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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Well, today is Veterans Day. We honor every veteran who has honorably served our country. Remember Memorial Day is to honor those who fought for this country and died. Veterans Day is for those who served in the military and are still alive.

Data compiled by Pew say there are around 19 million living veterans right now, less than 10% of the US population, and around 90% of them are men. Only about 1% of Americans at any one time these days are in the military. You can tell, just from watching the recruitment ads on TV, that they can struggle sometimes in some of the branches to fill the ranks. The Military Times reports, for example, that the Army has fallen 15,000 recruits short of its goal for this year so far.

We'll focus our discussion now on food insecurity among veterans specifically in New York City. According to a report from the US Department of Agriculture, veterans nationally are at a 7% greater risk for food insecurity than non-veterans. Why is that? We'll try to find out. New York City alone is home to more than 140,000 vets, many of whom we are told struggle to access food. Joining me now is Dennis Garvey, a former Marine and Vice President for Logistics at The Food Bank for New York City. Dennis, welcome, and thank you for your service. Welcome to WNYC.

Dennis Garvey: Good morning, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe if you're looking for someone to run logistics, you hire a former Marine, huh?

Dennis Garvey: [laughs] I think so.

Brian Lehrer: Want to tell us a little bit about yourself first? When were you in the Marines and where did you serve at that time?

Brian Lehrer: All right.

Dennis Garvey: Well, I went into the Marine Corps through commissioning program Navy ROTC in college and was commissioned when I graduated, and proceeded through basic school and infantry officers corps. I was on active duty from about 1984 through 1992. I spent most of my time out on the West Coast at Camp Pendleton and Marine Corps Recruit Depot, and had a fantastic experience serving in the military. I was actually sort of a Marine, so I grew up around it. [unintelligible 00:50:38]

Brian Lehrer: Did you just say you were in recruitment?

Dennis Garvey: The Recruit Depot boot camp, where we train recruits either on the east coast or west coast, I was out in San Diego.

Brian Lehrer: You must be a tough guy, right? If there's somebody who has a reputation of being a tough guy would be a Marine who leads boot camp.

Dennis Garvey: I'm obviously biased in support of the Marine Corps, but I think it's a pretty outstanding organization all around and the drill instructors out there at the recruit depots are some of the most highly trained and screened individuals, so they do a fantastic job, it's never cease to amaze me, in the three years or so I was there, the transformations that they can perform on these young men and women that come through the process.

Brian Lehrer: It's an unusual career path going from drill sergeant at Marine Corps boot camp to working for the Food Bank for New York City. Of course, there are many good causes, including many good veteran's causes, you could have gotten involved with, why the Food Bank for New York City?

Dennis Garvey: Well, I actually got exposed to it over years through my wife who has actually been in nonprofits and food insecurity, hunger relief organizations. Came to it, not necessarily by a plan, but when I got exposed to it, it's very easy to get behind the mission there. I think there's very few things that are as fundamental as food and providing people access to food when they're struggling with that.

I think one of the things I always missed since leaving active duty, and I've been out of active duty for a while, I've worked with a variety of for-profit organizations, but I think one of the main things from the time leaving the service was missing that sense of mission and focus on something larger than yourself and certainly, I think there's a lot of great things about leading a successful for-profit company in providing people jobs and a living in all those things but there's something a little bit special about being part of a team that is participating in a mission that you can feel good when you go to work every day that you're doing something meaningful for your community.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I'll say that my brother-in-law is about to retire from the Marines, and he's got his sights on causes for which to spend his time. You're not the only one as I'm sure you obviously know. As I said, in the intro, the federal government says veterans are at a greater risk for food insecurity than non-veterans, do you see it?

Dennis Garvey: Yes, and it's always been astounding to me. I've been aware of this even before coming to Food Bank and seeing that veterans are more likely to be exposed to food insecurity and homelessness as well and the two, obviously, are often linked. It's stunning to me, and I've tried to read up on it, and try to understand the reasons for it, and there's a lot of different reasons, I think, but it is astounding and disappointing to me as a veteran that we can have this population of people who have stepped up for whatever reason, they stepped up and offered to serve and often put their lives at risk, and yet, can find themselves in a situation where they don't know where their next meal is coming from.

Yes, it is a focus, and something I do think about, but we take some time today to honor veterans but they're just people like anybody else, they've just had a bit of a different path and perhaps experience some different pressures and stresses and challenges that have contributed to this. It's also interesting I've seen now too that the data says more women have entered the military, women veterans are also being overrepresented in food insecurity challenges, so it's very concerning.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, are you a veteran who has experienced food insecurity, share your story. What services have you used, what services do you think you could use or could have used or that your fellow vets could use? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 for Dennis Garvey, former Marine and Vice President for Logistics for the Food Bank for New York City. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. Veterans yourselves, first priority on the phones. Anybody who loves the veteran, second priority on the phones. 212-433-WNYC, especially with respect to our issue of this conversation food insecurity.

