Veterans home to mark 10 years

BANGOR – Ten years ago next month, the Maine Veterans Home in Bangor opened its doors to the first few of what would become more than 100 veterans.

There were only a dozen residents by the time the first Thanksgiving there rolled around.

The veterans and their families and friends joined with staff to share a traditional meal prepared by staff members in a kitchen in the first of the home’s original three units, built at a cost of about $9 million.

A fourth unit was added in 2003 as part of a more than $3 million expansion.

“You could smell the turkey throughout the unit,” said admissions coordinator Leslie Spenser, one of the home’s original staff members.

These are some of the memories likely to be shared on Sunday when the home marks its 10th anniversary with an open house.

The veterans home, now a 150-bed facility, occupies a sprawling brick structure that sits atop a bluff below the Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center on the city’s east side. The Bangor facility was the fifth of six such facilities built in Maine to care for Maine’s aging and ailing veterans, their spouses, widows and widowers, and Gold Star parents who lost sons or daughters from wounds suffered in combat.

The veterans who live in the home come from several different wars, the oldest from World War II and the youngest, Desert Storm. With a war now under way in Iraq, the need for veterans homes and other services will last long into the future, according to officials.

“I love this place,” said Forrest Wheelock, activities and volunteer supervisor and one of the veterans home’s original staff members.

Wheelock, a U.S. Air Force retiree, and Michael Kelley, a social worker who served as a Navy corpsman, are among several staff members who have served in the military themselves.

Wheelock said that the veterans, spouses and Gold Star parents enjoy a great deal of respect and support from the community. Numerous local organizations have stepped forward to sponsor activities, outings and parties.

“We’re in all the parades,” he said, adding, “The respect we receive is unbelievable.”

The home also has been blessed with a solid base of volunteers, staff said. Some of the volunteers are retired military themselves, among them Kenneth Butler, who recently died at the age of 84.

The Bangor home has four units: a 40-bed skilled nursing and rehabilitation unit; a 40-bed long-term care unit; a 40-bed secure unit for people with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia; and the newest, a 30-bed residential care unit for those in the early stages of dementia.

Sometime in the next few years, the home will have a therapeutic swimming pool and eventually might add outpatient rehabilitation services, Greg Urban, the home’s administrator, said.

The home also will soon have a year-round greenhouse, thanks to an $11,000 grant Wheelock and a University of Maine horticulture student landed.

“It will be a wonderfully therapeutic thing to have,” Wheelock said about the greenhouse. He said the natural light will help lift the mood of those afflicted with seasonal affective disorder, or depression linked to a deficiency of natural light often brought on by the shorter days of winter.

The Bangor home was the fifth to be added to the Maine Veterans Homes system.

The system itself was born in 1976, when members of the Maine Veterans Coordinating Committee proposed legislation to establish a network of nursing homes to meet the growing needs of the state’s war veterans.

The next year, state lawmakers established the Maine Veterans Homes as an independent nonprofit organization and voters approved a $2.1 million bond issue to match a construction grant from the Veterans Administration.

The first veterans home in the system was built in 1983 in Augusta, followed by homes in Caribou and Scarborough in 1990, South Paris in 1995, and Machias this year.

The Maine Veterans Home in Bangor will mark its 10th anniversary with an open house from 1 to 3 p.m. Sunday. The public is invited to take part in the event, which will feature tours, entertainment, refreshments and reminiscing.