Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center HOVER For Veterans

FOX28 Special Report: HOVER Vets
Katherine Duchame
February 10, 2016

The first visit to a veteran took place on January 5 last year. The total of visits to vets so far, over 1,300.

A local Vietnam veterans dream to continue serving after duty, is now a reality. One that touches the hearts of dozens of veterans every week in Michiana.

It started as what was thought to be a "simple" idea, a program to help veterans hospitalized get back on their feet. Now, a realization that the program does so much more as we learned in a special report from FOX 28's Katherine Ducharme.

The program is called HOVER, it stands for Honoring Our Veterans and Encouraging Recovery. HOVER ensures that every veteran hospitalized at Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center, is thanked for their service. A gesture many of us view as "normal" in today's world, but for some veterans who never received that recognition, it means so much more.

Bern McGrane, a Vietnam veteran and coordinator of HOVER, has a routine day of delivering an American flag and some company to hospitalized veterans. It became McGrane's mission in life just over a year ago."I was in the army in 1967, and as funny as it may seem that was me in 1967, I was 19 I believe," said McGrane.He served as a combat infantry soldier in Vietnam for 14 months.

"During the time that I was there, there was a uniqueness to being in a squad or a platoon, because it's not like you're going to do an eight to five job, you live with your fellow soldiers 24/7 under every imaginable kind of circumstance," said McGrane.
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