Ivan Buxton Gay Jr

Engineer, Surveyor & Navy Veteran

Ivan Buxton Gay Jr.

What Is the Navy Log, and Why Every Navy Veteran Should Enroll

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ivan buxton gay jr What Is the Navy Log

Most Navy veterans know about the memorials. Fewer know about the registry. And that’s a shame, because the Navy Log — maintained by the Navy Memorial in Washington, D.C. — is one of the most meaningful and most underused resources available to Sea Service veterans and their families. It costs nothing to enroll. It takes minutes. And what it creates lasts indefinitely.

What Is the Navy Log?

The Navy Log is the nation’s largest publicly available repository of Sea Service personnel. It’s a permanent public registry where Sea Service members and veterans can record their service information — name, duty stations, awards, photos, and memories.

Think of it as a living archive. This is a place where a sailor’s story gets told in their own words, preserved permanently, and made available to anyone who wants to find it.

It was established as a tribute to those who have served and a permanent archive of their military service, with the goal of creating a lasting legacy of honor that reaches across generations and tells the story of Sea Service veterans, preserving naval heritage for future generations to come.

Who Can Enroll?

The Navy Log isn’t limited to Navy veterans. It’s open to anyone who served in the Sea Services — Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and Merchant Marine, active duty and reservists alike. People can also record service information for veterans who are deceased or those who are unable to record their own information.

That last part matters. A significant number of the sailors who served in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam are gone now. Their families can still create an entry on their behalf. Their service can still be documented and honored in a place where it will outlast all of us.

Why Ivan Buxton Gay Jr. Thinks Every Navy Veteran Should Do This

Ivan Buxton Gay Jr. served aboard the USS Forrestal — one of the most historically significant carriers in Navy history. An entry in the Navy Log isn’t just a personal record. It’s a data point in a larger story. The Log allows veterans to search by duty station and year, which means a fellow Forrestal sailor from 1968 could find Ivan’s entry, and Ivan could find theirs. That kind of connection is exactly what a resource like this makes possible.

Ivan Buxton Gay Jr. sees the Navy Log as a form of accountability too. The stories of what sailors actually experienced aboard their ships, in their own words, are irreplaceable. Official records capture dates and assignments. The Navy Log captures what it felt like to be there.

What Can You Add to Your Entry?

An enrollment isn’t just a name and a rank. Veterans can include:

  • Name, rate, and years of service
  • Duty stations and ship assignments
  • Awards and commendations
  • Personal photos from service
  • Written memories and firsthand accounts

The Navy Memorial also runs an ongoing program called “Tales from the Navy Log,” which showcases stories contained within the registry — perspectives and experiences that offer a unique glimpse into Sea Service history. An entry you create today could be featured there.

How to Enroll

Enrollment is free and straightforward. Visit the Navy Log enrollment page at the Navy Memorial’s official website and complete the online form. A paper enrollment form is also available for those who prefer to submit by mail.

If you’re enrolling on behalf of a deceased veteran, the process is the same. The Navy Log can also be searched and viewed at the Memorial itself in Washington, D.C., at Pennsylvania Avenue and 7th Street NW, as well as online at navylog.navymemorial.org.

Service happened. It deserves a record.

VA Staffing Cuts in 2026: What Navy Veterans Need to Know About Their Care

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Something significant has shifted at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

ivan buxton gay jr va staffing cuts

According to Military Times’ reporting on VA workforce losses and care impacts, the VA shed more than 40,000 employees over the past year — the first net workforce loss in the department’s recent history. Eighty-eight percent of those departures came from the Veterans Health Administration, the branch responsible for actually delivering care. That’s not a footnote. That’s the core of the system.

Ivan Buxton Gay Jr., a Navy veteran who served aboard the USS Forrestal, has been watching this story develop for months. His view is straightforward: the people leaving aren’t the ones shuffling paper in central offices. They’re nurses. Mental health providers. Appointment schedulers. The people a veteran actually sees, calls, and counts on.

VA Secretary Doug Collins has maintained that care has not been meaningfully disrupted. Congressional Democrats and independent analysts are looking at the same numbers and reaching different conclusions.

Who Actually Left

The breakdown of who’s gone tells the real story. Net losses over the past year include roughly 3,000 registered nurses, 1,000 physicians, 700 social workers, 1,550 appointment schedulers, and nearly 2,000 claims processors. In a normal year, the VA would have added around 10,000 employees to its rolls. The swing from that baseline to a net loss of tens of thousands is jarring by any measure.

