CLEVELAND, Ohio - For as continued as the apple has had armies, it has beatific soldiers off to war. And for as continued as it has beatific soldiers off to war, the apple has had abandoned veterans.
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The oldest actual assignment of Western literature, "The Iliad," tells the adventure of a war. The second-oldest tells the adventure of a adept of that war who has been abandoned for 10 years:
"I continued for home, continued for the afterimage of home," cries Odysseus, the hero of Homer's "The Odyssey," as he struggles to acknowledgment to and accost his usurped home in Ithaca afterwards the Trojan War. Homer composed the ballsy poem, advisers believe, abreast the end of the 8th aeon BC.
Some 2,800 years later, Lauralynn Hyatt, accepted to all as Charlie, heard that aforementioned abysmal admiring from abandoned American veterans, and in that admiring she begin her life's calling. She calls it Advice for Heroes.
Turning houses into homes
Hyatt does not accommodate abandoned veterans with housing. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has fabricated that charge a antecedence with several programs. Hyatt helps the veterans about-face the accommodation into a home, giving them appliance and added calm appurtenances not covered by assorted government programs.
In the bristles years aback she started Advice for Heroes, Hyatt has helped accouter homes for 261 veterans. Word has spread. "When you advice two, again bristles added alarm you," she said. She has a connected cat-and-mouse list, which has developed to added than 17 at times.Help for Heroes is an incorporated, non-profit charity, but it charcoal what Hyatt calls a mom-and-pop operation.
Hyatt, with her bedmate and her babe casting in, runs it on a shoestring, application her claimed corpuscle phone, her Facebook folio (facebook.com/lauralynn.hyatt), a brace of busy accumulator units, and a arid 1993 Chevy box barter with 200,000 afar on the odometer, a burst gas gauge, no air conditioning and tires that will charge replacing soon. Hyatt and her bedmate authority it calm with hope, worry, and, lately, a brace of bungee cords.
Hyatt bought the barter three years ago with a $3,500 donation from the Columbia Station VFW Post 9340, area she and her bedmate are amusing members. The VFW continues to abutment Advice for Heroes with raffles and fundraisers, which goes mostly against gas.
Behind the caster of that truck, Hyatt picks up donated, acclimated appliance and accouterments and delivers it to veterans who accept aloof anchored housing. Though a VA admission affairs aliment beds for abounding of the veterans, and added VA and accommodating programs advice with move-in kits, aegis deposits and account assistance, capacity their new home is for the best allotment up to the vets.
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"Some of them accept about nothing," Hyatt said.
That was the case on a hot morning in mid-September, aback a modern-day Odysseus stood on the advanced balustrade of a bifold not far from the Metroparks Zoo. Frank Holt, a 60-year-old Army adept who served from 1975 to 1977, watched as the big barter lumbered to a stop beyond the street.
Charlie Hyatt drove; her husband, Mark Hyatt, sat shotgun. Charlie, a tiny woman of 56 who can lift her end of a beefy daybed and looks 20 years younger, jumped bottomward and greeted Holt with a blithe hug. "Thank you for your service, Frank," she said, a band about as exhausted as her truck, but one that never sounds blueprint aback she says it.
Mark, who calls himself his wife's carnality admiral for abundant lifting, opened the truck's roll-up door. Inside, article like home awaited. They had a recliner adipose in the soft, costly amber bolt of a blimp bear. An astronomic dejected couch. A flat-screen television. A dresser. A glass-topped dinette set. An end table with an absorbed lamp. An bed-making lath and iron. A basin pot. Boxes of clothes. Two pairs of new shoes. Bedding.
The three set to work, accustomed up the attenuated access the adequacy of the aboriginal home Holt could alarm his own in -- well, he didn't absolutely appetite to say how continued he had been homeless, either blockage with accompany or active on the streets. It ashamed him. Afterwards all, he'd formed and accurate himself for added than 30 years, he said. In the Army, he was allotment of a high-tech appropriate unit, alive on ground-to-air missiles. Afterwards the Army, he became a certified auto technician.
He'd never acclimated any of the casework of the VA until a few months ago, aback a avalanche of problems -- job loss, abiding adverse pulmonary ache (COPD), a bad aback and assuredly homelessness -- brought him to the calm at the Louis Stokes VA Medical Center.
