This Old House Home To Disabled Iraq Veteran and Family

Veteran’s new home stars on ‘This Old House’
Boston Globe
By Cristela Guerra
GLOBE STAFF
JUNE 23, 2015

‘The thing about Matt, and one of the things I fell in love with, is he doesn’t make his disability the focus. You forget he’s injured.’ --CAT DEWITT, speaking of her husband, Iraq war veteran Matt DeWitt

Local nonprofit Homes for Our Troops builds spaces for injured veterans, one at a time

MICHELE MCDONALD FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

The DeWitts outside their Hopkinton, N.H., home.

The foundation was set. One by one, sturdy wooden walls were raised to form wide hallways. Nails were hammered into place. Triangular trusses flew overhead, creating supports for a roof.

But what made this structure special were the extras: over 40 major adaptations including keyless entry, sliding windows, accessible storage, touchless faucets, and raised garden beds. What made this structure significant were touches like a digital wall panel for setting water temperature, allowing a father with no forearms to give his sons a bath. It’s all Army Staff Sergeant Matthew DeWitt wanted: to bathe his children without scalding them in the tub.

The house in Hopkinton, N.H., is the work of a local nonprofit organization called Homes for Our Troops, which has built 190 specially adapted homes for veterans across the United States. DeWitt, 38, a veteran of the Iraq war, and his family moved into theirs last November. Last month, the PBS series “This Old House” featured DeWitt in a special three-part veterans episode.

DeWitt came home from Iraq in 2003. While recovering from his injuries at Walter Reed Medical Center, he was offered a mortgage-free house by Homes for Our Troops, then a newly formed organization, based in Taunton. He said no.

He had faced down death on a dirt road in Khalidiyah as a cavalry scout: “the eyes and ears of the commander,” he said on the show. He remembered the explosion caused by a rocket-propelled grenade, and being thrown back on top of a turret. The nerve pain, the tangy metallic taste of blood inside his mouth. He remembered hearing doctors talk about “amputating them” at the field hospital outside Baghdad. He remembered going ballistic on the table before he was sedated. He remembered looking down a day later and his body shutting down completely.
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