Veterans

Eastern Connecticut State University held its annual Veterans Day Ceremony on Monday. Ron Welch, the commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Veterans Affairs, was this year’s keynote speaker.

Gene Passarella went to war as a teenager, but his Army career ended with an injury that eventually earned him a Purple Heart. He’s better known in his hometown of Scranton for his music.

Connecticut has launched an advertising campaign and documentary to promote the state’s veterans that are working as farmers.

Veterans are six times more likely to die by suicide than in combat, and twenty veterans take their own lives every day. Connecticut lawmakers cited those statistics as a reason for a $462,000 federal grant to a nonprofit that supports veterans.

Only one-third of Congress has worn a uniform, a sharp decrease from the World War II and Vietnam War eras.

Suffolk County lawmakers are urging Governor Kathy Hochul to sign legislation to expand state tuition benefits to non-combat military veterans.

Veterans applying for housing vouchers will no longer have to list their disability benefits as income. U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said the new policy is “righting a wrong.”

The federal government has authorized a national memorial to veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While groundbreaking for that monument in Washington, D.C. is still years away, a group of Connecticut veterans just unveiled their memorial in Danbury.

This Memorial Day, some Connecticut veterans continue to serve their country by operating a mobile food pantry that’s run by veterans for veterans — that is now helping the wider community.

A new Connecticut law exempts combat-injured veterans from paying property taxes on their primary residence.