Veterans affairs director ready to hit the ground running

Ramon Maxey hasn’t been this excited to start a new job since he got hired on as a police officer in Marshalltown right after he retired from the Marine Corps.

The new director of Jasper County Veterans Affairs attended his first commission meeting the day after the board of supervisors officially hired him last week. Although the commissioners are going to wait a few weeks for Maxey to settle in to his new job, they made it clear they want to set goals for the office.

Which should be perfectly fine by Maxey, who has shown he, too, wants to make changes to the department for the better and increase awareness of the office itself. There are still a number of certifications Maxey has to train for and obtain, but he said he is ready to hit the ground running and network with veterans.

“I have that kind of rapport with people,” Maxey said. “You have to be able to speak veteran lingo to speak to veterans, in my opinion … The amount of times, while I was a police officer, I was able to build a rapport with veterans who were in crisis throughout that timeframe, I don’t even remember the number of times.”

All he knows is that it happened a lot and he wanted to help as best he could. As someone who came from a military family and who spent 24 years in the Marine Corps, Maxey said it is his passion to make sure veterans get what they have earned from their service. Ever since he got the job, it’s all he thinks about.

“I am extremely, 100 percent optimistic about this job and looking forward to it,” he said. “I have not been able to turn my head off on the things I can do. And I want to get in here and see what’s going on. There is a wealth of knowledge here in this room … that have the connections also, and that’s part of it. I’m ready to go.”

Megan Maxey, his wife, attested to that and noted his uncanny ability to attract other veterans, saying he is “kind of a magnet” to veterans.

“He has been so excited,” she said. “He’s been so over the moon talking about it and coming up with his new ideas.”

Jerry Nelson, chairman of the Jasper County Veterans Affairs Commission, said his intent for the goal setting was so that commissioners and the director could come up with ideas and goals they want to accomplish in the next year or five years or 10 years, like what kind of programs they want to pursue.

“A lot of this stuff that needs attention and how we identity it and how we make goals to reach out to those vets and help those vets and get resources here to the county,” Nelson said. “The more resources we bring to the county, the more money comes in (to help veterans).”