By Keyonna Summers, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Wednesday, April 6, 2011
The Homeless Emergency Project broke ground Tuesday on a $3.2 million complex in Clearwater. U.S. Marine Brendan Fyfe died of a heroin overdose.
CLEARWATER
Homeless Emergency Project board chairman Bruce Fyfe smiled Tuesday as he and his colleagues held up shovels symbolizing the groundbreaking on the nonprofit's new $3.2 million veterans housing complex.
However, the 150 spectators at Everybody's Tabernacle also heard the occasional breaks in Fyfe's voice, the result of an underlying sadness.
Sadness that the driving force behind the project was the death of Fyfe's son Brendan, a former U.S. Marine. Melancholy that, despite Fyfe's repeated efforts, he wasn't able to save Brendan, whose severe post-traumatic stress disorder from three tours in Iraq blossomed into alcohol and drug addiction.
On Dec. 19, 2009, two years after an honorable military discharge, Brendan, 24, died homeless and alone in a Massachusetts motel room of a heroin overdose.
"I don't think any parent wants to see young men and women survive the horrors of war only to not successfully come all the way back home," said Bruce Fyfe. "I don't want any family to go through what our family has gone through."
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Clearwater complex will offer abode, counseling for homeless veterans
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