Letter No. 2 — To Secretary Doug Collins

Status: The Count Continues — Installment No. 1. Published October 25, 2026 — the delivery of record — and dispatched to the Department the same day. Day 10 of the silence that began when Letter No. 1 reached the Secretary himself on October 15, 2026. The standing series: a new open letter every three days until the Department of Veterans Affairs answers in writing.

Secretary Collins:

On October 15, a letter from my family reached you personally. It was at least the sixty-third substantive letter we had written into your Department. It asked you to read the record of what the VA did to my father, and to answer for it.

My father — Thomas Alan Bowman Sr., 84 years old, United States Navy, 100% service-connected — is dying at the Emory L. Bennett Veterans Nursing Home in Daytona Beach. He is dying still waiting for your answer.

While he waits, your Department pays that home $520.16 for every day of his care — the published prevailing rate for a veteran rated as he is. The money arrives every day. The answer has never arrived at all.

This letter begins a standing series. Every three days, your office will receive the next page of this record — a count, a document, a dollar figure — published openly at DearDougCollins.com, until the Department of Veterans Affairs answers in writing.

There is still time for your Department to answer a living man. There is less of it every day, and your office is spending it.

Thomas A. Bowman Jr. Son and personal representative of Thomas Alan Bowman Sr. Registered VA caregiver (unpaid), July 2024 – present

P.S. Doug, I’m willing to sit down and chat with you about how the VA has killed my father. The offer stands.