Several updates on homeless veterans

Homeless Veterans Stand Down Helps Local Vets

WJHG-TV - Panama City,FL,USA

It's a great place," said Glenn Folds, another homeless veteran. Murphy and Folds are not alone. The Homeless and Hunger Coalition of Northwest Florida

Grant for homeless veterans center

Worcester Telegram - Worcester,MA,USA

WORCESTER— Massachusetts Veterans Inc. has received a $1.5 million federal grant to build a center for homeless veterans.

Homeless vets' facility earns grant

Stockton Record - Stockton,CA,USA

By The Record Dignity's Alcove, not yet a year old and the Stockton area's first transitional home for homeless veterans, will receive a $377000

Shelter for homeless vets to receive $2 million

Seattle Post Intelligencer - USA

Patty Murray says that a new $2 million grant from the Department of Veteran Affairs will provide money for a new shelter that will serve homeless veterans

Female vets' shelter proposed for Ballston Spa

The Saratogian - Saratoga,NY,USA

Funding sources include the Homeless Veterans Reintegration program.

Helping out standing out at stand down

Helping out standing out at stand down
By Robert Jordan
Valley Times
Article Last Updated: 08/07/2008 11:29:58 PM PDT

PLEASANTON — Orlando Resendez walked around Thursday's East Bay Stand Down acting as the event's unofficial greeter.

Dressed in beige cargo pants, hiking boots, a green T-shirt and a black Marine Corps hat, Resendez, 44, said hello and asked everyone he encountered if they needed any help. He directed fellow volunteers to various tents and pointed wayward veterans to the right location.

Yet as helpful as Resendez is, when he needed help after leaving the Marines in 1996 he had a tough time finding it. Until, that is, he attended the North Bay Stand Down in 2005.

"At one point I was on top of the world and it was hard to ask for help," he said. "Only way I would ever ask is if I was homeless."

The Stand Down helped Resendez find housing and treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder that he had sought ever since he left the military.

Resendez returned the favor as one of 1,500 volunteers ranging from doctors to lawyers to other veterans who converge on the Alameda County Fairgrounds every other year to lend a hand to more than 400 veterans.
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http://www.insidebayarea.com/trivalleyherald/localnews/ci_10132285

Group gives three veterans honor burials they deserve

Group gives three veterans honor burials they deserve
Dwight Lewis

dlewis@tennessean.com
615-726-5928


They won't be sending Frank Murray to the University of Tennessee's Anthropology Research Facility, better known as the Body Farm, after all.

Instead, Murray, 65, a Vietnam War veteran found dead June 30 in the trailer where he lived in Murfreesboro, will be given a military burial Tuesday in the Middle Tennessee Veterans Cemetery on McCrory Lane.

"Our goal is to make sure no veteran ends up at the Body Farm,'' William J. Burleigh, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and executive director of Operation Stand Down Nashville, told me Tuesday.

That goal is one that Operation Stand Down Nashville, which helps the community re-establish ties with its veterans, can't accomplish by itself. And it's a goal that's being achieved not only with Murray's burial at 9 a.m. Aug. 5, but that of Dennis Gill, a homeless veteran, at 10 a.m. and Jerry Moran, a veteran who was formerly homeless, at 11 a.m.

"This is an extreme message,'' John Furgess, who served as assistant state commissioner for veterans affairs for 20 years before retiring in 2002, said by phone Tuesday. "When a veteran leaves the military he carries a lifelong record of service to his country. … Many times experts talk about the emotional effects on a veteran. You and I know it as post-traumatic stress disorder. …''

Furgess went on to tell me about the death and life of Jerry Moran, 61, who like Murray was a Vietnam veteran.

Eastland Funeral Home, which is owned by the Dignity Memorial Network, is providing free burial preparation for all three men, Burleigh and Furgess said. And officials with the Middle Tennessee Veterans Cemetery are making burial arrangements.
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The New Generation of Homeless Veterans

Veteran of the Afghan and Iraq wars Peter Mohan, right, hugs Vietnam veteran Robert Whitfield, of Haydenville, Mass., left, in a hallway at a veterans homeless shelter, in Leeds, Mass., Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2007. Whitfield is a Veterans Administration employee. (AP Photo/Steven Senne) (Steven Senne - AP)



Veteran of the Iraq war Mike Lally pulls a clothing cart through a walkway at a homeless shelter, in Leeds, Mass., Thursday, Dec. 6, 2007. Lally did two tours of duty in Iraq while serving with the Marine Corps. Lally, who is participating in the program "Soldier On," pulls the cart as part of the work he does to pay his way in the program. (AP Photo/Steven Senne) (Steven Senne - AP)

New Generation of Homeless Vets Emerge
By ERIN McCLAM
The Associated Press
Saturday, January 19, 2008; 11:52 PM

LEEDS, Mass. -- Peter Mohan traces the path from the Iraqi battlefield to this lifeless conference room, where he sits in a kilt and a Camp Kill Yourself T-shirt and calmly describes how he became a sad cliche: a homeless veteran.

There was a happy homecoming, but then an accident _ car crash, broken collarbone. And then a move east, close to his wife's new job but away from his best friends.

And then self-destruction: He would gun his motorcycle to 100 mph and try to stand on the seat. He would wait for his wife to leave in the morning, draw the blinds and open up whatever bottle of booze was closest.

He would pull out his gun, a .45-caliber, semiautomatic pistol. He would lovingly clean it, or just look at it and put it away. Sometimes place it in his mouth.

"I don't know what to do anymore," his wife, Anna, told him one day. "You can't be here anymore."

I know I posted this story before but now there are pictures to go with it. I've been posting on Sancho Press, as well as my own blogs, and this thing with O'Reilly has been really ticking us off. One of the members thought it would be a good idea to get the homeless veterans on film and send it to O'Reilly. BraveNew Films beat us to it. Before I could arrange to go to the local veterans homeless shelter in Orlando to film, they already had one up to confront O'Reilly's delusion and/or stupidity. I still plan on filming them and telling their stories.

While we take a look at the veterans lucky enough to get into a shelter, we forget about the thousands across the country who don't. From cities and towns all over the country there are people trying to get them out of the woods, out of their cars and into shelters. The problem is, most of the veterans sleeping in the woods and under bridges can't find room for them and others don't trust anyone enough to even try. Ask anyone who tries to help with Operation Stand Down how hard it is to get them out of the woods even for one day to get a hot meal, some fresh clothes and get cleaned up.

While O'Reilly lives in comfort and never has to worry a second about paying bills between his fat paycheck for shooting his mouth off on FOX and writing books claiming to be all about "watching over the little guy" these men and women, who served the nation find there is no place for them to call home. He can deny it all he wants, find excuses for as many times as his mouth can move, but in the end, he hasn't a clue what it is like to serve this nation only to find the nation has forgotten you.