Your Name Here!

The Veterans Association of North County needs donations to open the first vet center in northern San Diego County. Naming rights are available for this building on Mission Avenue in Oceanside.

True North: A New Vet Voice Rises from the Concrete

Unified Veterans Association of North County Might Provide Historic Shift

By Rick Rogers
DefenseTracker.com

The grass-roots effort to start a major veterans' organization in San Diego began one dark morning on a North County walkway.

The year was 2004 and Chuck Atkinson's Oceanside American Legion Post 146 was hopscotching from place to place to find a meeting location.

One morning - not the first -- the guy with the key never showed. The legionaries held their meeting where they stood on the concrete sidewalk.

That day Atkinson dedicated himself to finding rootless veterans groups like his a permanent home.

"This was no way for a legitimate organization to operate, especially a veteran's organization in an area with 80,000 veterans like North County," Atkinson said. "Something had to be done."

	Chuck Atkinson, president of Veterans Association of North County

It took Atkinson three long years to unify 32 North County veteran organizations into a single 5,000-member collective known as the Veterans Association of North County and to convince the city of Oceanside to donate a building for them to share.

"I thought at first there might be some resentment in asking all the groups to come together," Atkinson said. "But I told them I wasn't interested in taking their identity away, only in all of us joining together to do something great and unique in North County. I was offering them a way to have a place to call home. Only by banding together could we make this possible."

Located just off Interstate 5 in a former police station, the 10,000 sq. foot space needs about $1.75 million in renovations to open as a part meeting hall, part training center and part classroom.

"We need a facility in North County were veterans and their families can learn how to write a resume or how to interview for a job or even how to look for a job," Atkinson said. "Right now, they don't know where to go or how to help themselves. They've raised their hands to protect the country, but no one has offered them a hand to help them out."

AT&T has donated $15,000 and Home Depot another $10,000, but much more is needed to open the center, which Atkinson said would legitimize North County veteran outreach efforts like nothing else.

"The concern among North County veterans has always been that all the power is concentrated in southern San Diego," said Atkinson, 71. "The San Diego United Veteran Council is a very powerful and good group. But the north deserve a voice as well."

Since the mid-1980s, the United Veteran Council of San Diego has been the county's lone voice on vet issues. A place to see and to be seen.

On any given fourth Saturday of the month, city, state and federal legislators can be found mingling with top Department of Veteran Affairs and California Department of Veterans Affairs officials at the Old Naval Hospital Chapel.

At the last meeting, San Diego City Council Member Todd Gloria briefed the Council on his upcoming ballot measure to strengthen the city's veteran hiring practices.

It's not uncommon to find Rep. Bob Filner, chairman of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, or Assemblymember Mary Salas, chair of the Veterans Committee, in attendance. Candidates for various offices are always looking for a blessing.

In short, UVC meetings offer aspiring and seasoned politicians alike one-stop shopping to brush up on veteran issues and to burnish patriotic credentials. No small matters in a pro-defense county that's home to 280,000 voting veterans.

Whether this influence has caused veteran services to be lumped in southern end of San Diego County is debatable. But the uneven distribution is now a matter of concern and debate.

Atkinson hopes the Veterans Association of North County can one day pull in half the heavy hitters. He has his elevator pitch ready.

"Where better can you help veterans make the transition from the military to the civilian world?" asks Atkinson, a 27-year veteran of the Coast Guard, Marine Corps and Air Force. "Where better can you help the guy in uniform than in North County, where you have the largest military installation on the West Coast?"

Gary Rossio, who led the San Diego VA Health Care System for years before retiring in early 2009, said the success of the Veterans Association of North County is important for veterans across the county.

"The veterans population is growing in the North County and yes, it is import now and will be," Rossio said.

Mark Baird, a veteran advocate from Fallbrook and creator of the online job site HirePatriots.com., said younger veterans must be engaged for the North County veteran movement to take wing.

"There are Vietnam Veterans in North County and there are World War II Veterans in the United Veterans Council of San Diego. Both are out of touch with veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan," Baird said. "Veteran organizations are not something that younger veterans are looking in to. Creating a North County veteran center is great, but I am not sure if it's going to attract all the people it hopes to."

Rossio added, "We need to collaborate and encourage coordination and team work on the common veteran issues that affect us all in San Diego County."

That's the attitude Atkinson is searching for.

"The only we are going to help our vets is for you to forget about your organization and me to forget about mine and for both of us to focus on the vet."