At the July program Major General (Ret.) Todd B. McCaffrey, who serves as South Carolina's Secretary of Veterans' Affairs where he leads a cabinet level agency focused on assisting Veterans and their families to thrive, spoke to our members. General McCaffrey talked about the challenges of his job. There are over 300,000 veterans in South Carolina, but if they do not use the VA for benefits, his office has no way to know who they are and what they need. He discussed how women veterans are the largest growing group of veterans. He also talked about women veterans tend to not let people know they are a veteran and they do not use the resources available to them. He said the VA is expanding services for women and hope to serve them better in the future. He also talked about veteran suicide. He stated no one really knows why veterans have a higher rate of suicide. He did mention easy access to firearms might be an issue. He recommends all veterans store firearms an ammo safely and separately. If it takes time to think about using a firearm to commit suicide, that greatly decreases the chance of that person actually committing suicide. He said every VSO office in the state has free gun trigger locks for this reason. So, if you have a firearm that doesn’t have a trigger lock, go to a VSO office and get one. They are free and a DD-214 is not required.

Paulette Dunn, South Carolina Department of Veterans' Affairs Upstate Regional Integration Officer, also attended the meeting and spent a lot of time talking to our members. She told us she wants to get to know Greenwood better and thanked us for having her at the meeting.