Nadia McCaffrey's Veterans Village taken by bank

Nadia McCaffrey has adopted more veterans than I can remember. I was contacted by her after a post I did way back in 2005 because of this article I read on One Mother's War. Veterans Village started because her son died in combat. That's the way most things start.

The grief causes a lot of people to seek something to do with their lives that will make up for the loss the world suffered. Yes, the world. Each of us have something we are supposed to do on this planet we live on. Some are supposed to do things on a grand scale, getting money, power and attention to find support for what they are supposed to do while others are supposed to work on a small scale. Nadia is one of that type of hero.

No less important than all the other charities out there screaming "look at me" and "give me your money" while they never say a thing about what they are doing with all your money. You never really see them doing much at all while they talk about the issues veterans face, pull at your heart with their commercials, stuff sold at the Walgreens with their logo on it, they get your money for "raising awareness" and you know exactly what group I'm talking about but not interested in giving them any more free press. But people like Nadia are more about doing the good work and reliving suffering of our veterans than relieving you of what's in your wallet.

The problem is in doing what she has done is few think about her and supporting the work she does because the reality in this country is veterans are usually last on the list of things to do. Oh, sure we can line some streets in our home towns when heroes like her son Patrick come home in a casket with a flag covering it. We can show up when there is a local fundraiser for a triple amputee Green Beret SFC. Josh Burnette but everyday there are more and more no one ever hears about.

They end up homeless in the very country they risked their lives for. In an odd way, their very sense of selflessness that caused them to set aside everything for us, is what keeps them from asking us for help. Most are suffering from PTSD. When the military loves to point out that military suicides are more connected to relationship problem and financial hardships, they never seem to mention the fact that less than half of the veterans needing help for PTSD ask for it, so that in turn means that less than half are diagnosed with it. If they don't seek help to heal, then they are passed off as not suffering due to military service. Reporters never seem to know enough about PTSD to understand that. It still causes relationship problems and financial issues diagnosed or not. Families cannot understand and deal with the actions of these veterans, so they end up homeless and supportless.

Nadia tried to do something about it and now the bank took the home she had established to give these veterans a loving home they not only needed, but earned. What happened to her is just one more example of the people doing the work to help our veterans more than raise funds are suffering.

This notice came in from Facebook.

Nadia's son, Patrick was ambushed and killed in Iraq.

Since then, Nadia has turned Patrick's home in Tracy, CA into a Veteran's safe place...taking in homeless veterans, especially those with PTSD. She has done this completely on her own.

With the downturn of the economy, and the added expenses, Nadia was selling the home to one of our veterans who agreed to carry on the legacy of Patrick's home.

All the paperwork was submitted and the home was set for a "short-sale."

This morning at 10am, Nadia was notified that the home was sold by the bank...no notice, just sold right out from under her and the veteran.

She has more details and can provide you with the back story.

As for a SD tie in, Patrick's widow and children reside in Oceanside...in fact, Patrick is buried just outside of Camp Pendleton.

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 4:33 PM, Eve P-A wrote:
Nadia McCaffrey is the mother of fallen war soldier Sgt. Patrick McCaffrey (June 2004) featured in several articles since his untimely departure from: Democracy Now, LA Times: "A Mother's War" and a national figure person. Nadia is a mom to us, veterans like myself (I am a disabled veteran of the Gulf War Era), in which we come to Nadia often times in need of motherly love and support. It pains me to write that since Patrick's death, his home has been a healing space and place for homeless and sick veterans who have come to Patrick's house to be loved and cared for my Nadia. Her void and loss has been caring for us veterans.

Nadia has helped over dozens of men and women in the home she is not about to lose, because the house went into foreclosure, and today, My dearest Nadia called me to tell me that the bank sold the house from "under her in an auction", knowing that they were negotiating a sale with one of the veterans who still resides in "the house that belong to our hero's".

She is currently in touch with a couple of larger TV stations and people who have done articles on her, but she needs someone to eloquently tell the brutal face of what the banks are still doing to our fallen heroes!

You can do something to help Nadia. Sign the petition on Change.org!

Save a war heroes home for veterans

Nadia McCaffrey Talks About Foundation Dedicated to Veterans

Nadia has been a hero for veterans for a long time now. I don't know how she does it. If you are on Facebook, you know she never stops. If CNN is looking for one more Hero to honor, she's it!

