Posted On: Sunday, Apr. 17 2005 12:00 AM
By Debbie Stevenson
Killeen Daily Herald
In mid-September 2003, Linnie Blankenbecler kissed her husband good-bye.
Fresh from the sergeants major academy at Fort Bliss, Command Sgt. Maj. James D. Blankenbecler headed to Iraq to assume the top noncommissioned officer slot with his new unit, the 4th Infantry Division’s 1st Battalion, 44th Air Defense Artillery Regiment. Just days later, his wife, Linnie returned to her Fort Hood home to find soldiers waiting to give her the dreaded news: the 40-year-old Arlington, Va., native had been killed Oct. 1, 2003, during an ambush on his convoy in Samarra.
In the initial weeks after a soldier’s death, Linnie and other families like her receive an outpouring of support amid the bureaucracy that follows.
Fort Hood’s military and civilian communities filled the Killeen Civic and Conference Center for Blankenbecler’s funeral service. Classmates from Shoemaker High School lined the road as Linnie and her youngest daughter, Jessica, drove to the service. The Army’s initial payments appeared initially to ensure the loved ones left behind were well-provided for.
But, Linnie said, the families of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are finding their military benefits quickly dwindle once faced with today’s cost of living. On Tuesday, about 30 of those families took their case to the highest office in the land.
Linnie and Jessica were among the 90 relatives of Fort Hood’s 146 fallen soldiers who laid out the shortcomings to President Bush, behind closed doors, during his visit last week to Fort Hood.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the families concerns received a sympathetic ear from Bush.
“We did make some notes of the concerns that they expressed, and we will be following up on those,” he told pool reporters traveling with the president.
McClellan declined to offer specifics, citing privacy issues; however, Linnie and Inge Colton, the widow of Chief Warrant Officer-2 Lawrence Shane Colton, who was killed April 11, 2004, in Baghdad, said finances and the military’s handling of their cases were key issues aired before the president.
“I told the president that my husband believed his family would be taken care of, only to find out thats not what happened,” said Inge during an interview Thursday. “He said I wasnt the first widow to address this with him.”
Linnie said the president and Fort Hood’s top commander, Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, both appeared concerned and even surprised by what they were hearing. She believes steps are being taken to remedy some of the issues because the next day she received a telephone call from Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff.
“President Bush did tell me that if I had any concerns I could go to General Metz with this,” Linnie added. “He asked me did I bring this up with General Metz and I said, ‘No, youre the man.'”
Since her husband’s death, Linnie has remained in the Fort Hood area while Jessica completes her time at Shoemaker High School. Days after James died, Linnie received the OK to remain in post housing until the end of Jessica’s school year but moved after she had to pay $899 for rent on those quarters, the equivalent of what had been her husband’s housing allowance.
In the days after the tragic news, Linnie received a $12,420 death gratuity to help with immediate expenses. The government-subsidized Soldier Group Life Insurance plan paid another $250,000.
But not everyone gets that.
SGLI insurance is a soldier-elected benefit, bought and paid for with monthly premiums by the soldier, Linnie said. Many surviving spouses did not receive this SGLI insurance because the soldier elected not to pay for it, and decided it was not needed. This is not a government benefit, but a conscious choice of the soldier.
Limited monthly benefits also kicked in. Linnie began receiving Social Security payments and a widows pension from the military, which based on a percentage of her husband’s final annual income, came to $1,961.44 a month until Jessica turns 18.
Combined, the payments were nowhere near what the family had been living on. Faced with new off-post housing expenses and taxes, Linnie and other spouses whose soldiers have paid the ultimate sacrifice are finding it tough to make ends meet.
“If my husband were alive today, his military base pay for 2005 would be $4,755 a month as a command sergeant major serving 22 years,” Linnie said. “That is $57,060 per year without housing allowance, paid utilities, hazardous duty pay, etc.”
At the heart of the financial woes for the surviving spouses, is the survivors benefit plan and the dependent indemnity compensation.
Paid by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the dependent compensation actually is subtracted from the survivor’s benefit payments. It is a method similar to the disability payments that have been docked from military retiree paychecks. Under pressure from veterans groups, Congress last year began phasing out the unpopular practice, dubbed concurrent receipt.
In Linnie’s case, payments under the military’s survivor plan dipped from 55 percent of her husband’s monthly base pay of $4,566.25 to $1,961.44. The indemnity compensation payment worth $993 has been subtracted from that, leaving her with a survivors payment of $439. Added to the amount is $247 a month for each child until they are 18 or until they finish college. In Linnie’s case, Jessica will reach that cutoff in two years.