About 10,000 of the departed employees held frontline positions — the kind that interact directly with patients and claimants — that the department has struggled to backfill. And it’s not stabilizing yet. By the end of 2026, most VA facilities are projected to lose an additional 2 to 5 percent of their psychologists, with some locations, including Seattle and Buffalo, tracking toward double-digit attrition.

Mental Health Wait Times Are Climbing

The VA’s own access standard says new patients should be seen within 20 days for mental health care. That benchmark is being missed across a wide swath of the country right now.

As of early January 2026, the national average wait for new mental health patients exceeded 35 days. In 14 states, waits had climbed past 40 days. Maine hit 61 days. Maryland hit 54. Those aren’t near misses — they’re more than double the VA’s threshold. At one California clinic, seven of twelve mental health providers left following return-to-office mandates, pushing local wait times to 121 days.

Perhaps the most troubling detail: some veterans are now being capped at eight therapy sessions, regardless of what their provider recommends, simply because there aren’t enough staff to carry the caseload.

What the RISE Reorganization Means Going Forward

Layered on top of the staffing losses is a sweeping structural overhaul. The VA’s RISE initiative — Restructure for Impact and Sustainability Effort — will reduce the number of Veterans Integrated Service Networks from 18 down to 5. The reorganization carries an upfront cost of at least $312 million, with projected savings of $1.7 billion over time.

Separately, DOGE-driven contract decisions added another layer of uncertainty. Fourteen thousand contracts were allowed to expire and 2,000 more were canceled outright — many with no public plan for replacing the services they covered. The downstream effects reach beyond appointments: veterans waiting on claims appeals are now looking at average waits of 3,541 days, and 75,000 students saw education benefit checks go unpaid after the department failed to process several programs on time.

What Navy Veterans Should Do Right Now

Navy veterans have a particular reason to watch this. Tinnitus, hearing loss, and PTSD are among the most commonly filed service-connected conditions for sailors — and those are precisely the areas hit hardest by cuts to mental health staffing and claims processing capacity. Veterans who served in environments with burn pit or toxic exposure may also find their PACT Act claims moving slower, with nearly 2,000 fewer claims examiners working the backlog.

Ivan Buxton Gay Jr. encourages Navy veterans to take a few concrete steps now rather than wait for a problem to surface. Check current VA enrollment status. Confirm that upcoming appointments are still on the books. If a claim is pending or appears stalled, connect with a Veterans Service Organization — the DAV, VFW, and American Legion all offer free claims assistance and can help navigate delays.

For a full overview of current care access options and community care eligibility, visit VA.gov.

Vietnam Veterans Day 2026: Patriots Point Naval Museum Honors Those Who Served

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ivan buxton gay jr vietnam veterans day

This Sunday, March 29, marks National Vietnam Veterans Day, the anniversary of the 1973 withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Vietnam. It’s a date that deserves more than a passing mention on a calendar.

Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum in Mount Pleasant, SC, is marking the occasion with a full day of events, from a formal ceremony to rare combat film screenings that most people have never had the chance to see. For Navy veteran Ivan Buxton Gay Jr., occasions like this aren’t just commemorative; they’re necessary. The stories of Vietnam-era service members are fading with time, and institutions willing to do the work of preservation are worth paying attention to.

Vietnam veterans and their immediate families receive free admission all day. All other visitors get the ceremony and activities included with general admission. The museum is open from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with the ticket window closing at 4:00 p.m.

The Ceremony

At 1:00 p.m., a formal ceremony will take place inside the Vietnam Experience exhibit. Three speakers are confirmed: Dr. Bruce T. “Woody” Caine, a retired Army Infantry officer; Doug Geganto, a prior Army combat medic; and Arlene Southerland, a retired Navy nurse.

Southerland’s presence on that stage matters. Vietnam-era service stretched well beyond infantry units and jungle patrols—nurses, corpsmen, and support personnel carried their own weight and their own wounds. The ceremony honors all of it, recognizing the more than three million Americans who served during the war and the 58,000 who didn’t come back.

Rare Vietnam War Film Screenings

Patriots Point has partnered with USC Libraries to screen combat footage pulled from the Marine Corps film archive — much of it never shown to the public before. Screenings begin at 1:00 p.m. in the Smokey Stover Theater aboard the USS Yorktown, with additional showings running throughout the afternoon.

USC Libraries representatives will be on board to walk visitors through the footage and explain how the full collection—spanning World War I through the 1980s—can be accessed online. For anyone serious about military history, that’s a resource worth knowing about.

