The nomination of 1994 Rolla High School graduate Tommy Sowers for a top post in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has been sent by President Barack Obama to the Senate for confirmation.
The nomination of 1994 Rolla High School graduate Tommy Sowers for a top post in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has been sent by President Barack Obama to the Senate for confirmation.
“It’s an absolute honor to be nominated and to represent my fellow veterans,” Sowers, a former Green Beret major who in Iraq, told the Daily News in a phone conversation from San Francisco where he is an associate with McKinsey and Co., a business consulting company.
Obama has selected Sowers, a Democrat who lost his challenge to Eighth District U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson in 2010, as the assistant secretary for public and intergovernmental affairs at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
“I am thrilled and humbled to be asked to serve again in such a meaningful way,” Sowers said in a written announcement to friends and released to the media. “This chance to serve the VA is more than an opportunity — it’s personal.”
Sowers noted that last year he completed the work on his Ph.D. with the help of the Veterans Administration and the New GI?Bill.
“(And) ... during my physical exam at a VA?facility, my physician told me why she left private practice to join the VA. She said, ‘We have the best patients in the world.
Serving you all is a personal privilege’ I?couldn’t agree more,” he wrote. “In this position, I’ll have an opportunity to ensure that more veterans know of and benefit form the VA’s diverse services.”
Sowers told the RDN he is hopeful the Senate will act quickly to confirm the nomination so he can begin working on myriad issues relating to veterans.
“It will be everything from homeless vets to consumer affairs,’ he said.
Sowers had served as a senior advisor for the iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
A?native of Rolla, Sowers graduated from RHS, went to Duke University on an ROTC scholarship, and was commissioned in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
He served in NATO’s campaign in Kosovo, leading a combat engineering platoon.
While in Kosovo with the UN peacekeeping force, Sowers wrote a series of articles about his experiences there. Meanwhile, twin sister Alyson was serving in the Ukraine with the Peace Corps; she, too, wrote articles about her experiences for the RDN.
Tommy and Alyson are children of Tom and Chris Sowers; Tom is a former associate publisher and advertising director of the Rolla Daily News.
Later, Sowers graduated first in his class at the Special Forces Qualification Course and went on to lead a team of Green Berets.
He served 11 years and was awarded the Combat Infantryman Badge, Senior Parachutist Badge, Military Freefall Badge, Ranger Tab, Belgian Commando School Brevet and two Bronze Stars.
Sowers served two deployments in Iraq.
He went to the London School of Economics on a Rotary Scholarship in 2002.
In his last three years with the Army, Maj. Sowers served as an assistant professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point. During this time, he began working on a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics.
He taught in 2009 at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, and in October 2011 received the doctorate from the London School.
As if all that weren’t enough to keep him busy, Sowers ran in 2009 and 2010 against Emerson, long-time incumbent.
Despite much attention from the national media, significant contributions from celebrities and other Democratic supporters and a highly publicized “Boots on the Ground” project in which he worked jobs in all 28 counties in the Eighth District, Sowers lost when Emerson out-polled him 2-1.
Last August he was included in Time magazine’s cover story about “The Next Greatest Generation.”
Asked if he would run for public office again, Sowers did not say he wouldn’t.
“I’m just aspiring to be the best assistant secretary I can be,”?he told the Daily News.