News & Updates
Ground broken on new center for wounded troops
Web Posted: 09/15/2007 10:36 PM CDT
Hernan Rozemberg
Express-News Staff Writer
When Marine 1st Lt. Dan Moran was shipped back home to treat wounds suffered from two bombings in Iraq last year, he was dispatched to a place he had never seen and surrounded by people he had never met.
It didn't take long for Moran to get acclimated and begin calling San Antonio home away from home. Chalk it up not just to the care at Brooke Army Medical Center, but to the unexpected extras that have marked his nearly yearlong stay there.
"It's just awesome. It's a blessing. It's like being in your own living room," Moran, his face and arms scarred, said of the 1,200-square-foot room where returning wounded soldiers spend most of their time outside the hospital.
Thanks to the effort of community volunteers, that crammed, all-purpose room will expand tenfold when the new Warrior and Family Support Center opens next fall. Construction of the $4 million, 12,000-square-foot building ceremonially began with groundbreaking Saturday morning at Fort Sam Houston.
It will house private counseling rooms, a computer lab, separate kitchen and dining rooms, spacious gathering areas and a game room.
The privately funded project is the culmination of efforts by volunteers who never thought their dream of having more space to accommodate the rising number of wounded soldiers from Iraq would come true.
Leading the charge has been Judith Markelz, better known as "mom" at the post. She related the growth of what has until now been called the Soldier and Family Assistance Center, opened nearly four years ago.
It all started in that one room, with a television, some chairs and a desk. About 1 million homemade cookies, 2,000 activities and 180,000 visits later, the place now barely has enough room for the cadre of volunteers Markelz has amassed.
"Thank you to our wounded warriors," she said to a standing ovation. "We will build that building for you, to be used by you. It's the very least that we can do."
The effort will continue ensuring that soldiers rushed back for medical care will feel that they're coming home, not to a sterile, unwelcoming environment, said Moran, who suffered third-degree burns, a lost spleen, two herniated discs and other wounds after his Humvee was blown up — killing three — by a roadside bomb in Ramadi last October.
Matthew Webber, another soldier who was treated at BAMC, could not personally thank Markelz and her staff; the National Guard sergeant didn't survive his wounds, also caused by an "improvised explosive device," or IED.
But his mother didn't want it forgotten that the family's six-month ordeal would have been much more agonizing if it hadn't been for the support center.
"This is a legacy here," said Jayne Webber-Hardy, who flew from Grand Rapids, Mich., for the groundbreaking.
"There's nowhere else in the country where soldiers and their families are better taken care of."
The Warrior and Family Support Center is being built by Huffman Developments, which ran with Markelz's wish to have more room. Army approval came in just one week, bypassing the months- and years-long bureaucratic slog typically associated with military construction projects.
The event drew speakers from San Antonio's congressional delegation, including U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and Reps. Lamar Smith, Charlie Gonzalez and Ciro Rodriguez. hrozemberg@express-news.net
