Veteran spends retirement serving veterans

Shawn Holzhauser poses for a portrait in front of the Jefferson Building. Holzhauser works in the Missouri Veterans Commission, serving as a veterans service officer.
Shawn Holzhauser poses for a portrait in front of the Jefferson Building. Holzhauser works in the Missouri Veterans Commission, serving as a veterans service officer.

After 27 years serving his country, Shawn Holzhauser now serves other veterans.

As a Missouri Veterans Commission veterans service officer, he helps veterans from all eras and with a variety of backgrounds receive the benefits to which they are entitled.

The U.S. Army retired lieutenant colonel originally is from Portland and returned there in retirement June 2016. During his service, he was stationed in Africa, Iraq, Japan, Hawaii, Kansas, Missouri, South Carolina, South Dakota and Washington. Today, he lives on the same land where he, his father and his grandfather grew up.

He had his eye on working in retirement to help veterans. So the last eight months with the commission have been a "dream retirement job."

The challenge of his job is awareness.

"Many don't even know what they qualify for," he said. "I want to help get the benefits they deserve and should have."

Enlisting at age 25, Holzhauser said, after his initial enlistment years were up, he liked the feeling of serving his country as a construction, and later combat, engineer. So, through the Reserve Officer Training Corps, he became an officer and continued another 20 years in human resources and personnel.

His background helps him relate to veterans, he said.

"I've seen some places and some things, and I know what they do," he said. "I want to try to help them."

Sometimes his job is to gather the proper evidence for a veteran's claim, and other times it might be helping the veteran navigate the bureaucracy, filling out the correct paperwork and talking to the right people.

In addition to health care benefits, the service officers can guide veterans to receive other benefits, such as military grave markers or registration for a veterans' home. For younger veterans, they also can point them in the right direction for education benefits and home loans.

"There's not a large population willing to serve in the military," Holzhauser said. "For those who decided to serve or joined the National Guard and were called up, they made a decision 99 percent of the nation doesn't decide to do.

"The ones who decide to make that sacrifice, I think they deserve all the help they can get."