I guess we should point out, Dennis, that according to the Department of Agriculture, Food Insecurity is even higher among veterans with disabilities as well as those who are unemployed which would only make sense, and as you said, women vets. Why did why do you think, with about only 10% of veterans from the stats I saw being women, that they would be overrepresented among the vets with food insecurity?

Dennis Garvey: Well, I think overrepresented as a percentage of women generally suffering from food insecurity. I think women veterans suffering from some of the same challenges that their male counterparts are dealing with, and whether it be disabilities, particularly we've coming off a period of time where a lot of people have served often multiple deployments in combat environments, Afghanistan, Iraq, there's a lot of both physical and psychological disabilities, I think, that have come out of that conflict. PTSD, we all have heard a lot about. I think it's just a reflection of the increasing role of women in the military is now we're going to see them suffering from many of the same challenges.

Brian Lehrer: I think women, more often, also wind up having to incur the expenses of raising children without a partner more often than men do. That, I think, is a gender disparity with respect to any kind of poverty, including food insecurity, nationwide among all women, so it probably pertains to vets too. How about inflation recently, cost of living these days, changing it, making it worse for vets in particular?

Dennis Garvey: Yes, I think not only is it making it harder for vets and everybody in New York, very high cost of living environment, inflation is hitting everybody's pockets, and particularly on those people that can least afford that impact. We're coming out of a situation with COVID where we distributed records amount of food, 121 million meals last year, and that's more than we've done in a single year for four years of Food Bank's history.

As COVID has faded and we try to move back to some sense of normality, we're getting hit with inflationary impacts that not only is it increasing costs of rents and food to the people trying to buy food directly, but it's also making it harder for food bank because we go out and purchase a certain amount of our food, so we're also trying to spread that dollar as effectively as we can to make sure that we can get the maximum amount of food.

We're coming into a period now where, even post-COVID, we're seeing pantry lines increasing 10% year over year, because I think a lot of it is driven by that inflationary pressure.

Brian Lehrer: This is WNYC, FM, HD, and AM New York, WNJT FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are on New York and New Jersey Public Radio and live streaming at wnyc.org, as we're talking about food insecurity among veterans on this Veterans Day, with Dennis Garvey, former Marine, and with the Food Bank for New York City. Roland in Baltimore, you're on WNYC. Hi, Roland, thank you for calling today.

Roland: Good morning, Happy Veterans Day.

Brian Lehrer: And to you.

Roland: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: I'm not a veteran, so you can't wish me happy Veterans Day but you will say it to everybody.

Roland: I was just wishing you just happy Veterans Day.

Brian Lehrer: [laughs] There you go.

Dennis Garvey: Thank you.

Roland: Thank you. All due respect to the Marines, I was in the army. I spent part of my time as a recruiting officer in the Northeast Recruiting Command. I was in the army, the Vietnam War was over, and it was a lot different recruiting people than I imagined it would have been in the '60s when everyone was subjected to military service. I think that there's a sense of an absence of shared sacrifice that's led to a crisis of us team veterans showing up in shelters and being incarcerated.

That didn't exist before the end of the draft. I'm not saying that necessarily progressed but-- my dad was a combat veteran from World War 2 and got called back to Korea. My father said that if you were 19 or 20 years old walking around the streets of Baltimore, and you were perfectly healthy in 1943 people would think you're strange. People think of me as being special because I'm a military officer but reality is that I come from a family of people who almost everybody was expected to be a military officer.

Nowadays, there's a lack of connection between the military and the vast majority of people in the civilian population, and that leads to them not seeing us. I was at a wedding in Arizona a few years ago and a woman told me about her brother was having difficulty getting an appointment with [unintelligible 01:02:03] administration. I looked into his case, he was living under a bridge in New Haven, Connecticut. He just had not been able to get an appointment with the VA in Tucson.

One of the people at the wedding was a doctor at that VA Hospital, we were able to find him in Connecticut and flew him out and got an appointment. This was a Vietnam vet. He acquired a Combat Infantry Badge and a silver star. That's outrageous.

Brian Lehrer: Outrageous. Roland, do you think there's a connection there between what you said at the beginning of your call, and that that is we don't need the mobilization now that we did during World War 2, obviously, where healthy, young male would be looked at strange if they were walking around in civilian life. We've gone to the other extreme, where only 1% or even less than 1%, from one stat that I saw today, of the US population is in the military at any one time.