A New Digital Collection Brings One Sailor’s Story to Light

Perhaps the most quietly powerful part of Sunday’s event is the launch of a new digital collection on the Patriots Point website, dedicated to Navy corpsman James “Doc” Pueschel. Pueschel served with the 1st Marine Division, 3rd Battalion, Mike Company—a unit that sustained 100% casualties during the war. He was wounded four times while providing medical care under fire and kept going anyway.

Ivan Buxton Gay Jr. points to stories like Pueschel’s as exactly why these preservation efforts matter. For every veteran whose name is known, there are thousands more whose service has gone unrecognized.

How to Attend

Patriots Point is located at 40 Patriots Point Road, Mount Pleasant, SC 29464. Vietnam veterans and their immediate families receive free admission. For all other visitors, the ceremony and activities are included with general admission.

For full details, tickets, and event information, visit PatriotsPoint.org.

No One Left Behind: A Veteran’s Final Farewell

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ivan buxton gay jr No One Left Behind_ A Veteran's Final Farewell

Some stories don’t need much setup. A Navy veteran in West Pittston, Pennsylvania, Jeffrey Kalnas, passed away with no living relatives to see him off. No one to sit in the front pew. No one to fold the flag. Word got out, and the community answered in a way that’s hard not to feel.

Hundreds of people showed up.

A Community Refused to Let Him Go Alone

Members of the American Legion, local church congregations, and neighbors who’d never crossed paths with Kalnas in his lifetime filled the First United Methodist Church of West Pittston. Commander Ron Gitkos of American Legion Post 542 helped organize the effort alongside local veterans’ groups. The borough itself didn’t plan the event — regular people did. That distinction matters.

Ivan Buxton Gay Jr., himself a Navy veteran who served aboard the USS Forrestal, finds stories like this one particularly meaningful. There’s something about the military community’s instinct to close ranks around one of their own, even a stranger, that captures what service is really about at its core.

What Jeffrey Kalnas’ Story Tells Us

Veterans don’t always come back to parades or recognition. Many quietly re-enter civilian life, build whatever they can, and grow old without much fanfare. For some, the years thin out. Connections fade. And when they’re gone, the risk is that they go unnoticed.

That didn’t happen in West Pittston. And it’s worth asking: how do we make sure it doesn’t happen elsewhere, either?

Ivan Buxton Gay Jr. believes the answer lies in intentional community. Not just showing up at funerals, but checking in before it gets to that point. Veterans’ organizations, local churches, neighborhood networks — these groups are the infrastructure that keeps people from disappearing.

Honoring the Service Behind the Silence

Jeffrey Kalnas wore the uniform. That alone is worth something: worth a packed church, worth a folded flag, worth the trip across town on a Wednesday afternoon. The hundreds of strangers who came out understood that instinctively.

Hornets to Honor Dell Curry by Raising No. 30 to the Rafters

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The Hornets announced that Dell Curry will be honored with his No. 30 lifted to the rafters during a game against the Orlando Magic on March 19, 2026. The ceremony will take place at Spectrum Center, marking a rare franchise honor reserved for players who shaped the team’s identity.

Ivan Buxton Gay Jr Hornets to Honor Dell Curry by Raising No. 30 to the Rafters

As a basketball fan and longtime sports blogger, Ivan Buxton Gay Jr. sees this moment as a celebration of impact, consistency, and connection between a player and a fan base.

A Franchise Figure from Day One

Dell Curry spent a decade in a Hornets uniform and became a steady presence through the club’s formative seasons. Known for perimeter shooting and reliability off the bench, Curry finished his playing run as the team’s all-time leader in games played and near the top of the scoring list. His 1994 Sixth Man of the Year award highlighted how valuable his role was night after night.

Ivan Buxton Gay Jr. notes that honors like this often recognize more than points and awards. They acknowledge leadership, professionalism, and the way a player represents a team across many seasons.

Beyond the Scoreboard

Curry’s influence didn’t stop when his playing days ended. He remained closely tied to the organization as a broadcaster and ambassador, becoming a familiar voice for fans tuning in season after season. That continued presence helped bridge generations of supporters and players alike.

The moment also connects to the league’s broader story. Curry’s sons, Stephen Curry and Seth Curry, grew into standout professionals, making this honor a link between past and present eras of the game.

Why This Ceremony Stands Out

Only one other number hangs in the rafters for this franchise, underscoring how selective the honor is. For fans, it’s a chance to reflect on the early years and the players who gave the team its identity.

Ivan Buxton Gay Jr. believes moments like this resonate because they remind fans how the game is built over time—through dependable performances, loyalty, and a shared connection with the crowd.

For full details on the announcement, read the original report from Reuters.