A Tonawanda man was recently featured in a Reader’s Digest story about a backlog in requests by war veterans to receive federal assistance.
Chris Kreiger spent 15 months in Iraq as an Army medic, the magazine reported, becoming wounded on four occasions in the process. Suffering from memory loss, seizures and hearing loss upon his return home, Kreiger applied to the VA for medical assistance but was denied because the doctor who operated on his foot and back incorrectly completed the paperwork.
Kreiger’s claim was only approved three years later after the media began covering his case, but the magazine reported that he’d lost two cars and his house by that point.
“Never in a million years do you think you’ll come home and keep fighting,” Kreiger told the magazine.
Injured veterans wait an average five months for disability payments, the magazine reported, with some 400,000 disability claims still unattended to by the VA. Kreiger, for his part, started a nonprofit group called Western New York Heroes to assist some of these people who have been lost in the system.
“If a vet can’t pay utilities or put food on the table, then for that month we’ll take care of it,” he said. “Who can sit around for a year with no money and expect to survive?”
•••
A Syracuse travel reporter prominently featured Niagara County on his list of the top 10 getaway destinations of the past decade.
“The Getaway Guy” Mike O’Brian of News 10 Now included on his list the lighthouse at Thirty Mile Point along Lake Ontario (No. 3) and Whirlpool Jet Boats on the Niagara River (No. 2).
“Challenging the currents of the might Niagara River and into the whirlpool is a very exciting way to spend the day,” he said of the latter.
Topping his list was the Ice Hotel in Quebec City.
•••
Buffalo-area CEOs are among the most pessimistic in the state, according to a recent poll.
The Troy Record reported on a Siena Research Institute poll that asked Empire State business leaders how they felt about business prospects in 2010. Only 25 percent of CEOs in the Buffalo area expected conditions to improve this year, compared to 38 percent in Albany and 31 percent each in Rochester and Syracuse. Statewide, that number was 32 percent.
Numbers were up across the board compared to a year ago, the paper reported.
Contact Paul Laneat 693-1000, ext. 116.
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WHAT THEY'RE SAYING: Local man speaks for vets
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