Battling Red Tape and Old Fire

Air Force veteran Darrell Marcum applied for military benefits after a diagnosis of a fatal disease in January, but a decades-old fire and the slow churn of bureaucracy have him losing a race against the clock.

Family members say Marcum suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease, and is rapidly deteriorating. The 78-year-old Birmingham, Alabama, man’s story is one that has been repeated over and over since a blaze gutted the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis in 1973. The Department of Veterans Affairs calls it an “unparalleled disaster.” Although firefighters arrived a little more than four minutes after the first alarm, the fire burned out of control for 22 hours and was not declared officially out for four-and-a-half days.

The fire destroyed 16 million to 18 million files, including some 75 percent of Air Force records for peopled discharged between Sept. 25, 1947 and Jan. 1, 1963. In addition, 80 percent of Army records were destroyed for people discharged from 1912 to 1960.

What’s more, millions of records had been lent to the VA before the fire. And here’s the kicker: The government inexplicably made no duplicate copies and did not back up the records on microfilm. Nor were any indexes created, meaning that the government does not even have a complete list of the records that it lost, according to the VA.

For veterans who do not have their DD-214 discharge forms, the situation has created a nightmare of red tape. And unfortunately, the Marcum family cannot find that form.

“Because of this fire, reinventing my father’s time in the Air Force has proven to be next to impossible, or certainly very slow for someone who is extremely ill,” said Bart Marcum, the veteran’s son.

Dan Caldwell, vice president of legislative and political action for the advocacy group Concerned Veterans of America, said he constantly dealt with problems related to the 1973 fire when he was a congressional staffer. He said a constituent asked for help about once a month.

“It has affected thousands of veterans around the country, maybe more than that — maybe tens of thousands,” he said. “It hasn’t gotten [as much] attention as the VA backlog, but it affects a lot of veterans … It can oftentimes take over a year, especially if someone is trying to correct a record.”

The agency has been under fire since 2014, when reports surfaced that some veterans had died while on waiting lists to get treated at VA medical facilities.

“They have to fix not only the health care eligibility system but the VA benefits system,” Caldwell said. “It still takes too long to qualify for both systems.”

Bart Marcum said his father never used the VA health system because he always had private health insurance. He said his father originally hoped to obtain benefits to pay for home modifications after his diagnosis; but given his bedridden status, it will be too late for that money to do much good. The younger Marcum said his father now simply wants to secure survivor benefits for his wife.

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“If he passes away, she gets no benefits,” he said.

The VA suggests a number of different ways to establish the legitimacy of a claim, including photographs taken or letters written during service, police reports, medical records, and even “buddy” statements, or sworn affidavits from people who served with the veteran. But such documentation can be hard to come by, especially for veterans who served long ago and for relatively short stints.

Marcum said his father performed communications duties for the Air Force for four years after graduating from high school in the 1950s. He later went on to a long career as an engineer for AT&T and has been married to his high school sweetheart for nearly 60 years. Darrell Marcum was born in West Virginia, the son of a coal miner, and grew up in Ohio and later settled in the South after the military.

Bart Marcum said the family has hired a company called Touchstone to help expedite the matter. But it has been slow going. He said the family has sent several forms to the VA — only to be told more are required.

“By the time we get them processed, he might not even be here anymore, because his health has deteriorated so much,” he said. “It’s just kind of a travesty to me.”