterans Service Officers, in reference to her current and previous work with veterans.
According to Horan, in Escambia, it’s common for her and her colleague Andy Huffman to see veterans every hour on the hour, often with their lunch hour reserved for cases that need immediate attention.
“If a widow, for example, calls, and usually they're pretty distraught,” she began. “A lot of times all their income has stopped because of Social Security or retirement or what have you and the effect of the losing their loved one, they need to be seen quicker just to give them that peace of mind that everything's going to be okay.”
Additionally, much of their work involves staying up to date and keeping veterans updated on new rules, which can affect their benefits.
“The bottom line is that if there's a veteran out there who has never explored their VA benefits, they really should do so now,” said Horan, in reference to the 2022 Honoring Our PACT Act(PACT Act).
“There has been recent, law changes that expanded the eligibility for the veterans who served during Vietnam. Also, if there is a surviving spouse whose claim was previously denied, we'd love the opportunity to have a second look at that. The VA added hypertension, which is a very common disability, as well as new locations, including Guam and Thailand, to the Agent Orange presumptive list.”
More than 20 new presumptive conditions, including multiple types of cancer, expand benefits burn pit and other toxic exposure suffered by Gulf War era and post-9/11 Veterans.
Across the region, the greatest number of Veterans served in the first and second Gulf Wars, followed by the Vietnam War. There’s a much smaller number of older veterans seeking help with their VA benefits.
“It's getting fewer and fewer where we actually get the pleasure of working with a Korean War veteran or a World War II veteran,” said Horan. “In fact, if one of them were to show up in our office, we would expedite the assistance for them.”
According to 2023 estimates from World Population Review, the number of Korean War Veterans has fallen to 3,731 across the four counties of Northwest Florida, with the total number of World War II Veterans from Escambia to Walton down to 762.
