As World War II ended and millions of service members returned home, the Veterans Administration faced the major challenge of not just delivering benefits and medical care, but also ensuring broad public awareness of these programs. Congress had passed numerous forms of assistance for Veterans during the war and, in 1946, President Harry S. Truman directed General Omar N. Bradley, the newly appointed VA Administrator, to modernize VA’s delivery of its services. Confronting the agency was the task of coming up with highly effective ways to communicate benefits information and explain to Veterans how they could take advantage of what they had earned through their military service. Previously, the agency had devoted little effort to disseminating benefits information on a regular, nationwide basis.
Before and during the war years, no other medium had been more influential in keeping the American public informed than radio. In addition to extensive news coverage, many radio broadcasts brought entertainment and tributes to troops around the world and those on the home front. To VA, radio seemed a surefire way to reach a mass audience of Veterans with important information about benefits and services. However, to gain maximum exposure and hold the listener’s interest, the approach had to be novel and unique enough to rise above common everyday public service messaging.
The VA Public Relations office in Washington took on that challenge. Its director of Radio Service at the time was Joseph L. Brechner, a savvy broadcast executive who had brought his talents to the agency after the war. Using his industry connections, Brechner took an innovative path involving the cooperation of the Advertising Council, the American Federation of Radio Artists, and the national radio networks. He decided to produce weekly 15-minute programs that carried VA’s public service messages within what were mini versions of some of America’s most popular radio shows. Each broadcast would be high quality and custom-made for broad audience appeal and to convince stations across the country to place it on their schedules. And, so, Here’s To Veterans was born. The first series of programs premiered in mid-1946 with distribution to nearly a thousand stations on 16-inch vinyl discs, known as transcriptions.
For the first several years, the program featured giants of the entertainment industry, including Milton Berle, Fibber McGee & Molly, Jack Benny, and Dinah Shore. It quickly became one of the most successful public information campaigns ever undertaken by a federal agency. The unique content of each show boasting the participation of so many well-known popular entertainers also marked it as a signal moment in radio history.
The life of Here’s To Veterans as an agency public information vehicle did not end even after its postwar mission had been largely achieved. In the 1950s, it transitioned into a program with much the same format, but now devoted entirely to popular music featuring well-known recording artists. Under a special arrangement with the American Federation of Musicians and Capitol Records, stars like Nat “King” Cole, Jo Stafford, Stan Kenton, and Les Paul not only performed some of their latest releases, but also served as the hosts, voicing VA benefits messages. Now aimed at reaching Veterans of the Korean and Vietnam Wars, Here’s To Veterans provided a way for radio stations to present an entertaining program coupled with public service information for their listeners.
For a brief period in the late 1970s, VA reissued a series of its original programs with fresh message content, capitalizing on an industry trend at the time—broadcasts from the “Golden Age of Radio.” Finally, in 1981, the last pressings of Here’s To Veterans were released as the agency shifted to more contemporary means of disseminating public service messages on radio and television. Today, the complete 35-year series with over 1,800 programs are housed at the National Archives. Copies that survive are avidly sought by collectors, and downloads can be accessed on internet sites specializing in programs from radio’s most memorable era. In that sense, the program lives on, illustrating its success as a highly effective and creative means of outreach to the Veteran population.
By Donald R. Smith
Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs (Retired)
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History of VA in 100 Objects
Object 80: LUKE/DEKA Prosthetic Arm
In the 19th century, the federal government left the manufacture and distribution of prosthetic limbs for disabled Veterans to private enterprise. The experience of fighting two world wars in the first half of the 20th century led to a reversal in this policy.
In the interwar era, first the Veterans Bureau and then the Veterans Administration assumed responsibility for providing replacement limbs and medical care to Veterans.
In recent decades, another federal agency, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), has joined VA as a supporter of cutting-edge research into artificial limb technology. DARPA’s efforts were spurred by the spike in traumatic injuries resulting from the emergence of improvised explosive devices as the insurgent’s weapon of choice in Iraq in 2003-04.
Out of that effort came the LUKE/DEKA prosthetic limb, named after the main character from "Star Wars."
History of VA in 100 Objects
Object 79: VA Study of Former Prisoners of War
American prisoners of war from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam faced starvation, torture, forced labor, and other abuses at the hands of their captors. For those that returned home, their experiences in captivity often had long-lasting impacts on their physical and mental health. Over the decades, the U.S. government sought to address their specific needs through legislation conferring special benefits on former prisoners of war.
In 1978, five years after the United States withdrew the last of its combat troops from South Vietnam, Congress mandated VA carry out a thorough study of the disability and medical needs of former prisoners of war. In consultation with the Secretary of Defense, VA completed the study in 14 months and published its findings in early 1980. Like previous investigations in the 1950s, the study confirmed that former prisoners of war had higher rates of service-connected disabilities.
History of VA in 100 Objects
Object 78: French Cross at Cypress Hills National Cemetery in Brooklyn
In the waning days of World War I, French sailors from three visiting allied warships marched through New York in a Liberty Loan Parade. The timing was unfortunate as the second wave of the influenza pandemic was spreading in the U.S. By January, 25 of French sailors died from the virus.
These men were later buried at the Cypress Hills National Cemetery and later a 12-foot granite cross monument, the French Cross, was dedicated in 1920 on Armistice Day. This event later influenced changes to burial laws that opened up availability of allied service members and U.S. citizens who served in foreign armies in the war against Germany and Austrian empires.
