Longtime local veterans services advocate is retiring

Jeffrey Askew, director of the Marion County Veterans Service Office, is shown in his office on March 11, 2025. He is retiring on March 14 after more than decades of service. [Photo by Andy Fillmore]

Jeffrey Askew, director of the Marion County Veterans Service Office, will retire on March 14 after 23 years of helping improve the lives of local veterans and their families.

Askew said one of the most significant accomplishments of the office has been assisting veterans in obtaining about $10 million annually in Veterans Administration benefits, for example disability, educational and survivor benefits. He said the office “advocates” for veterans and their families at no charge.

“The MCVSO is not the VA, and we want veterans to know we’re in their corner and we do the red tape,” Askew said.
Askew was honored by member of the Marion County Board of County Commissioners during their March 4 regular meeting.

“Askew has tirelessly advocated for and supported our local veterans for over two decades,” said board chair Kathy Bryant.

Bryant praised Askew’s dedication, leadership, impact and involvement in many projects in the veterans’ community and how he “touched countless lives.”

“His legacy will live on,” she said.

Askew pointed to helping surviving widows of veterans as his most satisfying accomplishment in his remarks to the MCBCC and also in a recent interview. He said he gave talks about survivor benefits to educate people about how to navigate the system.

“Family members have left in tears when they get help from the survivor benefits,” he said.

Askew said during the MCBCC meeting that he didn’t want to leave but after nearly five decades of governmental service it was “time to turn the page and let the young people take over.”

Askew, 66, is a native of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He joined the U.S. Navy right out of high school in 1977 and served until 1999. His primary military occupations were in command and control, overseeing ship movement, aircraft and personnel.
He served on the aircraft carriers USS Coral Sea and USS Lexington, and traveled to locations including Sicily, Hong Kong, Australia, Japan and Korea, and the Suez Canal. He served on the destroyer USS O’Bannon, which carried the American flag in NATO exercises in South America in 1984 and 1985, and was onboard the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower when the ship was the first on station on Aug. 5, 1990, for the start of Operation Desert Storm and Operation Desert Shield.

heh also was a member of a military funeral honor guard for a time while he was on active duty with the Navy.
 
“When I joined the Navy, it was, ‘See the world,’” he said.

Askew served at the Pinecastle Bombing Range in east Marion County from 1996 to 1999 and after his service there hired on with Marion County in 2000 in the human resources department. He met the former Marion County Veterans Service Office director while in the HR department and decided to pursue the director’s position when that person retired. Askew started in the veterans service office in 2002.

Esther Gomez, staff assistant at the office since 2011, described Askew’s “big smile” and stated that, “It’s been a great experience working with Jeffrey,” in an email.

Askew also oversees the Ocala-Marion County Memorial Veterans Park which, in partnership with the nonprofit Friends of Marion County’s Veteran Park Foundation, has grown to house an array of monuments and displays and serves as a significant venue for community events.

The park also includes a Veterans Exhibition and Education center, which features rooms with educational displays about America’s wars. That center is inside the building that formerly housed the Marion County Veterans Service Office and prior to that a Florida Highway Patrol office. The Marion County Veterans Service Office is inside the Marion County Veteran Resource Center at 2730 E. Silver Springs Blvd., Ocala.

The MCVSO can help residents obtain VA benefits including compensation, pensions, health care, education, death and burial benefits, and in replacing lost medals.

At this time, no one has been named to replace Askew. The service office director’s position will be posted by Marion County as they seek to fill the position, officials said.

For more information, call (352) 671-8423 or go to
marionfl.org/agencies-departments/departments-facilities-offices/veterans-services

John Earl plays “Amazing Grace” on the bagpipes as Jeffrey Askew, the director of Marion County Veterans Services, holds one of the pipes during the 9/11 Memorial Service at the Ocala/Marion County Veterans Memorial Park in Ocala, Fla. on Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2024. [File photo by Bruce Ackerman]