Man from Rogers fought for benefits for vets with Agent Orange health claims

Three decades after his tour of duty in Vietnam ended, Steve Fiscus noticed his body wasn't moving the way it used to.

"Slow motion," he said, describing changes he noticed in the way he moved. "I was dragging."

It got so bad his wife Patricia once scolded him.

"It was Easter Sunday, and we were walking to a restaurant to be with the family, and he was shuffling," she said. "I turned to him and I said, 'Pick up your feet.' "

But Fiscus, who lives in Rogers, wasn't slouching. He would soon be diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

After lots of research, Fiscus became convinced there was a link between his illness and Agent Orange, the toxic chemcial the U.S. military used to kill plants during the war.

"(I) realized that a lot of farmers go ahead and come down with Parkinson's, more than the regular population," he said. "So then (I)started putting herbicides, pesticides, all of this together, and your chemicals, (and I) guessed there could be a little bit of correlation between it."

Fiscus was exposed to Agent Orange as Marine Corps machinist. As part of his job, he cut open empty barrels that had been filled with the chemical.

Since the war, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has recognized a link between Agent Orange and more than a dozen medical conditions, but not Parkinson's.

Not until now.

This week Fiscus got a phone call telling him that, thanks in large part to a study published by the Insitutute of Medicine, the Veterans Affairs department had proposed new rules recognizing the link between Agent Orange and Parkinson's, as well as certain types of heart disease and leukemia.

Fiscus had testified four times in front of Congress and was part of the study that prompted the change.

"We won," he said with a smile.

Now he and perhaps 200,000 Vietnam vets won't just have their medical treatment paid for. They can file claims to receive monthly disability payments.

Those payments would make life a little easier - and recognize that serving in Vietnam had made life more difficult.

"We got 'er done," he said.

"Yeah," Patricia added. "I said we need T-shirts now for our group that (say) we got 'er done."

The Veterans Affairs department did not estimate how much these changes would cost.

The new rules still have to be reviewed and finalized, which means it could take several months before veterans like Fiscus start collecting checks.

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