Visit the Convention page on the BVA website to locate available details and complete the registration process for the Blinded Veterans Association’s 80th National Convention in Dallas, Texas, July 5-11, 2025. This year’s gathering, held in partnership with the American Council of the Blind (ACB), commemorates 80 years of service to blind and low vision veterans. Some of the planned offsite visits offered have limited seating capacity so please act now to finalize your arrangements! […]

The 39th annual National Disabled Veterans Winter Sports Clinic in Snowmass Village, Colorado, regarded as perhaps the nation’s premier adaptive winter sports event, is now history for 2025. Once again, it was indeed “Miracles on a Mountainside” (the Clinic theme) for the contingency of blind and low vision veterans who, for another year, had the time of their life March 31-April 5. The 46 veterans with sight loss joined some 355 additional of their fellow […]

Greetings to my BVA Family. It is truly an honor to take the reins from Don Overton as the next National Executive Director of the finest Veterans Service Organization I know of. Over the past 80 years, BVA has been the leader in blind veteran advocacy.  Although we have come a long way, the road ahead is still long. I know that together we can and will continue to lead the way. I believe that our Executive […]

At 8:45am Eastern Time, exactly 80 years ago today, some 100 blinded veterans gathered in one room, the size of which has never been documented, perhaps because so few of the attendees could see it. The room’s location was a residential school for boys, converted temporarily by the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration into a training facility for veterans who had returned from World War II with little or no remaining sight. Many of them were […]

S. 1032, the bipartisan Major Richard Star Act, has the full support of BVA and approximately 50 of its sister organizations as Senate Veterans Affairs’ Committee Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Senators Mike Crapo (R-ID), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Rick Scott (R-FL) team up to introduce the bill in the U.S. Senate. As proposed legislation affecting a number of blind and low vision veterans, S. 1032 already has 43 Senate co-sponsors. A House of […]

BVA member Paschal Baute, Ed.D., of Lexington, Kentucky, 95-year-old retired psychologist, storyteller, author, poet, and frequent contributor to the BVA Bulletin, has added still one more book to his 40+ works centered on conflict resolution and human behavior. His latest, Sanity Way—Stories of People Keeping Their Heads above Water, outlines Paschal’s conclusions from listening to more than 70,000 hours of people’s problems and 16 contributors to the book. Through a collection of powerful stories about […]

At 8:45am on March 28, 1945, approximately 100 recently returning World War II service members and veterans gathered for a much-publicized meeting at Avon Old Farms Army Convalescent Hospital. The minutes of the meeting recorded that the group assembled, all young men at the time, were recovering from combat injuries, the most notable of which was their loss of sight. Time spent at the Connecticut facility also consisted of a program of instruction and practical […]

On February 8, members of the BVA Louisiana/Mississippi (LA/MS) Regional Group gathered at Blind Grace, a nonprofit organization that holds summer camps for visually impaired children in Lafayette, Louisiana. The occasion was the organization’s third annual Gumbo-Jambalaya-Pastalaya Cook-Off. The event was originally scheduled for January 25, but due to the rare winter blizzard in southern Louisiana previously reported in BVA Happenings (10 inches of snow and temperatures down to 4 degrees), it was postponed until […]

BVA National Headquarters is pleased to remind you about the availability of the Association’s digital membership card, which has been available for download to your smartphones for the past two months. This digital card is part of ongoing efforts to enhance your membership experience by providing convenient and immediate access to your membership details. Reasons for Choosing the Digital Membership Card  The digital membership card offers numerous benefits over traditional physical cards. It is always […]

BVA National President Paul Mimms will outline the Association’s current legislative priorities at a joint session of the House and Senate Committees on Veterans Affairs this Tuesday, February 25. The hearing will be streamed live via the website of the House Committee beginning at 10:00am Eastern Time, originating from Room 390 of the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill in the Nation’s Capital. Please note that the hearing will consist of two separate panels, […]