{"id":21696,"date":"2011-01-02T10:05:54","date_gmt":"2011-01-02T14:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=21696"},"modified":"2011-01-02T10:05:54","modified_gmt":"2011-01-02T14:05:54","slug":"fallen-soldiers-family-slighted-by-cantwell-and-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=21696","title":{"rendered":"Fallen soldier&#8217;s family slighted by Cantwell and Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sean Collins was killed in Afghanistan last month and, according to <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.thenewstribune.com\/military\/2010\/12\/30\/his-name-was-sean-and-he-died-for-his-country\/\">The News Tribune<\/a>, were overcome by support of friends and family. But they were underwhelmed by the reaction from politicians;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>One slight came in a letter of condolences the family received from the office of Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.<\/p>\n<p>At first, the Collins family appreciated that Cantwell had taken the time to send a letter acknowledging their son\u2019s sacrifice.<\/p>\n<p>But the letter misidentified the slain soldier in its last paragraph, which reads:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAgain, please accept my warmest condolences. May your memories of Bryn and the knowledge that he made a positive impact on the lives of so many serve as a source of comfort to you during this time of sorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The letter was dated Dec. 20 and delivered to Sean Collins\u2019 mother, Linda Collins of Yelm. The error conveyed to the family that Cantwell had sent a form letter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Cantwell, was one of the Senators endorsed by the VFW-PAC, yet her staff couldn&#8217;t find the time to proof read her letter to a Gold Star mother.<\/p>\n<p>But the story doesn&#8217;t end there;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The other slight came when [Sgt. Collins&#8217; father, Lt. Col. Patrick Collins (Ret.)] called the White House and asked to have President Obama call his ex-wife, Linda, to talk about their son.<\/p>\n<p>He was told that Obama did not regularly make phone calls to the families of fallen soldiers.<\/p>\n<p>Later, Patrick Collins read a story about Obama\u2019s phone call to Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffery Lurie. Obama reportedly praised Lurie for giving quarterback Michael Vick a second chance to play football after serving time in prison for running a dog fighting ring.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat burns,\u201d Patrick Collins said Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAny soldier that gets killed in action, you\u2019d think the president would be calling someone in the family. There\u2019s no politics in it. His predecessor did it,\u201d Collins said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Not to mention the countless vacations. Thanks to TSO for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sean Collins was killed in Afghanistan last month and, according to The News Tribune, were overcome by support of friends and family. But they were underwhelmed by the reaction from politicians; One slight came in a letter of condolences the family received from the office of Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. At first, the Collins family [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,18,144],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-support-the-troops","category-vfw-pac"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ozh1-5DW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21696\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}