He tried to get his disabled veteran son help. Now, hes burying him.
Timothy Robinson didn’t always want to live. During the three decades he spent homeless in the Washington region, time during which he lost both his legs to amputations, his thoughts sometimes drifted to dark places.
He confessed that to me last year. He also confessed that his outlook changed after his father found him sitting in a broken wheelchair at a bus stop, took him to get medical help and started fighting for him to receive benefits as a veteran.
For the first time in a long time, Robinson told me in November 2022, he was looking forward to his future.
“I feel like I would like to live,” he said. “Live a good life.”
In a column at the time, I told you about Robinson, an Army veteran, and his father, Rudolph Robinson, a retired D.C. police officer. They had spent a year and a half fighting to get military and Veterans Affairs officials to recognize that the younger Robinson should not have been denied benefits decades earlier and to give him the help he needed. They hoped that by publicly sharing their story, he could get that help sooner rather than later, because he had already lost so many years to struggling with his mental and physical health.
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But that did not happen. The two instead spent the following months, then year, continuing their fight. They fought by pleading with officials through phone calls, emails and office visits. They fought by asking federal lawmakers to intervene in the case. They fought by hiring a lawyer and taking the matter before a judge.
Now, Rudolph Robinson will have to continue that fight alone. On Sunday, Timothy Robinson, who joined the military after graduating high school, following in the steps of his father and his grandfather, died while waiting to receive veterans benefits. He was 58.
“He was denied benefits to the end,” Rudolph Robinson said. “What happened is a shame. It’s an embarrassment to the VA. It’s an embarrassment to the Army.”
I spoke to him as he and his wife headed to make the arrangements for their son’s funeral. If their son had been receiving benefits, the cost would have been covered, Robinson said. Instead, he said, he and his wife will have to dig deep into their savings to bury their son.
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“Me and my wife, we are heartbroken,” he said. “My whole family, we are hurting. But justice in this case will be done. This fight is not over.”
Curtis A. Cutler, the attorney who represents the family, said their experience is not unique. Cutler is also a veteran and has represented many other veterans. He described Timothy Robinson’s case as one of the most egregious he has handled and one in “a string of disappointments and tragedy.”
“This case matters because it represents the tragedy experienced by those who have fought the good fight for our nation and who are being unjustly denied the benefits that were promised to them for their honorable service,” Cutler said. “Tim represents every veteran client I’ve had who has passed away either waiting to be heard, or who has been heard and granted benefits and are waiting years to receive their just due when they pass away.”
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He said in the past five years, he has attended the funerals of about 19 clients who were veterans.
“There was one point last spring, I told my wife I couldn’t go to another one,” he said.
Cutler said he was shocked to receive a call from Rudolph Robinson on Sunday telling him that his son had been found unresponsive at the Maryland rehabilitation center where he had been living and that paramedics were unable to revive him. He suggested the family request an autopsy to determine the cause of death. Just days earlier, Cutler had seen Timothy Robinson and nothing about his condition raised concerns.
“When I last saw him, he was getting around fine in his wheelchair and he was smiling,” he said. He recalled what Robinson told him that day: “I’m going to keep fighting.”
Robinson’s military experience was complicated, and Cutler said they have four ongoing cases related to it. Records show that he served on active duty from Oct. 16, 1984 to Feb. 2, 1985, and was sent home early by the Army because he was experiencing problems with his feet. A letter from the military characterized him as having flat feet. Robinson told me that he was given boots that were too small and they left his feet blistered and bloodied. He said that because he couldn’t run quickly enough, his fellow service members wanted him gone: “At night, they would put a blanket over my head and beat on me.”
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Rudolph Robinson said his son was sent home with the belief that he had received a dishonorable discharge. He said after his son fell into a depression, he and his wife contacted military officials to get him help but were told he was not eligible. The family only learned decades later, when Robinson found his son at that bus stop and his son gave him permission to look at his military records, that he did not receive a dishonorable discharge.
Robinson said the military changed his son, who ended up leaving home and living on the streets.
“He went in a happy-go-lucky guy and came home a saddened guy,” he said. “He was not the same.”
When I initially contacted Veterans VA officials about the case, I was told privacy precautions did not allow them to offer a comment on the situation. Court records show that officials found Timothy Robinson ineligible to enroll in the VA health-care system because he served less than 24 months of active duty service. Records also show that there are exceptions to that rule and that in July, a judge at the Board of Veterans’ Appeal remanded his eligibility denial. The judge wrote that officials who found he was not eligible for enrollment based on his active service time “did not develop his claim further than looking at his military personnel records. This is a pre-decisional error.” The judge wrote that more information, such as his income, should be gathered.
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Instead of following the judge’s order, Robinson’s account was closed, making it so he couldn’t apply for health-care benefits again, Cutler said.
Now that Robinson is dead, there is no point in continuing to push for him to get health care, Cutler said. But, he said, his family still deserves an acknowledgment that he was eligible and an apology for denying him benefits that could have helped him avoid decades of struggles and an early death.
Rudolph Robinson said his son should have received that apology and that his family now wants it on his behalf. He last saw his son two days before his death.
“Dad, I’m getting tired of this. When are they going to give me my benefits?” he recalled him saying. “He would always ask that: ‘When are they going to give me my benefits?’”
Robinson, who is 79, said he plans to keep fighting — for his son and other veterans.
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“My fight is to make sure that my son’s death was not in vain,” he said. “Tim is not the only veteran who is experiencing this.”
Timothy Robinson was well aware of that. When we spoke, he talked about how other veterans were also in need of help and didn’t have anyone fighting alongside them. “They got nobody,” he said. “They could be going through the same thing as me, and they do not have a dad looking into it.”
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