Nadia McCaffrey Talks About Foundation Dedicated to Veterans
January 20, 2012

CORPUS CHRISTI (Kiii News) -
A mother who lost her son to the war in Iraq is now dedicating her life to helping all veterans who are returning back to civilian life, specifically those who are suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Nadia McCaffrey has been interviewed by the likes of Larry King and Good Morning America because of her mission. Friday, she was in Corpus Christi to be recognized by the Peace Tree Project of South Texas.

Her mission is to help those who are returning from war, to give them therapy. The Gold Star mother even invites veterans to stay at her home, a place where they can readjust to life and get the counseling they need.

"I cook for them, I take care of them until they feel confident enough, counseling benefits, go to school when they are ready," says McCaffrey.

Nadia began a foundation in 2006 named after her son Patrick McCaffrey and since then has had 27 veterans, men and women stay at her home. McCaffrey's son Patrick was killed in Iraq.

Since then she's been all over the country to speak about her him, but she also started to get calls from his unit and started to realize they were in trouble coming home. Many, she says suffer from trauma they experienced overseas, and PTSD.

read more here

'Veterans Village' being considered for Sauk Centre campus

'Veterans Village' being considered for Sauk Centre campus
The villages aren't medical facilities but aim to help veterans heal their emotional wounds.

By CHAO XIONG, Star Tribune

Last update: August 21, 2008 - 9:24 PM
Alice Karakas wants to turn a vacant home-school campus in Sauk Centre into a rehabilitation facility for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans left unmoored by warfare.

The 77.5-acre campus already has dormitories, a barn and classroom buildings. Karakas hopes it'll become the latest in a small number of "Veterans Villages" started in 2006 by a grieving California woman who lost her son, Patrick Ryan McCaffrey Sr., in Iraq.

Nadia McCaffrey will be in Sauk Centre next week to visit the campus and make a final decision about pursuing a village there. She's been corresponding with Karakas for months.

"It's a marvelous place," McCaffrey said from Wellsville, N.Y., where she is overseeing the start of the fourth Veterans Village. "This sounds like a dream coming true."

Karakas moved to Sauk Centre eight years ago and discovered the Oak Ridge Campus while walking her dog. Karakas said she follows veterans affairs closely and thought the campus would make a good rehabilitation site. She soon discovered McCaffrey's villages and foundation, the Patrick Ryan McCaffrey Sr. Foundation for Combat Veterans, and began lobbying for a Veterans Village in her northwestern Minnesota town.
go here for more
http://www.startribune.com/local/27255284.html?elr=KArks:DCiUHc3E7_V_nDaycUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUU

Veteran's Village of healing

Here's a link to a film my brother and I made recently for Veteran's Village, a charity founded by Nadia McCaffrey, mother of fallen American soldier Patrick McCaffrey.

Roughly 30% of American soldiers are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD. Veteran's Village is a healing oasis to help vets reintegrate into society.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q7cTlRjGeU

If you look over on the side bar, you'll see this video up for about a week or so.

It's hard to believe this much time has come and gone since I was first made aware of Nadia.

One Mother's War
Robert Durell / LAT
Nadia McCaffrey, who now operates a nonprofit grief counseling program and has become a leader in the Northern California antiwar movement, has been a lifelong pacifist and opposed her son's enlistment from the beginning.
By Jeff Nachtigal, Special to the Times
January 30, 2005
TRACY, Calif. -- On the day her son Patrick McCaffrey died on a blacktop farm road in northern Iraq, Nadia McCaffrey's war began.

Her first act was to invite the press to the Sacramento Airport when her 34-year-old son's flag draped-coffin was brought home at the end of June 2004.
http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/la-tm-guard30jan30-sb,1,3668041.story?coll=la-home-magazine&ctrack=1&cset=true

Since then my admiration for her has only grown deeper. While she gets attention for the Veteran's Village, what her life's mission is, is something she does very quietly. She is changing lives. You won't hear her tell you of this one or that one who had their lives transformed because she thought waving a flag and slapping a yellow magnet to the back of a car was just not enough to support the veterans enough and did something about it, but you will hear it in her voice how much she really cares about all of them. You can hear it in this video. A remarkable woman indeed~

Nadia has been helping a friend of mine I care deeply for. No one will know his story or how much she has helped him. No one will know most of the stories of the lives placed into Nadia's loving hands or how they have gone from seeing lives and things destroyed to feeling love's healing grace and watching things grow on organic farms. They will not know how many have cried on her shoulder or thrived on a hug from this woman who has adopted all of them as if they were her own children. What no one will hear is precisely the reason she does it. No one would have been there to help them the way she has. Her reward is beyond a price tag. You cannot put a price on a life that may have ended had Nadia not been there doing this work.