Do you think that that minority status, extreme minority status, in a certain respect, and that disconnect then that people may have from personal experience with anybody in the military contributes to the poverty rate in the homeless rate? Roland?

Roland: I think it does in two ways. First of all, people who have not been in the military don't really understand the climate. I know people who think that the military is USA commercials with Rob Gronkowski is the greatest benefit for having going in. I was a training officer-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: That insurance company where you can only get their product if you were a veteran?

Roland: Best insurance company overall, believe me. [laughs] I've had it for years. I strongly endorse them. When I was a training officer at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, there was no draft but I would get kids from all over the country and they would come in, I don't know how many times on graduation day, after 14 weeks of hell. All due respect to marine boot camp. We do a pretty tough job getting people churned out too.

When mothers come up to me with tears in their eyes and said, "What have you done to him?" A kid who wouldn't make his bed or had a hard time growing up and suddenly turned into a soldier. I think those things stay with you forever. That never goes away. My uncle Marsalis who died recently who I saw beside the Battle of Anzio in 1944 in Sicily, always taught his kids, first thing in the morning, make your bed. If you make your bed, everything else can go okay if you do that right. We do that with basic training too but there's a sense of discipline.

It's not for everybody. It makes a difference in your life. I think it changes everybody-

Brian Lehrer: Roland.

Roland: -but the act of that experience with other people is just there's no relationship between the military and civilians. Most of us don't know anybody who served. It makes it tough.

Brian Lehrer: Roland, I'm glad we got to know you a little bit through this call. Thank you very much, happy Veterans Day to you. Len in Teaneck, you're on WNYC. Hi, Len, thanks for calling in.

Len: Good morning, Brian. I'm calling both as a veteran although clearly not as heroic or steadfast as Mr. Garvey and some of your callers, but a guy who was in the National Guard about 50 years ago. In my retirement from Corporate America, I've become a board member of my zone, a Jewish response to hunger, and just want to highlight the hunger and the food insecurity of veterans, as your guest has been saying, but also active military. There are food banks on or near every Army and Marine and Navy base in the United States.

The only way to leverage the support needed to take care of our active duty military and our veterans is for the federal government to help out the food banks including the ones that Mr. Garvey serves, are really terrific, but they are band-aids in terms of food insecurity. MAZON has been leveraging its impact on the federal government by lobbying both Republicans and Democrats to help in the farm bill, in the agriculture area, and in the military to try to get SNAP benefits and other benefits to active duty military, as well as veterans.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for making that point, Len. Dennis Garvey, do you want to expand on that at all? Do you see the Food Bank for New York City as a band-aid and the real action for really solving food insecurity among that is in policy at the government level?

Dennis Garvey: Well, a couple of things. I think your first caller, Roland, pointed out something I think is important. I mentioned the transformation that I witnessed when you see young Marines come through the recruit depot boot camp processes is nothing short of really remarkable. I think one of the things that I think some veterans can see is, after being through that process, and being brought into that environment of structure and support and mutual support, that when they leave, that can be I think one of the things that can contribute to veterans struggling is being outside that family environment.

If they don't have support mechanisms elsewhere, the military generally does a very good job of supporting its people. Also to your second caller's point, talking about active duty, people needing food support, there's a truth there in the sense that the military pay system for young enlisted troops was, I think, originally designed and probably still to a certain extent focused on young single people.

When you get young soldiers and Marines sailors that are getting married early and have kids, the pay structure is not necessarily enough to help support that. You can have active duty people also experiencing food insecurity and primarily in some of the junior ranks before their pay starts to get more competitive. Yes, there's definitely things there. I don't see us as a band-aid at the food bank. I think it's a never-ending battle. That's certainly is true. It's something that pursuingly the extinguishing of hunger in our community is maybe something that we'll never completely achieve, but I think it's the pursuit that we have to be relentless in. That's what we're doing. If we're a band-aid, I'd like to think of us as a very large and aggressive Band-Aid in going out there and trying to deal with these things.

There's certainly policy elements there, too, because we are seeing cutbacks in some of the federal programs that were in place during COVID, and that's hurting us. A lot of our food comes through some federal programs that have been trimmed back. It creates a need for us to raise money and be able to buy food and other sources. Here we are in our busiest time of year going into Thanksgiving and Christmas, where everybody sits around a table of food to celebrate the things that they have to be thankful for. I think there's a lot of people out there in New York City who'd be thankful to have the meal.

Brian Lehrer: Dennis Garvey, former Marine and Vice President of Logistics for the Food Bank For New York City, thank you so much for this Veterans Day conversation. We really appreciate it. I could tell from our caller board, our listeners really appreciate it, too. Thank you.

Dennis Garvey: Thank you, Brian. I appreciate the time.

[01:11:17] [END OF AUDIO]

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