and she was there for us. Our hero, Navy veteran Ms. Maude DeVictor.
(First Published November 9, 1986)\
By Desson Howee
She welcomes you into her hotel room like a distracted hostess -- glad to see you but worried about the pot roast.
"I'm looking ragged and battered and pudgy," she says. She asks you to cool your heels a bit, while she adjusts. Her garment bag lies unopened on the bed. Mister Rogers is welcoming everyone to his neighborhood loudly on the unwatched television and the phone rings constantly with calls from the press.
This is an elated Maude DeVictor. The woman known for her advocacy for Vietnam veterans -- particularly over the issue of Agent Orange -- has just jetted in from Boston, where she was received by Mayor Raymond Flynn and Gov. Michael Dukakis (Flynn declared today Maude DeVictor Day). This past weekend in Washington she attended "In Service to America," a conference sponsored by the Vietnam Veterans of America.
DeVictor's frenetic activity is connected with tonight's "Unnatural Causes," a controversial NBC television drama based on her battle to establish a connection between the defoliant Agent Orange used in the war and a plethora of deaths, illnesses and physical ailments that many Vietnam veterans have suffered. A consultant on the film, she says the docudrama "accurately depicts" the circumstances of her career with the Veterans Administration's Chicago Regional Office.
"Just do the top," she says to a photographer. She points to her hips and laughs.
"Have you heard of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo?" she asks, referring to a Buddhist chant. She throws a visitor a leaflet on Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism before heading for the bathroom with a lipstick.
"This is like a victory for fat people," she says just before disappearing and lets out a cackle that threatens to vibrate the infrastructure.
When DeVictor, a benefits counselor at the VA office, filed a claim in 1977 on behalf of a Vietnam veteran who had terminal cancer, it was the beginning of what may be a lifelong mission. The veteran's widow claimed his death resulted from exposure to Agent Orange, and DeVictor -- a divorced mother raising a son -- began to discover other veterans who also believed their medical problems came from the toxin.
