Waiting for an Army to Die by Fred A. Wilcox

Author:Fred A. Wilcox [Wilcox, Fred A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-60980-339-1
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2011-09-12T16:00:00+00:00

* For a copy of this memo, see Appendix, 191–194.

* In 1980 the VA rescinded the requirement that veterans prove exposure when asking for information, assistance, or treatment for what they believed to be Agent Orange-related illnesses.

* For the American Legion’s August 24–26, 1982, resolution no. 410 (Iowa), “The American Legion Policy on Agent Orange,” see Appendix, 197–199.

7

When You Can’t Sue the Government that Kills You

Victor Yannacone has been called flamboyant, arrogant, a genius, and, I’m sure, many less complimentary things by those whose vested interests he challenges in the name of what he calls the “public good.” Certainly he is not overly modest, calling the Agent Orange class action suit “the most important product liability case in the history of the United States.” Nor is he always gracious or polite, thundering like an evangelist, occasionally answering questions with the clipped irritability of a man who has little time for fools, because he knows only too well that they can be depended on to lose: and Yannacone doesn’t intend to lose when he goes to court on behalf of 2.5 million Vietnam veterans and their families.

He can be charming. He will bring you coffee, buy you lunch and spend the morning, perhaps even part of the afternoon, helping you sort things out, defining legal terms correcting misconceptions, and speaking always with the confidence of a man who, through his successful campaign to remove DDT from the market, has shown that the chemical industry and its multi-million-dollar Washington lobby is not invincible. Yannacone loves a good joke, a humorous story, or a satirical account of court proceedings, but he is not a cynic, and beneath the bravado it is easy to see the intense compassion he feels for the “kids” who served in Vietnam and returned home with what Yannacone calls “an aging disease.”

Victor Yannacone possesses another important attribute. To men who have been lied to, misled, maligned, treated as pariahs, psychopaths, malingerers, hypochondriacs, and disposable war matériel, he just may be the one man in America whom Vietnam veterans feel they can trust.

I am waiting for him to finish a rather long story about how he once defended a man who wanted to keep pigs in his backyard on Long Island. Somehow Yannacone managed to prove that the pigs’ ancestors had provided a valuable service to the community and, he laughs, to convince the judge that the pigs therefore had every right to be where they were. At a nearby desk Carol Yannacone sorts through mail, examines and files autopsy reports on Vietnam veterans and their children. She explains that “many times they don’t really know why the children are born dead or don’t live long after birth. Everything seems to be perfectly normal, but the child dies. So the doctor just files an autopsy report and we get them from lawyers who are working on the class action suit. It is a sad job, sometimes too sad.”

In nearby rooms typewriters clack, computers hum, and Vietnam veterans phone from all over the country seeking advice, asking for help, offering assistance.

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