Local VFW Members Earn Top Surgeon Awards At State Convention

Decades ago, these former warriors would have donned ruck sacks and helmets to support their comrades. Instead – usually wearing smiling faces and caps bearing the Cross of Malta – the two life members of Veterans of Foreign Wars District 29 and West Mifflin VFW Post 914 are now known as among the best for helping their former brothers and sisters in arms.

Two Mon Valley veterans were recognized June 17 for supporting hospitalized servicemembers during the 102 nd Department of Pennsylvania VFW and Auxiliary convention in Pittsburgh. Bill Roland, VFW PA State Surgeon, earned the National Surgeon Award, while VFW Post 914 West Mifflin Surgeon, Bernie Zurawski, won Department of PA VFW Surgeon of the Year.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the VFW has maintained outreach activities to those who served in the United States military. Roland and Zurawski earned their awards for helping to keep these vital programs going during the most adverse of circumstances.

Such challenges are nothing new for Roland. While on active duty as a medical officer with the Army, the North Versailles resident helped transport a child from war-torn Kosovo to the United States to receive heart surgery. At the start of the pandemic last year, Roland answered a call put through the VFW for retired military medical personnel to help in the coronavirus response.

As a volunteer, Roland assisted with the implementation of COVID-19 vaccination programs for veterans, and met with Veterans Administration hospital managers to help make certain quality of care continued at a high standard during the pandemic.

“In the VFW, the promise to honor those who’ve died by helping the living is sacred to our core beliefs,” said Roland. “As a former commissioned officer and life member of the VFW, volunteering to help those in need is expected – as well as rewarding.”

For Zurawski, who served as a Marine in Operation Desert Storm, keeping his post’s hospital visitation programs at Southwestern Veterans Center going over the last nine years was at times difficult, but worthwhile.

“It started when I was on active duty,” Zurawski said. “While on leave, I would visit my father-in-law at Southwestern Veterans Center, and we would do bedside bingos and other things to help keep up morale. It was something that I enjoyed doing, and once I retired and became part of the VFW, I became more active helping my fellow veterans.”

Each year, the VFW nationally contributes hundreds of thousands of dollars and volunteer hours towards comforting hospitalized veterans. The hospital visitation program is the oldest established function of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Auxiliary. Caring for warriors is also enshrined in the credo of the Military Order of the Cootie - the VFW’s honor degree. Their service program proudly touts its main directive as ‘keep ‘em smiling in beds of white.”

“I would say that this is the most important thing that we do as members of the VFW,” said Roland, a retired Army major with 26 years of active and reserve military service. “We help make certain that our comrades are cared for in the best way. Not by just seeing that they receive care in hospitals, but by making sure we can be part of the care wherever and whenever possible.”

Roland, a Kosovo Campaign and Global War On Terrorism veteran, also said that lobbying efforts made by the VFW more than a hundred years ago were instrumental in establishing the hospital system run by the Veterans Administration, as well as other medical benefits for former soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.

“This is a task that we are committed to doing,” said Roland.

Located approximately six miles from West Mifflin, Southwestern Veterans Center is an assisted living facility run by the Pennsylvania Department of Military and Veterans Affairs. It serves more than 200 area veterans and spouses who are disabled, chronically ill, or in need of specialized care. Patients there have been the focus of VFW Post 914’s hospital visitation program for nearly 30 years.

Through the West Mifflin post, Roland and Zurawski head efforts to help buy refreshments and snacks for veteran patients and residents, as well as to purchase coupon books, and fund small cash prizes during bingo games. Patients at Southwestern Veterans Center use these windfalls to purchase things such as toiletry items and other sundry articles at the hospital canteen.

The support from the VFW post fills a need. Many of the veterans and other residents at Southwestern Veterans Center are indigent, and what little financial support they have by way of pension or government benefits are utilized by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to help fund their care. The bingo games conducted by VFW Post 914 are managed in such a manner as to ensure everyone who participates is a winner, and all will receive some of the small cash prizes.

In addition to grant money provided through the VFW foundation, VFW Post 914 usually funds its hospital visitation program through Buddy Poppy donations. The pandemic, however, necessitated a quick and immediate change. As social distancing protocols effectively scratched Buddy Poppy fund raising throughout the state over the past year, the post began attracting donations through social media a few months ago.

According to Roland, other VFW posts throughout Pennsylvania have also had to find different ways to underwrite their efforts during the pandemic. Through residual canteen profits and other fundraisers, hospitalized veterans are still being cared for, he said.

The idea, said Roland, is to keep this mission going.

“Just like in the military, things never stop just because something bad happens,” he said. “As long as there is a VFW, our goals that honor veterans will be served - no matter what.”