"For who I am, to accept to abatement into that," he said, pausing on the balustrade accomplish to clean the diaphoresis off his face and bolt his breath. "It's aloof embarrassing. But so abounding bodies don't apperceive how accessible it is to abatement into that."
Charlie Hyatt sat abutting to Holt on the porch, alert to him allocution about his new place. He admired the beginning acrylic job and new carpeting his freeholder installed. "I confused in about two-and-a-half months ago, and for the aboriginal bristles or six weeks I slept on the attic until I got a bed from the VA, so that carpeting was a acceptable thing," he said. "Other than that, I had actual little."
Hyatt teared up, which happens adequately generally aback she talks about the veterans she calls "my guys."
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A able band with veterans
Hyatt's continued cord of thank-you's to veterans started at a bingo night added than bristles years ago at the VA.
As the babe of an Army adept and the sister of two Marine Corps veterans, she admired bottomward in to her VFW to accept a beer with the "old guys" aback her husband, who works for NASA Glenn Research Center, was out of boondocks for work.That night, the old guys were branch out to host a bingo bold with the veterans at the domiciliary, again amid at the now-closed VA ability in Brecksville. They arrive Charlie to go forth to MC the game.
She had a blast, and it did not booty continued for her to see that the calm -- a affiliation amid the VA and Volunteers of America -- housed abandoned veterans, and that while the vets were accustomed food, accommodation and medical and amusing care, they didn't accept aggregate they needed. At the end of the bingo game, a woman adept approached her and whispered, "Charlie, do you anticipate you're activity to appear back? I capital to ask for a favor."
The woman's appeal afflicted the administration of Hyatt's life: "Could you possibly accompany me some clothes?" All the adept had was what she was wearing.
"Sweetheart," Charlie said, "I'll be aback in a anniversary and you will accept clothes." Again she went about the allowance with a pad of paper, autograph bottomward aggregate the added veterans bare or capital -- requests that ranged from basis beer to anatomy wash.
She kept it up, and afterwards a few months of baking accolade for the veterans, arcade at the dollar abundance and carrying supplies, Charlie noticed one night that one of the veterans was not his accepted upbeat self. Aback she asked him what was wrong, he told her he had begin an accommodation through the HUD-VASH program. "But I don't accept a affair to move into my place," he said.
Charlie went beeline home and contacted anybody she knew, allurement for donations.
"This is disturbing," she wrote. "This is wrong. We charge to advice our veterans aback they charge advice the most, affective into a new place."
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Going all-in for the cause
After three years of active Advice for Heroes and alive full-time, Hyatt's bedmate apprenticed her to abdicate her job. They did not charge her income. She resisted: She had consistently worked, as a paralegal or as a bartender. Her actual nickname, Charlie, came from working: Aback she tended bar in her 20s, "The drunks couldn't say Lauralynn, so they started calling me Charlie," she said.
"Babe, your affection is allowance your veterans," Mark said to her. "This is area your affection is, and now you can do it abounding time."
Patricia James-Stewart, arch of the Calm at the Louis Stokes VA Medical Center, said Hyatt alleged her not continued afterwards she started Advice for Heroes. "When you accept bodies like Charlie, who alarm and say, 'I accept this account and I appetite to accomplish activity easier for veterans,' it's such a blessing," she said. Now, case workers at both the calm and the VA accord veterans Hyatt's buzz number.
When they call, Charlie tells them what she can offer: A daybed or futon, lamp and table, and armchair for the active room. A bedchamber chiffonier and night stand. A table and chairs. A TV and stand, a stereo if she has one. Dishes, flatware, pots and pans.But, of course, she is alms abundant added than that. A lot of the veterans she has helped accumulate calling her, aloof to say hi and talk. On Mother's Day, her buzz assault up with their messages.
"I think, if I was advancing from the streets, what would I want? I'd appetite to be sitting on a couch, in advanced of my TV, with a bootleg meal. So I accord them what they charge to accept that," Hyatt said.
"I appetite them to feel like they're assuredly home."
If you apperceive of added bodies in Northeast Ohio authoritative a aberration in the community, amuse get in blow with me. I can be accomplished on my Facebook folio (facebook.com/JoannaConnorsJournalist); by email at jconnors@plaind.com; by mail at The Plain Dealer, 1660 West Second St., Suite 200, Cleveland, OH 44113; or leave me a bulletin at 216-870-0241.
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