Hays County Veteran Services Office helps those who served

Jude Prather tells the story of the World War II Navy veteran who was rapidly losing his hearing.  

The folks at the Hays County Veteran Services Office traced his hearing loss to service on a destroyer and its booming big guns. They combed 75-year-old records, completed form after form and argued their case before the judges at the Veteran’s Administration.

In the end, the aging sailor got the medical treatment and disability payments he was entitled to. Prather and his staff got the satisfaction of helping one more veteran.

Prather has been the director of the Veteran Services Office for the last 10 years. He and his staff of four spend their time fighting for military veterans. He figures his office handles 50-70 calls per day. Some of the calls last a couple minutes and direct a veteran to the proper webpage. Others take hundreds of hours, digging up old records at the National Archives, arranging for medical examinations and appealing unfavorable rulings.

“My job is very rewarding,” says Prather, “and very frustrating. With the bureaucracy and red tape it becomes very frustrating. On the other hand, helping a veteran get what he or she has earned, is, well, there’s no better feeling.”

Prather estimated there are around 14,000 veterans in Hays County. State law mandates that any county with a total population of 200,000 or more have a veteran services office. 

Varied duties 

The staff doesn’t just shuffle papers. It deals with all kinds of real-life problems, from getting subsidies for a veteran struggling with rent or utility bills to distributing food. When the recent freeze knocked out wells and busted pipes, the office handed out drinking water. The staff also rounded up homeless vets and made sure they had shelter in the freezing temperatures.

If there’s a Boy Scout flag raising, someone from the veterans office will likely be there. They have a booth at the Wimberley Veterans of Foreign War’s annual Fourth of July celebration.

After the deadly 2015 floods in Wimberley, the staff was busy finding housing for veterans who had lost their homes.

“After the floods, we had people donating refrigerators and furniture. I had to get a storage unit to store it all.  People really responded,” recalls Prather.

The veterans office got its start way back in 1944 with the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act — commonly known as the G.I. Bill — that helped thousands of World War II veterans gets low-cost mortgages, small-business loans, educational assistance, and unemployment payments.

“That one piece of legislation,” says Prather, “fundamentally transformed our country. It took that farmer from rural Texas and gave him the ability to go to A&M and become an engineer.”

It made home ownership possible, Prather points out, which led to subdivisions, suburbs and the Baby Boom.

Over the years, offices popped up to guide veterans through the labyrinth of rules, regulations and paperwork.  The Hays County office is located in the old courthouse on the square in San Marcos and has been helping veterans since the 1980s.

Like most other businesses and government agencies, COVID has had an impact — both good and bad, says Prather.

The staff used to deal with time-consuming face-to-face meetings that often lasted an hour after the chit chat and war stories. Now most of the work is done over the phone or in virtual meetings. The procedure is more efficient these days.

At the same time, the government operations almost ground to a standstill. The National Archives — which the office uses to bolster cases — was reduced to a skeleton crew and retrieving the required information was a slow, tedious process.

The staff tried working from home for awhile, but found the back and forth in the office really helped move things along. “We are always leaning over and asking ‘what about this?’ or ‘how do you do that?’ So being together in the office is very beneficial,” says Prather, who served as a Humvee gunner during the Iraq War.

While much of the work is done over the phone or through virtual meetings these days, Prather points out, that anyone who walks in will get served.

The office works hard to reach out to veterans at events and through service organizations. “The Wimberley (VFW) post is very dynamic. It always helps restock our pantry,” says Prather.

Different eras

Veterans from different eras, of course, face different challenges. 

The veterans from World War II and Korea are mostly concerned with medical issues and have complicated cases because of the lack of record keeping back in the day.

The widely used defoliant Agent Orange and its health effects is a big issue among vets from the Vietnam era.

For those who took part in the various Gulf Wars, problems range from severe rashes to brain injuries to depression and anxiety.

“You have to be a combination lawyer and doctor for this job. Each veteran’s case is like a book filled with information,” says Prather.

Jude estimates that payments from the federal government to disabled vets brings $90-$100 million into Hays County annually.

To become a veteran services officer requires a lot of study and a state certification, but, like with most positions, the best experience comes from simply doing the job and learning as you go. The Veteran’s Administration is a vast bureaucracy that operates some 1,700 medical centers and clinics, 135 national cemeteries and employs more than 400,000 people.

Dealing with all that is a pretty daunting task. That’s why Prather points out: “If you know a veteran who needs help our office is the place to start.”

The office is at 111 E. San Antonio, Suite 200 in San Marcos. The phone number is 512-392-8387.