VA Loan Updates

Hard work was Harry W. Colmery’s trademark. For most of his adult life, he juggled a busy law practice in Topeka and a national role as an advocate for veterans. He never retired from either; Colmery was still practicing law when he died at an American Legion convention in 1979 at age 89.

His admirers - and they are many - are finding it necessary to follow his example. For 10 years, an effort has been under way to make Colmery a posthumous recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

The effort has united politicians of both parties. The House of Representatives passed a resolution in 2004 urging that Colmery be honored for the role he played in drafting and lobbying for the G.I. Bill of Rights.

Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have not conferred the honor, however. And it may not be politically palatable for Bush to do so while his administration is opposing an increase in the benefits begun under the original G.I. Bill.

Colmery’s family, friends and supporters say they will persevere. Colmery would have expected nothing less.

“He was driven for work,” his daughter, Mary Colmery Olander, said shortly before her death early this month. “He rarely slept. His passion was for the veterans.”

Colmery served in the Army Air Corps during World War I. He was deeply troubled by the sight of veterans on street corners and unemployment lines at the war’s end, and resolved not to let the same thing happen to World War II veterans.

By then, Colmery was active in the leadership of the American Legion, which was lobbying Congress for veterans benefits. Colmery took his ideas and proposals from other Legion members and wrote them in longhand on stationery provided by the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. Those scribblings became the foundation for the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, better known as the G.I. Bill.

Passage didn’t come easily. Congressmen worried that providing veterans with benefits such as tuition aid, homeownership loans and unemployment stipends would be too costly and diminish initiative. As it turned out, the G.I. Bill opened the door to a thriving American middle class.

Colmery’s papers, including his congressional testimony and other speeches, have been donated to the Kansas State Historical Society in Topeka. His thoughts on veterans are as pertinent today as they were at the end of World War II.

“We take them out of our competitive system,” Colmery said in one speech, “… and having used, wasted and sacrificed him, we toss him back into life’s rough and tumble competition, to start from scratch in a race against contestants who have already run quite a number of laps. We have taught him the value of war and alienated him from the values of peace.

“And when he returns, we have a veteran’s problem. But too many of us have been satisfied to consider it his - rather than our problem.”

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