This week's Valley Veterans column comes from Todd Vercoe, Legacy Mid North Coast President
Most of us have close links to ex-servicemen and women who may well have been exposed to a range of sensory and physical experiences that most in the community will have no familiarity with.
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These experiences catch up with them and can lead to ongoing physical and mental health issues.
What happens when ex-servicemen and women die or are incapacitated due to their wartime service?
What happens to their remaining family members?
How do the bills get paid and how are they assisted to maintain a circle of friends and acquaintances?
This is where Legacy steps into the breach. Legacy is an organisation of over 5,900 volunteers, and a small number of permanent employees, providing services to the dependants of veterans who have died or who suffer ongoing health effects from military service.
Today Legacy's caring and compassionate service assists over 80,000 widows and 1,800 children and dependants with a disability.
Within the Nambucca Valley, 34 volunteer Legatees serve the needs of 236 beneficiaries, from bereaved partners to disabled dependants to school children.
Legacy Week, September 1 to 8, 2019
Legacy is dedicated to enhancing the lives and opportunities of our families through innovative and practical programs.
But how do we do that - what practical things do we do to help make this happen?
We advocate get the widow the best possible pension payment that we can. Where necessary we arrange for them to have handrails fitted to their bathrooms and toilets and for ramps to be constructed where they are unsure of their footing.
We arrange for household and nursing assistance where required and also for Meals on Wheels to provide them with meals. We speak on their behalf to Centrelink, community transport and health agencies. And we get them out to social activities on a regular basis. We visit beneficiaries regularly or phone them, to ensure that they are well and have social company.
We hear stories of growing up in this Valley when the main industry was timber cutting and anything produced in the Valley was shipped off to Sydney by boat, stories of the days long before mobile phones when all phone calls were connected manually by switchboard operators who literally had to push in a plug to make the phone call happen.
To perform all these services without the benefit of any Government funding, either at state or federal level. These services do not come for free: service providers and tradesmen need to be paid.
Each year Legacy conducts a number of fundraising activities to enable them to continue to deliver their much-needed services.
The most obvious time is Legacy Week, which this year runs from September 1 to 8.
Help those widows, struggling wives and their children, and when you see someone selling badges, teddy bears or pens on behalf of Legacy, please give generously to show that you care.
