DAV van Veterans deserve to be treated better

I went to Vietnam in July '66 and, with the exception of six months on the DMZ in Korea, I left Vietnam in November of '71. During my service in Vietnam in '68, I was wounded in an NVA ambush at Khe Sanh.

Because of war injuries, I need to go to the VA Hospital each month for treatment, prescriptions, etc.

I try to take the DAV van whenever I can.

Doing so required my parking my vehicle in the parking lot of the 5th Avenue restaurant, where the DAV van would pick up vets at 6:45 a.m.

I always parked so as not to block access to the restaurant.

On Sept. 11, I spoke with the "owner," of this restaurant to inquire as to why the change to not permit parking in their parking lot.

The bottom line was that for the time my vehicle was using that parking space, it was costing the restaurant over $15,000 in revenue.

I called the DAV van coordinator and discovered that over three years, the number of patients picked up in Sandpoint averaged 12-15 per month, not the hoards the owner described.

All World War II, Korean War, Vietnam and current Middle East vets have done, and are doing very serious "jobs," whether we agreed or not with the politics involved.

We willingly fulfilled our obligations. In return, we bore our wounds and haven't asked for much.

But we in the least deserve better treatment than described herein.

DR. JOHN IVY

Sandpoint

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