Family Sues Over Vietnam Veteran’s Suicide : Seeks $8 Million From VA, Private Agency for Mistaken Cutoff of Benefits

More than 10 months have passed since they interred the ashes of Ronald James Beck in the Los Angeles National Cemetery during a military ceremony. But in court and Congress he is not forgotten.

The family of the 37-year-old Vietnam veteran, who committed suicide after his disability benefits were mistakenly cut off, went into federal court here last week to seek $8 million in damages from the Veterans Administration and the Disabled American Veterans, a private group that aids veterans.

And in Washington, Rep. Mel Levine (D-West Los Angeles) and some of his colleagues are wrestling with ways to protect veterans from the bureaucratic bungling that led Beck to his tragic end.

On June 8, 1984, Beck went into a shack behind his home in Gardena, put a rifle to his head and ended the pain that had plagued him for 19 years--through three combat tours, three back operations and two previous attempts to take his life.

Suit Blames VA

The lawsuit filed on behalf of Beck’s widow, Judy, and two daughters from a previous marriage, Denise, 16, and Jenifer, 10, alleges that Beck’s suicidal tendencies “developed as a result of the failure of the VA to properly evaluate, fully compensate, properly review and acknowledge his need for allowance of the benefits.”

It also charges that DAV officials “recklessly reviewed, prepared, compiled and filed the wrong requests” with the VA after Beck went to them for help.

“This tragedy should never have occurred,” said Paul Markley, a West Los Angeles attorney representing the Beck family. “Ron Beck was an American war hero in every sense of the word.

“He had three Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts among numerous other combat medals. But he did not receive the kind of respect or dignity he deserved as a war hero.”

Two Tours of Duty

Beck enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1964 and marched off to war in Vietnam. He was discharged four years later as a sergeant, returned home to attend college in Pennsylvania for a short time, then re-enlisted with the Army.

In 1972, Beck came home again, bringing with him three Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts and a dozen other combat medals. He also brought with him a back pain that had grown steadily worse since 1965, when he was injured changing a tire on a military truck.

Despite a doctor’s statement that he was not fit for work and assertions from relatives that pain had kept him unemployed since 1980, Beck was unable to convince VA officials that he deserved full disability benefits, according to the suit, scheduled to be heard by U.S. District Judge Mariana Pfaelzer.

“The VA refused to authorize back surgery, so he had to have that done on his own,” said James B. Sanborn, another lawyer assisting the family. “Instead they chose to treat him with increasingly larger doses of medication, leading him into a drug dependency problem.

“Over the years he was given different levels of disability, going up and down with different evaluations, until the final and fatal frustration.”

The Final Frustration

That final frustration began, according to the lawsuit, when Beck received a letter from the VA in early 1984 informing him that he had been overpaid by $1,798 and telling him that his benefits would be cut off until he returned that sum.

Beck then went to the DAV office in Westwood seeking help to straighten out what the government has since conceded was an error in its accounting.

But last May, while Beck was in the hospital for a third back surgery, the VA did not send his monthly disability check of $535. Nor did they send one in June.

In a final letter to his wife--which he left on the couple’s bed--Beck said the family would be better off with one less mouth to feed.

Felt Like a ‘Sponge’

“He told me I would be better off financially, and it was too much of a hardship on me,” she recalled. “It made him feel like a sponge with me out working and taking care of the home, and he couldn’t even bring home an income at all.”

Spokesmen for the VA and private disabled veterans’ group declined to comment on the case after the lawsuit was filed. But shortly after Beck’s death, Jack Ross, the assistant regional director of the VA, admitted that Beck did not owe the $1,798. Ross maintained that if Beck had contacted the VA directly, “We could have cleared it up then and there.”

Bob Jordan, a supervisor in the DAV’s Los Angeles branch office, maintained after Beck’s suicide that his organization had asked the VA why Beck owed the money. But Jordan said he did not receive an answer until after Beck had taken his life.

“The Ron Beck tragedy is a tragic example of colossal insensitivity and gross mismanagement by the VA,” Rep. Levine said in a telephone interview Friday from Washington. “We are looking at what can be done to prevent something like this from happening again, but it is hard to legislate compassion and sensitivity.”

Hearing Held Last Week

Levine said that he and some fellow members of Congress have been pushing for “better training and improved procedures within the VA to guard against this sort of tragedy from ever happening again.” A congressional hearing on the type of paper-work problems that plagued Beck was held last week in Oregon.

Levine described the VA as a “bureaucracy that, in general, does not pay much heed to the plight of veterans but seems to disproportionately mistreat and fail to help veterans from the Vietnam War.”