What is the Colonel Ray Valor Award Circle
The HBOT4KYVETS Valor Award Circle seeks to recognize those who work to support and assist individual veterans with the invisible wounds of TBI/PTSD Veterans or organizations that have contributed to the advancement of HBOT for TBI/PTSD Veterans across the country.
The Valor Award is named for Colonel Ronald D. Ray, who dedicated his life to military and public service. Colonel Ray served in the Marine Corps for 30 years, both active and Reserve duty and was highly decorated. Colonel Ray served as an advisor with the South Vietnamese Marines in 1967-68. Despite his many decorations, awards and honors, he was most proud of his service in Vietnam and fighting alongside the South Vietnamese Marines. When he and other Vietnam vets returned home largely to repudiation from their fellow countrymen, he campaigned to recast the Veterans’ honorable service and great sacrifices and founded and served as the first chairman of the Kentucky Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. After leading the effort to raise more than one million dollars, a unique granite sundial as a memorial in Frankfort, Kentucky was dedicated in 1988. At the end of the Colonel’s life, he evidenced the outcomes of TBI and PTSD, invisible wounds he sustained 50 years before in the jungles of Vietnam. Ron service of coordinating naval and air gun fire to support Marine and Army operations on the ground, and even being overrun and calling in fire on his own position left him with TBIs. After leading an otherwise successful life, his mental health was altered by his service and upon his death after 12 years of significant neurological decline, his brain and spinal cord were donated to the brain study at Boston University, where Alzheimer’s, Louie Body Dementia and ALS were found.
The Colonel’s wife and caregiver learned his condition was not unusual. His Neurologist/Psychiatrist and primary care doctors prescribed two care options: a strict anti-inflammatory diet and HBOT or Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy treatments. Managing the diet was much easier than accessing HBOT. When her husband was denied HBOT treatments at the local hospital, she and Eric Koleda, her Air Force brother-in-law, went to the Kentucky legislature where they secured legislation, unanimously passed, to require HBOT providers to treat Kentucky’s TBI vets! HBOT4KYVETS is the result of that effort and thanks to Eric’s leadership, Kentucky TBI and PTSD veterans can now access oxygen treatments. The Valor Award is meant to advance the long-held truth, that the nation’s debt to Veterans goes on after the battle, the service and sacrifice.
Colonel Ray Valor Award Circle Program
Recipients of the Colonel Ray Valor Award are individuals and or organizations who continue to serve our national and local communities to the benefit of those TBI/PTSD Veterans. All potential candidate submittals should be submitted to the HBOT4KYVETS Board of Directors no later than November 1st of each calendar year. Submittals should include specific accomplishments directly related to benefits for TBI/PTSD Veterans. Announcements will be made in January the following year. The award will not necessarily be made each year depending on the candidates and the number and quality of submittals.