Category Veterans Homes
Yountville’s Chief Doctor Can Attest: Servicemembers’ Fighting Spirit Doesn’t End with Separation from the Armed Forces
Dr. Julie Fields will tell you that once a soldier, sailor, Marine, or airman—always a soldier, sailor, Marine, or airman. “Our veterans, like the active duty sailors and Marines I served, tend to be extremely resilient and sometimes downright stubborn,” said Fields.
Climbing the Ladder of Volunteering Success at Chula Vista Veterans Home
Several winters ago, Lois Cornish says she met a real Grinch: a notoriously cantankerous veteran who lived at the Veterans Home of California-Chula Vista. In our ongoing “Volunteers Serving Veterans” series, CalVet highlights Cornish, who began volunteering at the Chula Vista Home when it opened in 2000. She soon started recruiting some of her American […]
Redding Home Veterans Always Know What Volunteer Has in Store for Them
Whenever Dorothy Lipps volunteers to work in the tiny store inside the Veterans Home of California-Redding, she comes dressed for the part. “I’m very patriotic,” said Lipps, who began helping out at the Home seven years ago. “I always wear red, white, and blue. My two sisters and I always have done that, even when […]
Veterans’ Best Friend Proved to be the Volunteer of a Lifetime at Fresno Home
Shortly after the Veterans Home of California-Fresno opened in October 2013, Gladys Garza-Brown took her former husband, an ailing veteran, there to scout it out as a place where he might live. She also brought along her Border Collie, Chase. The moment they walked through the doors, staff immediately began recruiting her and Chase to […]
Too Early to Deploy, Redding Home Vet Found Herself Swamped with Paperwork
As the Korean War raged in 1951, Lois Sweeney decided to become one of “The few. The proud. The Marines.” She enlisted and soon found herself at Parris Island, South Carolina — one of the 138,000 recruits who trained there throughout the war. “I was in the swamp,” the 92-year-old resident of the Veterans Home […]
With Pandemic Restrictions Eased, CalVet Homes are Eager to Rebuild Volunteer Ranks
Arlene Kepplin loved volunteering so much at the Veterans Home of California-Yountville that she did so for more than two decades. Her remarkable span began in 1998; she kept going strong until the pandemic in 2020 severely limited all volunteerism at Yountville—and at all other seven Veterans Homes. The majority of Kepplin’s volunteerism was at […]
Blindness Spurs Army Veteran to Swing into Music
Emmanuel Hodrick lets his fingers guide him whenever he plays the electronic keyboard at the Veterans Home of California-Redding. “I find the two raised black keys—D-Flat and E-Flat—and I know Middle-C is the key to the left,” Hodrick said. As we celebrate Black History Month, CalVet honors this resilient 60-year-old Army veteran who, blind for […]
An Apple a Day and Then Some for 103-Year-Old in CalVet’s Ventura Home
Apple trees, Mack Edwards will tell you, can live for a very long time. “They have to be taken care of a bit,” said the World War II Army veteran, retired orchard owner, and six-year resident of the Veterans Home of California-Ventura. In fact, given the right conditions – climate, water and good soil among […]
Navy veteran finds ‘Heaven’s Waiting Room’ at CalVet’s Lancaster Home
Soon after Lawrence Jones moved into the Veterans Home of California-Lancaster in 2012, a fellow veteran told him he was now in “Heaven’s waiting room.” It didn’t take Jones long to understand what the older vet meant. A U.S. Navy veteran, Jones soon discovered his own, once-elusive bliss there at the Home. A quality of […]
Navy Veteran Brings Hot Food, Warm Conversations to Residents at CalVet’s Yountville Home
Joe Raudales decided it was time for a change. His five years in the U.S. Navy included tours of duty in Japan and the Persian Gulf. He served aboard an amphibious ship off the coast of Somalia, and saw duty as an air traffic controller before he separated in 1996. He then spent 23 years […]
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