William Wisener was proud to be guarding Titan 2 ICBMs at the nuclear missile facility near Rock, Kansas.

As a teenager in 1978, Wisener had enlisted in the Air Force, following a family military tradition. The Grants Pass resident is today the father of an active serviceman stationed in Klamath Falls, Oregon.

Wisener distinguished himself almost immediately as an M60 machine gunner specialist and became an MP (military policeman).

A year later, while off-duty, he flipped on the TV. What he saw frightened him. He knew he had to help.

“There had been an accident at the missile silo, a nitrogen tetroxide gas leak. My team wasn't protected. I rushed over to help evacuate everybody. Several people died,” Wisener recalls.

Nitrogen tetroxide gas is normally pressurized so it can be stored as a liquid. This chemical is a rocket propellant still used today in NASA's space shuttle. When it vaporizes, one of the byproducts is deadly nitric acid.

“Two weeks later, I started to get bad headaches, my appetite disappeared, and food made me nauseous. The base doctor told me it was nervousness because I was an MP and that's a stressful job,” Wisener says.

The pain and symptoms worsened.

“I started to question this. I once passed out on the job. The guys on my team that I worked with on the evacuation also got sick.” Wisener says.

Shortly after this incident, Wisener attempted to re-enlist and was presented with discharge papers. He was honorably discharged, but with a notation claiming that he had a personality disorder—nothing ever raised with him before by the military.

The year was 1980. Wisener went to the Veteran's Administration seeking medical help but didn't get it. He then went to civilian doctors who, because they lacked familiarity with his symptoms, kept referring him right back to the local VA facility in Tennessee. By that time, Wisener's symptoms included an intestinal disorder and pain in his arms and legs. The pain got so intense that at times he couldn't function.

“After being sent to the Alvin York Medical Center in Tennessee about fifteen times in the 1980's and getting no treatment or relief there, I gave up,” Wisener says.

The VA refused to declare him disabled, which would have opened the door to the financial and, most importantly, the medical assistance he desperately needed.

He turned next to the Social Security Administration which, in 1988, declared Wisener disabled because of his physical condition.

For the past 20+ years, Wisener has eked out a meager existence on social security disability believing all the while that he had gotten a bad shake from the VA. His physical symptoms have continued.

In 2009, a friend of Wisener's told him about Help Now! so Wisener decided to give it a try by calling the organization.

“I was about to give up hope when I found out about Help Now! It had been so many years,” Wisener says.

The person on the other end of the telephone was Tom Wood, a Help Now! advocate who also is a veteran. The two formed an immediate bond.

Wood rolled up his sleeves, made numerous calls, and finally enlisted the help of Renée Burgdorf, a VA representative located in Medford. Based on Wood's description of what had happened and persuasive urging, Burgdorf made Wisener's case a priority.

Burgdorf knew of a law that states that, if a veteran becomes disabled within a year of discharge, he is eligible for VA disability benefits.

Due to Wood's intervention and Burgdorf's follow-up work, the VA has finally, after 30 years, granted Wisener his VA disability benefits thereby acknowledging that his suffering for the past 30 years was indeed a result of the missile fuel leakage that day in Kansas.

At least for the remaining years of his life, things for Wisener will be a little easier financially, and he'll be eligible for free VA medical care for his condition.

“I needed to do this not only for myself, but for the others who got killed,” Wisener says.

For Wood, the entire experience of helping another vet through a difficult situation has been very rewarding.

“I've learned that for VA matters, you need to be patient, keep on them, and keep a dialogue going with them to achieve the needed result,” Wood says.

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