The Disabled American Veterans (DAV) state convention ended with a new slate of officers for the year 2016-2017. Dr. Charles Edwards was elected as the new Texas State Commander. Dr. Edwards has been a member of the DAV for more than 22 years and has also served as the National Chaplain from 2007-2012 and retired from the US Army; US Army Reserve and the Texas Army National Guard as a Brigadier General.
In his speech to the convention attendees, he stated that a new era was beginning in Texas as it regards Suicide Prevention efforts in the state. As such, he appointed Glenn Towery as the first
Suicide Prevention Safety Officer for the state of Texas. Glenn will be tasked to find ways to help the DAV organization in the state of Texas to decrease veteran suicides among its membership. Glenn Towery is the founder and chairman of the Veterans Suicide Prevention Channel, the nation’s first broadcast channel created to broadcast wellness, information and programming to America’s veterans 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The VSPChannel can be accessed online by visiting:
www.vspchannel.com. Glenn Towery is a member of the DAV and a member of HBCUConnect.com, VFW and American Legion veterans organizations. Earlier this year, he authored resolutions to create the office of Veterans Suicide Prevention Safety Officer for all three organizations to serve in local posts and as state and national officers. The resolution that was written for the DAV was not passed by the Texas State Resolutions Committee in this session, although it had wide support.
“I am honored to have been appointed DAV’s Texas Suicide Prevention Officer. This is an opportunity to explore ways to prevent these veteran suicides by implementing ideas created specifically to impact the rate at which member suicides occur. I will work with the State Commander and advise him as to what I think may be possible for us to achieve this coming year. I will also continue to try to get the national DAV organization to appoint a national Suicide Prevention Officer, as well. It is documented that we are, and have been for many years, experiencing an epidemic of veteran suicides in America. As an organization, DAV has the ability to expand its structure to meet the challenge to help decrease and, hopefully, end veterans suicides among its rank and file members. A good way to begin is to appoint Suicide Prevention Officers whose sole responsibility is to deal with the problem of suicide in the DAV. We owe it to our members to try, and we owe it to all of America’s veterans to succeed. The VSPChannel will become a large part of our effort here in Texas and we hope that the effort here will also extend throughout the United States.”
Posted By: Reginald Culpepper
Tuesday, June 14th 2016 at 3:49PM
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