Providing hope to our heroes
Lightfoot leads the way in veterans' services
By Lindsay Sauvageau JOURNAL CORRESPONDENT

Leslie Lightfoot poses with her husband, Ray Fanelli, in Caguas, Puerto Rico where the Hacienda de Veteranos is located. The facility provides therapy and rehabilitation to veterans. COURTESY PHOTO

Leslie Lightfoot says her life changed when she was 9 years old and her father, a WWII veteran, gave her his heart - his Purple Heart Medal.

"I was still too young to know what it meant but I knew it was important to him and it came as a great honor," she said.

The Ashburnham resident says it was the first time she began thinking about what life was like for veterans.

"Years later a childhood friend was killed in Vietnam. I had wanted to go myself but at the time women weren't being sent there," Lightfoot said.

As of today, Lightfoot has helped begin and operate six different veteran organizations - three of which are the first of their kind in the country. She is currently is working on a $5 million housing and rehabilitation project in Gardner with the help of Mount Wachusett Community College.

The endeavor, a 20-duplex housing and rehabilitation project in Gardner, is in its infant stages. Using 10-acres donated by MWCC, the facility will be used to help Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, specifically burn and amputee patients and those with traumatic brain injuries and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The complex, with added transportation will allow these veterans to rehabilitate while attending the college and getting an education.

The Veteran Hospice Homestead owns and operates the Veteran Homestead Mobile Unit which travels all over Central and Western Massachusetts as well as Southern New Hampshire providing medical screenings to veterans without access to hospital transportation. COURTESY PHOTO

"We need this project now. Depending on what (Web) site you look at, there are between 23,000 to 100,000 wounded veterans coming from overseas. I think the number is really around 59,000 but we need to have something that these vets can come home to," she said.

And earlier this month she was appointed to the Veterans Affair's Advisory Committee on Education. As a member of the committee she and the 14 other members will lend their various expertise on all issues concerning the delivery of educational benefits and services to veterans, including recommending new programs and long-range planning and development.

"Massachusetts is one of three states that really takes care of their veterans. A lot of states don't have any programs or facilities other than what the VA offers, which may times isn't enough," she said.

Before Lightfoot began to conceive of these projects, or of joining the advisory committee, the Ohio native was a veteran herself. She entered the Army after graduating high school and served as a medic from 1967 to 1970, spending part of her three years working in a military emergency room in Landstuhl, Germany.

When she finished her service she went back to school and received two degrees in psychology and began working as a psychotherapist in a group practice focusing on helping emotionally traumatized firefighters and police officers. She says that's when she first realized the need for an increase in veteran services.

"Veterans seemed to gravitate to my office," she said. "Many of them had no place to go and what do you do if you're sick and you have no family and no insurance?"

So, in 1987 Lightfoot put her 20 years of experience working with PTSD patients and traumatized veterans to use, beginning the Leominster Homestead. The Homestead is a housing and treatment facility for veterans with various addictions and other psychological problems.

Soon after, in the early 1990s, she began the Hero and Armistice Homesteads in Leominster, 15-bed housing facilities for elderly and/or disabled veterans. These facilities offer a safe and supportive homelike environment where counseling and medical services meet the physical and emotional needs of veterans

Not long after, Lightfoot said, she met a Korean War veteran at MassGeneral Hospital who was dying with no place to go. That's when she decided to open the Veteran Hospice Homestead in Fitchburg.

"It's a unique facility, the first in the country to offer the hospice component but veterans are not required to die to stay here," she said.

The Hospice Homestead is a 12-bed, five-bath residential facility, offering specialized transitional housing to service veterans diagnosed with terminal illnesses who are no longer able to care for themselves.

"Veterans can stay here, get their medications straightened out and their lives back on track, they can finish their chemo and eventually get back out into society," she said.

Altogether the three facilities serve over 40 veterans for a minimal fee. Lightfoot says the projects are mostly funded by the Veterans Affairs (VA) Homeless Providers and per diem money along with grants, donations and private funding.

"I have a lot of energy and adrenaline and it needs to go somewhere. I think, after serving in the military I realized when I see alcoholics and addicts and disabled cases from being in wars that it could have been any one of us and I'm grateful that I did not decided to use my energy negatively," she said.

A few years ago, Lightfoot created the Veteran Victory Farm in Fitzwilliam, NH, - the first of its kind in this country. This 40-foot, 80-acre working organic vegetable farm was a program to give veterans a lifestyle change.

Homeless veterans and those suffering from substance abuse and mental illness who have been unsuccessful transitioning from residential treatment programs to independent or transitional housing are given the chance to get their lives back together working on a farm, growing vegetables and tending the farm's horses, chickens, donkeys, etc.

"These vets are not an entitled group, they earn their benefits. We are a safety net for veterans that might fall through the cracks. Many come to us as referrals from the VA, word of mouth, doctors and from the VNA (Visiting Nurses Association) hospice," she said.

Recognizing a need to help veterans without transportation receive medical attention, Lightfoot started a Mobile Medical Unit that travels all over Central and Western Massachusetts as well as Southern New Hampshire. The unit provides medical screenings to veterans.

Her other project is Hacienda de Veteranos in Caguas, Puerto Rico, which provides therapy and rehabilitation to 12 to 14 veterans. Besides a VA Hospital, the Hacienda is the only other veterans facility in Puerto Rico.

"It's a lot of work but I love it," she said. "There aren't enough hours in the day. I'd like a few more days in the week. I've got a lot of energy and this is a great way to put it all to good use. I'm usually in the office by 5 every morning working on things. It keeps me going."

To learn more visit more about Veteran Homestead Inc. visit www.vethospice.com