An 82-year-old Ohio veteran has been granted honorable discharge more than six decades after he was “undesirably” discharged from the Army for being gay.
Donald Hallman appealed to the Army Review Board to change his discharge status in June, with the help of the organization Stonewall Columbus and U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio.
On Friday, Stonewall Columbus wrote on Facebook: “We are SO very proud to announce that Veteran Donald Hallman has received his honorable discharge after once being given an ‘undesirable’ discharge and removed from the Army in 1955.”
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The Associated Press also reported Friday that Hallman had received honorable discharge. He served from 1953 to 1955, the AP reported. Attempts to reach Hallman were unsuccessful Friday.
President Barack Obama repealed the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” rule in 2010, but Brown said about 100,000 service members were dishonorably discharged due to their sexual orientation before the change was made. Dishonorable discharge results in lost benefits.
“Those who served our country even when it didn’t support them deserve our utmost respect and honor, and we owe it to them to make upgrading their discharge status as easy and efficient as possible,” Brown said in a statement last month.
When President Obama signed a repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) into law five years ago today, we celebrated the…
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In a video posted by Stonewall Columbus in November, Hallman said he was looking forward to the possibility of having his discharge status listed as “honorable.”
“I’ll be so happy when the conclusion comes to the end I get my honorable discharge,” Hallman said in the video. “And I hope that happens with every other person that was mistreated.”
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com.
Yijun He