While her work is priceless to those she helps, it is very expensive to operate. Veteran's Village needs donations. She needs you to support her so she can support them. If you've finally come to the point in your life where you are aware that waving a flag seems insignificant and a yellow ribbon on an SUV seems really stupid, donate to the work Nadia is doing to really welcome them home and to a home where they can feel as if they are a part of this beautiful land. Help them find a peaceful place to recover from the wounds they carry in their soul.

We know that when the mind, body and spirit are addressed in unison, there are miracles happening everyday. Nadia understands this. Do you? Veteran's Village is non-political and all she cares about is them. It doesn't matter if they agree with what is being done in Iraq or not. All she cares about is that they were willing to serve their country and they are now in need for doing so.



I am proud to call Nadia my friend and I hope one day to be able to meet her, but I have a feeling we already met in another time and another place. Should we not meet on this earth face to face, we'll meet later soul to soul.

Nadia McCaffrey gets to the point in radio interview

MON MAY 26, 2008
Memorial Day: The Past and the Present

Legacy Player:
Memorial Day originated after the Civil War, but a somber remembrance of fallen soldiers has also become a cheerful greeting of summer. Monday, on To the Point, how well does America honor those who've died for their country? Also, the GI Bill and the presidential campaign.
more…

One Mother's War
Robert Durell / LAT
Nadia McCaffrey, who now operates a nonprofit grief counseling program and has become a leader in the Northern California antiwar movement, has been a lifelong pacifist and opposed her son's enlistment from the beginning.
By Jeff Nachtigal, Special to the Times
January 30, 2005
TRACY, Calif. -- On the day her son Patrick McCaffrey died on a blacktop farm road in northern Iraq, Nadia McCaffrey's war began.

Her first act was to invite the press to the Sacramento Airport when her 34-year-old son's flag draped-coffin was brought home at the end of June 2004.


"Patrick was not a private person. All his life he loved people," Nadia McCaffrey explained. "Why should I hide him when he comes home? He would not have wanted that."

At a time when the Pentagon was attempting to keep photographs of the returning coffins out of the American press, the Sacramento Airport scene attracted international attention.

From the first interviews with newspaper obituary writers, Nadia was outspoken about her own opposition to the war as well as her son's growing reservations at the time he was killed.

"Patrick was overwhelmed by the hatred there for Americans and Europeans," Nadia told a reporter for The Times. "He was so ashamed by the prisoner abuse scandal. He even sent me an e-mail to tell me that not all the soldiers were like that. He said we had no business in Iraq and should not be there. Even so, he wanted to be a good soldier."

go here for more
http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/la-tm-guard30jan30-sb,1,3668041.story

Published on Saturday, July 3, 2004 by the Independent/UK
The Son Who Came Home for the Fourth of July
Last week Nadia McCaffrey defied President Bush by allowing the media to view the coffin of her son, Patrick, killed in action in Iraq. Andrew Buncombe was invited to attend his funeral in Tracy, California



The photographs of Patrick McCaffrey laid out on the table at the front of the reception hall were the record of a life cut short. There were pictures of Patrick as a young boy, a head of curly brown hair, posing in his judo outfit. There was one of him dressed to play American football and another, taken a few years later, of Patrick wearing a tuxedo and probably heading out to the high school prom. There was one of him with his family - a wife, a little girl and a son so proud that his father was a member of the California National Guard that he had asked for his own set of dog-tags.


