Editor’s note: This article is by Nora Doyle-Burr, of the Valley News, in which it was first published July 3, 2015.
[W]hite River Junction — Upper Valley veterans have a new space to call their own on the first floor of a new office building on Prospect Street in White River Junction.
At the new, larger Vet Center counselors will continue to provide veterans and their families with care and referral services as they did at the former location at the Gilman Office Complex on Holiday Drive, but they’ll have more elbow room.
“It’s really nice,” Moe Ferland, 56, of Charlestown, said as he waited for the ceremony to begin. “It’s so much bigger and more comfortable.”
Ferland, a Navy veteran, who is now a member of Claremont American Legion Post 29, said, “A lot of people meet here to get solutions to their problems.”
A ribbon cutting at the newly relocated Vet Center attracted a crowd of approximately 100 people, including veterans, current service members, their families, employees of the Vet Center and the White River Junction Veterans Affairs Medical Center and policy makers and their representatives on Thursday.
On the eve of the holiday celebrating the country’s independence, New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan thanked the veterans and the service men and women gathered.
“You understand that there is a cause greater than us — this country and this democracy,” she said. “Because of all of you our country is safer; because of all of you our freedom is stronger.”
Hassan said the country could never fully repay its debt to those who have served in the military, but the Vet Center — which employs nine people — is one way the country strives to give back to its veterans.
The White River Junction Vet Center is one of more than 200 “storefront counseling centers” around the country, Deborah Amdur, director of the White River Junction VA Medical Center, said.
Such centers, overseen by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, offer a “safe haven” for returning veterans, she said. They also offer support for family members, who play a “key role” in helping veterans adjust to civilian life, she said.
Congress established the first Vet Centers in 1979, intending to address the challenges experienced by Vietnam War veterans as they worked to transition back to civilian life, Tim Beebe, a Vietnam veteran and a former team leader of the White River Junction Vet Center and former regional director of Vet Centers, said.
Prior to the creation of such facilities, Beebe said veterans struggled with returning to work, maintaining relationships and legal issues. They found that the types of behaviors that kept them safe while they were at war were not necessarily acceptable at home, he said.
For example, “skulking at night” might be important to keep the enemy at bay in battle, but the same activity might get a veteran arrested in the U.S., he said.
Beebe recalled the first location of the White River Junction Vet Center, above a garage, which opened in 1981.
“It was the only Vet Center in the country where you could get counseling and an oil change at the same time,” he said.
Over time, the center moved to its Holiday Drive location and officially expanded services to include veterans of wars other than Vietnam, Beebe said.
While he agreed that the new building is nice, John Tracy, a Vietnam veteran, who spoke on behalf of Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said it’s not the building that’s important in caring for the nation’s veterans — “it’s the people.”
Following the ceremony, the crowd lined up for a chicken barbecue, served by Upper Valley veterans’ groups.
