The Armed Services YMCA established Veterans & Military Families Month in 1996. The U.S. Government has recognized the occasion every year since. Each November, the President signs a proclamation declaring November National Veterans & Military Families Month, and with hundreds of thousands of service members deployed overseas, recognizing the daily sacrifices made by active duty, Guard, and Reserve military families has never been more important. The same applies to American veterans, the number of which […]

With the Fall season now nearly halfway complete, the Daylight-Saving Time ritual of “falling back” in time has arrived. The time change will officially occur this Sunday, November 2, at 2:00am local time. Because the change in time, both morning and night, dictates when the sky is lit and when it is dark, sleep habits naturally come into play. Light and darkness are the most powerful timing cues for alertness and sleepiness in the human body. […]

Families are usually the primary source of support for veterans with sight loss. The same is true for older Americans as well as people with other disabilities. In fact, more than 53 million family caregivers provide unpaid care in the United States today. That is an economic value totaling more than $470 billion. The importance of family caregivers explains why National Family Caregivers Month is celebrated every November. While family caregivers should be recognized every day for […]

The fifth and now second-to-last session of the Fall Gardening series, organized and led by BVA National Treasurer Monique Statham, will occur this Monday, November 3, via Zoom. The session will announce the winner of the much-heralded scarecrow contest and feature guest speaker Raushanah Echols. She will address the topic of Winter Sowing. In addition, due to popular demand, Monique has determined to add a previously unscheduled sixth session on November 10 in the same […]

Darwin Belt, co-founder and manager of WayAround, will be the featured guest speaker at next Tuesday evening’s BVA Auxiliary (BVAA) Town Hall. Darwin has a truly amazing and inspirational life story. The meeting, held customarily every two months on the first Tuesday, will begin at 8:00pm Eastern Time. Please click here or on the full link below to join. For further information, contact BVAA National President Kenneth Witt at bvaanationalpresident@gmail.com or at 910-633-5983. Kenneth Witt is […]

For BVA members and their families who celebrate the holiday, Happy Halloween! Come tomorrow morning, those with leftover candy or excess candy collected from trick-or-treating can donate it to support a good cause, that of providing a few sweets to Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Centers, Military installations, and Guard/Reserve units that have registered and been approved to receive the collected candy. Soldiers’ Angels Treats for Troops is a Halloween Candy collection program where local […]

Extreme sports athlete, National Geographic 2015 Adventurer of the Year, former Navy Petty Officer 1st Class, and BVA member Lonnie Bedwell has made his dream of reaching the highest peak on each of the Earth’s seven continents a reality, the first blind person ever to do so. On October 17, he and his companions made it to the top of Carstensz Pyramid (Puncak Jaya in Indonesian, literally meaning Victorious Peak), the last on his “beyond […]

Despite the current federal government shutdown, hopefully resolved prior to Veterans Day, the Veterans Day National Committee of which BVA is a member continues to move forward with the planned activities for the annual ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on November 11. The VSO breakfast is a hallmark of the day, but will this year be held away from the White House due to the renovations in progress there. Subsequent activities usually include a traditional […]

The BVA Book Club Interest Group has recently seen increased attendance at its monthly virtual meetings and greater enthusiasm to read the works selected by the group. The reading occurs via the audio Braille and Audio Reading Download (BARD) of the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled Downloadable Books and Magazines. The book just completed was John Grisham’s 2001 novel The Painted House, a departure from Grisham’s legal thrillers. Having enjoyed one […]

October 27, this Monday, is the original Navy Day, the day that was established in celebration of the United States Navy. Although the observance was officially replaced by Armed Forces Day in 1949, the celebrations of Navy Day continue, especially among the members of the Naval Forces themselves. Research undertaken in the 1970s revealed that the true birthday of the U.S. Navy is October 13, and the birth date of this branch of the Armed […]