The U.S. Air Force will upgrade the status of a 91-year-old Air Force veteran, who was undesirably discharged in 1948 because he was gay. The veteran, Edward Spires, will now have an honorable discharge, which will give him access to health care and a military funeral.
Spires has waited nearly 70 years for this. With the help of the Yale Law Clinic, he petitioned the Air Force for an upgrade but he says it’s about more than just the health benefits. Getting that honorable status was his life’s great unfinished business.
“I was a nobody to them, and they treated me that way and they threw me out that way. I want to prove the Air Force wrong,” Spires says.
Since World War II, thousands of service members have been discharged for being gay. Many saw their discharges upgraded in 2010 when “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” was repealed, but Spires wasn’t one of them. He burned his papers to keep his parents from finding out he was gay. And the Air Force lost its copy of the papers in a fire.
U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., says this case could help thousands of other veterans who can’t get their discharges upgraded for similar reasons.