Finally there was a photograph of Patrick with his unit in Iraq. It had been taken shortly before the ambush in which Patrick was killed. In the picture he is laughing with his friends. He was 34-years-old and - according to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count website - the 848th American soldier to die in Iraq.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0703-04.htm

Veteran's Village
Sgt Patrick R McCaffrey Sr
Foundation for War Veterans
http://www.veteransvillage.org/

Sonoma County says PTSD Combat Vets someone else's problem

PTSD home opposed for fear of ‘deranged’ vets

By Scott Lindlaw - The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Mar 23, 2008 10:01:06 EDT

GUERNEVILLE, Calif. — Merry Lane, a cul-de-sac shaded by redwoods in Sonoma County wine country, would seem a pleasant place to recover from the psychic wounds of war. Nadia McCaffrey’s dream is to set up a group home there for veterans plagued by post-traumatic stress disorder.

But she is running into stiff resistance from the neighbors. They not only object to the brand-new structure itself, which looks like a four-story apartment house wedged amid their cabins, they are also worried that deranged veterans will move in.

At a community meeting in December, “one person was concerned that even firecrackers would set these people off,” said Andrew Eckers, 54, who lives across the street.

McCaffrey, whose son was killed in Iraq in 2004, said she has tried to reassure the neighbors, but “they are afraid of it because they don’t want to understand it.”

Projects similar to McCaffrey’s have cropped up in other communities across the country, with some also raising concerns from neighbors, in part because of the many news accounts of traumatized veterans committing suicide or murder.

“We’re all, frankly, failing in properly educating society about what PTSD is and what its effects are,” said Jon Soltz, an Iraq war veteran and chairman of VoteVets.org, a veterans advocacy group.

McCaffrey wants to set up at least three group homes around the country where vets with PTSD could live temporarily, and virtually for free, while they study at a college or work at a farm. Donations are paying for the projects, she said.

go here for the rest

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2008/03/ap_ptsdhome_032308/

Guess what? It can make someone who has survived a mud slide jump too. Did they ever think of that? It can make someone who survived fires, or hurricanes or tornadoes or violent crime do the same. Did they ever think of that? How many of their neighbors have PTSD and they don't even have a clue about them? Do they want to get rid of any neighbor who has PTSD because they were a victim of a violent crime or horrific accident too? How about a firefighter who entered into one too many burning buildings? Or a police officer who had one too many shoot outs or had just seen too much? Do they want to get rid of them too? Enough people! There are enough people in this nation who have PTSD and most of them live right next door to you already.

Prevalence and incidence statistics for Post-traumatic stress disorder:
see also prevalence and incidence page for Post-traumatic stress disorder
Prevalance of Post-traumatic stress disorder: 5.2 million adult Americans (NIMH); 3.6% adults (NIMH); about 30% of war veterans.
Prevalance Rate: approx 1 in 52 or 1.91% or 5.2 million people in USA [about data]
Incidence (annual) of Post-traumatic stress disorder: 3.6% adults annually (NIMH)
Incidence Rate: approx 1 in 27 or 3.60% or 9.8 million people in USA [about data]
Incidence extrapolations for USA for Post-traumatic stress disorder: 9,791,999 per year, 815,999 per month, 188,307 per week, 26,827 per day, 1,117 per hour, 18 per minute, 0 per second.
Prevalance of Post-traumatic stress disorder: PTSD affects about 5.2 million adult Americans. (Source: excerpt from Anxiety Disorders: NIMH)
Incidence of Post-traumatic stress disorder: About 3.6 percent of U.S. adults ages 18 to 54 (5.2 million people) have PTSD during the course of a given year. (Source: excerpt from Facts about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: NIMH)
Top
About statistics:This page presents a variety of statistics about Post-traumatic stress disorder. The term 'prevalence' of Post-traumatic stress disorder usually refers to the estimated population of people who are managing Post-traumatic stress disorder at any given time. The term 'incidence' of Post-traumatic stress disorder refers to the annual diagnosis rate, or the number of new cases of Post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosed each year.
http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/p/post_traumatic_stress_disorder/stats.htm

Yes firecrackers will make them jump! That does not mean they are any more dangerous than anyone else in the neighborhood and statistically speaking the are more apt to offer a neighbor a helping hand than to do anything wrong to them.

The attitude of people really makes me sick sometimes. They treated people with AIDS the same way thinking they would "catch" it. They wouldn't want a bunch of combat veterans living near them so they can recover from serving them? They ought to be fully ashamed of themselves.
Chaplain Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com
http://www.namguardianangel.org/
http://www.namguardianangel.blogspot.com/
http://www.woundedtimes.blogspot.com/
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington