Letter No. 5 — To Secretary Doug Collins

Status: Installment No. 3 of The Count Continues — a new open letter to the Secretary every three days until the Department answers in writing; this installment was written and published the same morning as the events it records, ahead of the series' schedule. Published October 30, 2026 — the delivery of record — and emailed to the Department the same morning (Fastmail Sent, 8:51 AM EDT, to customercare@va.gov). Day 15 of the silence that began when Letter No. 1 reached the Secretary himself on October 15, 2026.

Secretary Collins:

Fifteen days. Sixty-two letters before this site existed, and Letters No. 2, 3, and 4 since — and your office has not answered one word.

This morning at the Emory L. Bennett Veterans Nursing Home, my father — 84, a Navy veteran, 100% service-connected, at the end of his life — lay calling out for water. His hands no longer work well enough to press the call button. I asked for a doctor at 8:22 this morning. For almost eight minutes, nobody came. I told the staff I would dial 911 and have an ambulance take him out of the building.

The VA pays $520.16 a day for his care there.

I am his son, his power of attorney, his health care surrogate. In the eight weeks he has been in that building, I have never once spoken to his attending physician. Everything reaches me through an assistant, or it does not reach me at all.

The count continues.

Thomas A. Bowman Jr. Port Orange, Florida

Thomas Alan Bowman Sr. in his bed at Emory L. Bennett Veterans Nursing Home on the morning of October 30, 2026 — Thomas Alan Bowman Sr. in his bed at Emory L. Bennett Veterans Nursing Home, Daytona Beach — photographed by his son at 8:30 AM on October 30, 2026, minutes after the events this letter records. No staff are pictured; this site does not name or shame the people on Bennett's floor. The failure this letter charges sits with the system that staffs, funds, and oversees that building — and with the Secretary who has not answered.