Edwin L. Arnold Sr.

Edwin L. Arnold Sr. was born in 1929 and entered federal service after a tour of combat duty in Korea as a United States Marine Corps Lieutenant. His pre-VA federal experience included service as Administrative Assistant to the Indiana Congressman Ralph Harvey; in 1960 he and his wife Mary Miller Arnold Person Mary Miller Arnold b. 1938 · d. 2006 United States Senate Doorkeeper Supervisor for twenty-one years and a leader in the Animal Welfare League of Alexandria. Memphis State University alumna, born in Jonesboro, … moved from Memphis, Tennessee to Washington, D.C., the move that anchored the family’s Northern Virginia life and the long careers in federal-legislative service that followed. ^[1] Source 1 AVSOPS.org — Mary and Ed Arnold memorial Website

His VA career spanned thirty-eight-plus years and included long-running service as the agency’s Liaison to the United States Senate — the staff role responsible for shepherding the agency’s business through the Senate’s veterans-affairs committee and advising senators on VA legislation. He was instrumental in the institutional work that transitioned the Veterans Administration from an independent agency into a Cabinet-level department: the Department of Veterans Affairs, established by P.L. 100-527 (signed October 25, 1988) and effective March 15, 1989 under President George H. W. Bush. The elevation made the VA Secretary the fifteenth member of the Cabinet and codified the agency’s standing in the federal hierarchy after decades as an independent agency.

He died on November 14, 2012 and was interred with full military honors at 2823 King Street Place 2823 King Street Twenty-two-acre garden cemetery in Alexandria's Rosemont district, chartered 1856 by thirty Alexandrians on land sold from the estate of Hugh C. Smith. A representative entry in … alongside his wife, who had preceded him in death in 2006. ^[2] Source 2 Washington Post — Edwin Arnold obit (Nov 2012) Newspaper

The contemporary nonprofit AVSOPS.org Nonprofit AVSOPS.org Virginia 501(c)(3) (pending) maintaining an open-data public directory of more than fifteen thousand veterans service organizations and patriotic societies across all fifty states. … — a Virginia 501(c)(3) maintaining an open-data directory of more than fifteen thousand veterans service organizations and patriotic societies across all fifty states — was created in his honor and his wife’s, carrying his federal-service-to-veterans legacy forward into the public-data era.