Local

Woman fights for veteran husband's pension to save home

COWETA COUNTY, Ga.,None — The clock is ticking for the wife of a veteran to save her home from being sold at a foreclosure auction.

Army Veteran Byron Womer died in 2009. Since then, his wife has been fighting the Department of Veterans Affairs to get his pension to help save their home.

"I can't get any help from anywhere," Brenda Womer told Channel 2's Craig Lucie.

Brenda Womer said the bank locked her out of the Senoia home she and her husband shared for 10 years.

"They booted me out," Womer said.

Womer said she was paying the bank everything she had.

"I run out of insurance money," she told Lucie.

But Womer said she should have more money to pay her mortgage from her husband's pension plan after he served in Vietnam.

Womer's daughter, Sherry Womer Taylor, said they were not in financial trouble until he passed.

"Three months before he died, he was granted this (payments) by the VA, but he died before he received the first check," said Taylor.

Taylor said when she and Brenda called the Department of Veterans Affairs, they told them sorry for their loss.

"They're saying they can't get medical records," Womer said.

Taylor said she pressed the VA for more information.

"They say they don't know where they're at. There burnt. They say they don't back up and don't have any records from the St. Louis fire. I can't remember what year the woman told me," Taylor explained.

Lucie looked it up, and that fire occurred on July 12, 1973.

It destroyed between 16 million and 18 million military records at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis.

Byron Womer's records were among the millions, and it's paperwork his wife needs to save their home.

"It goes up for auction March 6. There's nothing nobody can do. It will be sold that day," explained Taylor.

Lucie contacted the VA and they told him quote: "We are seeking a resolution for this family. Thank you for bringing this to our attention."

The Womer family hopes they live up to their word. They also want to make sure other veteran families don't have to go through what they've been through.