“In the beginning, you’re told youre going to get that, and get that, and get that and everybody forgets youre going to lose that, and that, and that,” she said.
“In two years time, I am expected to live on survivors benefits of $993 for DIC and $439 for SBP, which don’t forget SBP of $439 represents his 20 years of military service,” Linnie said. “That is a total monthly benefit of $1,432 or $17,184 yearly income. From living on a command sergeant major income of almost $50,000 in 2003, I am now expected to live on $17,184 per year.”
Linnie said the survivors insurance also does not last long.
“If a widow lived within her budget, with a very conservative amount of $30,000 a year or $2,500 per month, this SGLI insurance of $250,000 would last only eight years,” she noted. “Most widows are very young, with very young children and tiny babies. In eight years, their children could still be in elementary or middle school and SGLI would be gone if not properly invested.”
Even Social Security payments are not a lifetime benefit, Linnie said.
“When a child reaches the age of 16, the widow loses her Social Security,” Linnie noted. “For me, as an older widow with a 15-year-old child, this happens in six months.”
The children’s portion of the Social Security also ends once they are 18.
Facing her new reality, Linnie said she abandoned her goal of returning to Hawaii, a place where she and James had been so happy.
“I don’t think thats possible,” she said, her eyes cast downward for a moment. “It takes a lot to live in Hawaii. Im not going to go there to kill myself financially.”
Instead, she bought a house in Harker Heights and is careful about her plans for the future.
Despite the apparent shortfalls faced by the surviving military families, lawmakers faced with record federal deficits have been slow to respond despite the favorable wartime tide in favor of boosting pay and benefits for military personnel and veterans. The death gratuity last was addressed in 2003 when it was doubled from $6,000 to $12,420. Still, it remains a paltry sum, say some lawmakers, when compared to payouts to police officers, which range from $40,000 to $100,000.
Still,Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., are sponsoring a bill to increase the instant death gratuity payment for troops killed in combat zones from $12,420 to $100,000. However, that would not cover seven of Fort Hood’s 4th Infantry families whose soldiers were killed in a Nov. 29 Black Hawk helicopter crash in Central Texas while preparing for the division’s scheduled return to Iraq.
The bill also calls for raising the payout from the subsidized Servicemans Group Life Insurance to $400,000 from the current $250,000. It is one of the more generous on the table.
“Every soldier who goes into harm’s way needs to know that if something happens to him or her, his family will be well- taken care of. I know the American people share that view,” Sessions said, as he introduced the bill earlier this year. “This is a large raising of the death benefits, but its well within reason, and were in a time in which $100,000 is not near what it used to be. But that’s a good step forward for the basic death benefit.”
The Pentagon in February backed the plan, unveiling its own measure to boost the insurance payment to $500,000. The Pentagon is wanting the death benefit increases to apply to all soldiers who die in the line of duty. However, the military’s increased payments would be made retroactive to Oct. 7, 2001. That is when the Afghanistan war began, but it leaves out the families of the Sept. 11, 2001, Pentagon casualties who watched payments to their New York counterparts average $2 million.
Sessions said his measure would cost about $460 million in the first year, including some $280 million in retroactive benefits.
Linnie said the proposal is long overdue.
“I personally thank Senator Sessions, President Bush and all those involved, for finally realizing how insulting the survivors benefits really are to date,” she said. “This increase is a step in the right direction and will help to ensure that we have a better chance at surviving after our spouses were killed at war.”
Campaigning for change, Linnie and Inge both say any remedy is unlikely to help them. Still, they say it is important not to give up for the families who may one day walk in their shoes.
“It is not the money issue, it is the principle issue. Honor what you say,” Linnie said.
The women said they are just looking for a little simplicity, fairness and the chance to review decisions about complex financial options made during a time of grief.
“Give us the option at 24 months to review initial decisions with a clear head,” Inge said.
But most of all, she added, get rid of the offset, the practice of docking the Veterans Affairs payment from the survivors portion of their soldiers military pension. And inform the soldiers and the families about what they can expect.
“This needs to come out your families are not going to be taken care of 100 percent,” Inge said. “The 4th ID will be leaving in a couple of months, so they need to be aware of it. They need to arrange for extra life insurance. They need to go with their husbands to the briefings. … They need to go with their husbands to get a will.”
More importantly, Linnie added, they must check those extra life insurance policies for a military clause that would prevent payout for a death either in the line of duty or in a combat zone.
“I had one policy that did not pay,” Linnie said.
