Cooke County — Cooke County Veterans Service Officer Judson Perry estimates there are more than 3,500 veterans in Cooke County, who have served in World War II to the present conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As the veterans service officer, he is charged with advising veterans and dependents of the legal benefits available to them under state and U.S. federal law.

“I’m a veteran myself, retired from the military,” Perry said, and during the seven years he has served the county’s veterans, which he says accounts for approximately nine percent of the population, his responsibilities have included compensation or pension, disability retirement, death indemnity compensation, board of veterans appeal, hospital and outpatient benefits, Texas veterans land board programs, educational benefits, vocational rehabilitation benefits, debt waivers, obtaining lost military records, review of military discharge, claims for insurance payments, burial benefits and TAPS transportation to Department of Veterans Affairs medical facilities.

“It’s a real rewarding job because of the people: the veterans and their spouses and their dependents,” Perry said. “It’s something where you can give back and it gives you a feeling of self-satisfaction.

“When you help someone file a claim and they receive a benefit, then that gives you a sense of satisfaction, that you got them something that they didn’t know they were entitled to or that they hadn’t applied for,” he continued. “It means a lot to them to receive the benefit.”

Perry said a lot of veterans haven’t applied for their benefits because they are either too proud to do it, they don’t feel they deserve them or they aren’t aware they were entitled to them.

The military became Perry’s first career and he served in one of the branches of the armed forces for 23 years.

His own history started one month before his sixteenth birthday when he joined the Texas National Guard.

Following his graduation from high school, he and his friend joined the Marine Corps under the buddy system so they could serve together.

“The last time I saw him was when we finished basic training,” Perry quipped. “I haven’t seen him since...we have talked on the phone a couple of times.”

After the Marine Corps he married and became a civilian for less than one year before he enlisted in the Army.

“I like the military,” he said, and responded, “Oh, yes, yes,” that the military has been a good career choice for him.

In the Army, Perry attended Officer Candidate School at Fort Sill in Oklahoma and was commissioned in field artillery. He also trained to fly helicopters in flight school in Mineral Wells and then went on to Fort Rucker in Atlanta.

“Once you finished flight school back then, your next assignment was Vietnam, and I went to Vietnam,” he noted. He was 26 then.

Following a one-year tour in Vietnam he came back to the states and was stationed in Savannah, Ga. and then attended the University of Nebraska in Omaha where he completed his Bachelor of Science degree in business.

From there he was sent to Fort Bliss here in Texas and then to El Paso for advanced officer training. He then returned to Savannah where he was transitioned to Cobra helicopters, an aerial support gunship, which he flew during his second tour of Vietnam.

“It was sort of like driving a truck,” he said of his day-to-day assignment flying the Cobra during his tour, “but you flew a lot of hours.”

Following Vietnam he went to Fort Bliss and was commissioned as an artillery officer, then attended Command and General Staff College.

His last command was as an aviation adviser to the 75th Maneuver Area Command in Houston, where he was responsible to train and test staff of groups, brigades and higher level personnel in the Reserve and National Guard Units.

During his military years, Perry said he and his family traveled to many different parts of the world.

Perry said it was a big change after he retired from the military.

“Oh, you miss it for a while,” he recalled, “We did a lot of traveling, saw a lot of the world...it was interesting and you make a lot of friends in the service. And, you’ve all got things in common, separation from your family and things like that. The military to me was like a big family.”

After retiring from the armed forces he came to Cooke County and went to work with the Electric Co-op, then worked with the State of Texas for two years as a safety instructor before taking the position with Cooke County as the veterans service officer.

Perry expressed support and concern for veterans and those still serving.

One of his concerns is for some of those returning with psychological scars after serving in areas of war and conflict.

“(Some) can’t get the war out of their minds,” he said. “Like these people are coming back with scarred minds...they don’t go away overnight. They don’t go away in a year. Sometimes 10 years. Sometimes never. We’ve had World War II veterans that are still having nightmares.”

He said that treatment is very time consuming and costly, but the Veterans Administration is trying to do all that it can. A lot of people don’t want the stigma of having post-traumatic stress disorder or other problems because that affects them later on in life such as when they go into the job market to become employed, he said.

“The real thing there for the veterans who are suffering from all of this, to me, it seems like if they can get in group counseling or get into a group with people with similar problems where they’ll talk about it, because most of them won’t talk about it...and they don’t want to talk about it to someone who doesn’t know what you’re talking about,” Perry noted. “You talk to your family, they don’t realize what you were in. But if you have people that have been in the same situations, been in the same place, saw the same things, they can talk about it amongst themselves. And that helps with the healing process.”

Perry hopes that family, friends and the larger society have or come to have a basic understanding of what soldiers and veterans are going through and can integrate those returning from war into their lives and culture.

 “We’ve just got a lot of people that are going to be using the VA system,” he added. “And these people are young and we’re looking for a long period of time.

“You have to give them a little slack along the way somewhere. We can find a lot of things that they (injured soldiers) can do. And you’ll find too that a lot of these people are more dedicated workers...they’re dependable, they’ve been disciplined.”

The fact that less than one percent of the population is serving in the military at the present time, which means repeated deployments and extended tours for the same soldiers, is something that also concerns him.

A native Texan, Perry grew up in Montague County and finished high school in Wichita Falls.

He and his wife, Bobbie Jean, met in Savannah when he went out with his friends to one of the dance halls. She was also there with her friends. That was almost 50 years ago.

For fun, they both like to fish for bass and crappie in North Texas and Oklahoma.

Together they have three sons and all have served in the military: one in the Navy, one in the Army and one is currently in the Air Force.

Perry said he encouraged his own sons and grandsons to serve in the military, and they have. He feels it is a place where young people can mature and can serve their county. They can benefit through the education program the military offers, though they take the chance of having to go to Iraq and Afghanistan if they enlist.

“But, anything you want to do that’s worthwhile, you’re going to have to take some chances anyway,” he continued. “They have done that. They have gone either to Iraq or Afghanistan and they’ve come back, and that’s good. But, there’s always a price to pay for something like that.

“But, it’s a growing up phase that is good for younger people,” he added, “and it’s a good way to learn how to follow orders, listen and take directions and take initiative to do things on their own too. It’s good training.”