Readers filled my inbox with e-mail after my column about Col. Darel Maxfield appeared here two weeks ago.

They wrote to express their indignation that the “full-bird” colonel has gone more than a year since his stroke without any medical benefits or disability pay from the U.S. Army Reserve or Veterans Affairs. Some described their own trials with the Army or VA. Others shared their frustrations and fears for the service members in their families.

In the last line of the column, I quoted Maxfield saying, “If we did this to a full bird, holy crap, what happens to a Sgt. Nobody?”

He now regrets the phrasing. A more respectful version, he says, might have been Sgt. Common Man. Nevertheless, none of my e-mail writers blamed him a bit.

In fact, Colletta Young wrote to share the story of what happened to the “Sgt. Nobody” in her life.

Young’s husband, Richard, served as an Army medic from 1967 to 1971, including two tours of duty in Vietnam. After he left the service, he attended a seminary and became a Southern Baptist minister.

A native of Denison, Texas, Young moved to Spokane in 1992 with his wife to serve as associate pastor of Driscoll Baptist Church.

Eight years ago, the church’s senior pastor asked to speak to Colletta Young privately. Her husband’s memory seemed to be failing. When he led the hymns, he might repeat the third verse three times.

On July 26, 2005, Richard Young was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 57.

The couple moved to Stevens County, a secluded area that provided Richard Young some dignity. His wife couldn’t bear for people to see him declining, speechless and drooling, as he piled up sticks on the property during the day or read an upside-down magazine at night.

She works as a director for Washington State University’s Upward Bound Program, helping first-generation and low-income high school students find their way to college.

As the years went by, it became more difficult to care for her husband. One day she received a call from the local sheriff. Her husband had hitchhiked to a church 10 miles away and couldn’t find his way home.

She became desperate for help. Her husband’s neurologist knew he had served in Vietnam, where he’d also spent some time in the hospital. The doctor suggested she contact the VA to ask them to trace his medical records to see if a service-related injury, such as a brain trauma, might have contributed to his Alzheimer’s disease.

Twice Colletta Young drove her husband 50 miles to visit the VA Medical Center in Spokane only to find that the doctor he’d been assigned to was sick and no one would be able to see him that day.

Colletta Young knew she needed to move her husband to a care facility. The cost could run as high as $7,000 to $10,000 a month, and he could easily live another 10 years. She’d have to drain his small annuity from the ministry and her larger university retirement before they’d be eligible for aid. By paying for his care, she would face an impoverished old age.

Colletta Young met with a VA social worker who recommended protecting her assets by divorce.

For a wife of a Southern Baptist minister, divorce was unthinkable. Richard Young had married hundreds of couples. He’d led Marriage Encounter sessions. He believed deeply in the sanctity of marriage “till death do us part.”

In November, on Veterans Day, she placed her husband in an adult family home in Stevens County and began drawing down their retirement funds to pay $3,000 per month. She heard of a VA aid and attendance program that could help, but each month, another letter would arrive from the VA saying that due to the large volume of claims, no determination had been made in her husband’s case.

In May she received a phone call from the VA. A decision in her husband’s case was imminent.

Two days later, Richard Young was found in a nearby pond. He had drowned.

Colletta Young got a permit to transfer his body and drove her husband back home via Larry McMurtry’s route of the “Lonesome Dove” for an old-fashioned Texas funeral.

A month or so later, she called the VA to learn their decision. She could have taken “no” for an answer, but she needed an answer. The staff member, she says, told her that because her husband had died, the file was closed. There would be no decision in his case.

She now thinks of her husband’s death as a “tender mercy.” But in the endless delays at the VA, she found no similar grace.

“If you all wait long enough, the VA will never have to make a decision,” she said. “After all, we’ll all die sooner or later.”