Illinois’ leaders can help families of injured vets like mine
My husband Ryan gave 12 years to the Army National Guard and rose to sergeant.
During a training jump, he struck his head leaving the aircraft and suffered a traumatic brain injury. We believed he would recover. Instead, at 33, he was diagnosed with early- onset Alzheimer’s disease, a rare genetic form his brain injury drove forward faster. He is 36 now and lives in a memory care facility.
I was five months pregnant with our third child when the man I married began slipping away. I left my career as a social worker to care for him, and we sold our home and moved from Florida to Algonquin, in Chicago’s northwest suburbs, to be closer to my family. Today I am raising three young children in the community we now call home, managing Ryan’s care and living with a question effort never answers: am I doing enough?
Ours is one story among millions. About 14.3 million Americans quietly care for a wounded, ill or injured service member or veteran, and as a 2025 Dole Caregiver Fellow with the Elizabeth Dole Foundation, I have met many of them. Across Illinois — in Chicago, its suburbs and small towns downstate — thousands of families live some version of what mine does. What binds us is a patience hard-won against systems never built for families like ours, and a bill that could finally rebuild them: the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act, which bundles more than 60 stalled but widely supported measures into a single overdue package.
Three parts of that package speak directly to my family. The first is its investment in brain health. Ryan’s story, in which a brain injury hastened a devastating disease, reflects a connection science is only beginning to understand. Built on the Precision Brain Health Research Act, this provision would expand federal research into traumatic brain injury and its links to dementia and related conditions, and improve how the VA and Defense Department share what they learn. That research comes too late to change Ryan’s path. For the next young service member who falls hard in training, it could change everything.
The second is the Sharri Briley and Eric Edmundson Veterans Benefits Expansion Act, which would strengthen support for veterans with the most catastrophic injuries and, for the surviving spouses and children that so many caregivers become, deliver the first meaningful increase in more than 30 years. Ryan’s needs are complex and unrelenting.
No family should have to choose between a veteran’s care and the roof over their children’s heads.
The third is the Veteran Caregiver Reeducation, Reemployment, and Retirement Act, known as the 3Rs. Like countless caregivers, I set down a profession I loved when my husband needed me at home. The 3Rs would help people in my position return to work, recover lost income and rebuild the retirement security a paused career erodes.
Not every bill in this package will touch my household, and I am fighting for all of them just the same. The Major Richard Star Act would end an unjust offset, often called the wounded veteran tax, that forces many combat-injured retirees to surrender part of the retirement pay they earned. It would not change my family’s benefits, but it would bring relief to thousands of Illinois veterans who gave so much. Their fight is mine, too.
Illinois is fortunate to have a champion in this cause. Sen. Tammy Duckworth understands the cost of service in a way few in Washington ever will, and she has devoted her career to ensuring the veterans, caregivers and survivors who follow her are never left to struggle alone. To families like mine, her leadership is not a talking point. It is the reason we believe change is possible.
So I am asking Sen. Duckworth to help carry this package across the finish line, and Sen. Dick Durbin and every member of the Illinois delegation to join her. For Ryan, action now cannot restore what he has lost, but it can honor what he gave and protect the families still waiting behind us. Illinois’ veterans kept every promise they made to this country. It is long past time our elected leaders kept ours.
• Liana Redshaw, of Algonquin, is a 2025 Dole Caregiver Fellow with the Elizabeth Dole Foundation and is developing Hi Friend Toolkit, a resource for fellow caregivers.