Tuesday is Veterans Day, which used to be an opportunity to ask readers barreling toward Christmas to pause to remember more than just Thanksgiving.

But after a couple decades beating that drum, and a resurgence in programming and observances in schools and communities, it seems awareness of Veterans Day isn’t a significant concern.

Whether we properly care for people who served the country the other 364 days a year is a different issue.

According to the CensusReporter.org, which formats data from the federal Census bureau, the current estimate is Illinois is home to 459,569 veterans, about 4.7% of overall population. Of those, 43,008 are women. The number of living veterans has generally decreased yearly, but again Illinois account for about 3.2% of the nation’s 14.2 million veterans.

As elsewhere, in Illinois World War II veterans are the smallest subgroup, about 3,000, with fewer than 20,000 having served in Korea, more than 151,000 in Vietnam, more than 99,000 in the Middle West in the 1990s and 121,000 since 2001.

The Housing Assistance Council, a national nonprofit group primarily focusing on rural affordable homes, said roughly 24.5% of Illinois veterans pay too much for their housing while 7.2% live in poverty and more than 550 are homeless.

In Illinois more than 4,000 veterans get a government pension, at least 115,000 are on some level of disability compensation, there are about 17,000 education beneficiaries and about 245,000 enrolled in the federal veterans health care system. All these numbers have differing degrees of accuracy and margin of error given the difficulty of constantly auditing an aging population with an outsized amount of health challenges compared to the general public.

Then there’s the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs, which employs more than 1,200, most of whom are tasked with making sure the state’s veterans get the benefits to which they are entitled.

The state also operates five skilled nursing and memory care homes serving up to 1,134 veterans and eligible spouses and widows. Homes in Quincy and Anna can take a few dozen who don’t need skilled care, and the Prince Home in Manteno has 15 beds for the otherwise homeless.

In fiscal 2024, according to its annual report (tinyurl.com/IDVA2024), IDVA conducted 18,934 in-person and 46,016 telephone interviews to prepare 17,259 benefits applications. That yielded $2,234,005 in new money. IDVA also presided over the Deceased, Disabled and MIA/POW scholarship program, processing 2,381 claims worth $3.5 million while state schools absorbed the remaining $5,894,177 in tuition and fees. The lottery scratch ticket program awarded 24 grants clearing $1.86 million via $2 scratchers sold from November through February.

While saluting service is appropriate and important, proper care is a permanent commitment backed by legislation, oversight and investment.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.