Purple Heart Homes, Area Realtors Foundation Partner to Ensure that a Local Veteran Has Hot Water
Foundation recently donated $10,000 to Purple Heart Homes, which is working to establish a local chapter and help more area veterans obtain safe, barrier-free housing.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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This Christmas, a local Marine Corps veteran and his teenaged daughter will once again have hot water in their home, thanks to a donation from the Fredericksburg REALTORS Foundation and the work of the nonprofit Purple Heart Homes.
“I still can’t believe it,” said David Gursky, director of corporate partnerships for Purple Heart Homes, which is a North Carolina-based nonprofit that works to ensure that service-disabled and aging veterans have access to safe, barrier-free housing.
The organization works with industry, business, and state and local government to build homes or provide needed home maintenance to veterans. It was founded by two veterans, John Gallina and Dale Beatty, who together survived an anti-tank mine explosion in Iraq in 2004 that left Beatty a double amputee and Gallina with severe back injuries, a traumatic brain injury, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
The community of Statesville, North Carolina rallied together to build a handicap-accessible home for Gallina, an effort that inspired Purple Heart Homes. Since 2008, the nonprofit has completed 1,000 projects for veterans and now has 16 chapters throughout the country, including one in Lynchburg, Virginia—but until this year, there wasn't one in the Fredericksburg area.
“And there is tremendous need here,” said Gursky, who is retired from the U.S. Army Special Forces. “But the veterans who are in need will never show it, and you will never know. That always T-bones me.”
Gurksy took the position with Purple Heart Homes a year ago but has supported the organization and admired its work for 15 years.
“You know the question, ‘If you weren’t afraid, what would you do?’ My answer was always, ‘Work in the nonprofit world,’” Gursky said.
Finally, after a career with the U.S. government and a short stint with a government contractor, Gursky decided he was no longer afraid and was ready to work with Purple Heart Homes to support fellow veterans in the Fredericksburg region.
The organization’s first local project was to fix the wheelchair ramp at the Fredericksburg VFW Post 3103.
“The door opened into the ramp, the ramp was not to code, and there were overgrown trees in the way,” Gursky said. Though Purple Heart Homes usually works on individual houses rather than public meeting places, this was a simple project that improved the lives of all 850-some people who depend on the VFW for social interaction with fellow veterans—including the beneficiary of the latest project.
Gursky met the veteran at one of the weekly gatherings of Veterans on Board, a local support group.
“Its members range from homeless veterans to millionaires,” Gursky said. “For some of the people, if they didn’t go, they would never interact with another human.”
Gursky attended the meeting to speak about Purple Heart Homes and seek support for its mission, but as so often happens, he left with a list of people he wanted to help.
He said the beneficiary of the latest project at first wasn’t going to share any of his own struggles. The man spoke with Gursky over the course of a lunch about everything he was doing for other families.
“But what I was seeing and what I was hearing didn’t match,” Gursky said. “So, I asked him, ‘But what about you?’ He looked like a deer in the headlights.”
It turned out that the man was recently divorced, had a teenage daughter living with him, was dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder, and had no heating, air conditioning, or hot water at his house in Stafford.
“This is a guy we are designed to help,” Gursky said.
To seek assistance with funding for the project, Gursky reached out to Crystal Harmon, a real estate broker who works with Fredericksburg REALTORS Foundation, on the advice of one of the Purple Heart Homes board members, who’d worked with Harmon in the past.
The Foundation provides grants to local charitable organizations whose clients struggle with hardships that threaten their ability to secure and retain shelter. Harmon said the Foundation board would be voting at its November meeting on funding recipients and invited Gursky to submit a proposal.
Harmon said the Foundation had $13,000 in its budget. Both she and Gursky expected that if Purple Heart Homes was to receive a donation, it would be of between $3,000 and $5,000.
So Harmon could hardly believe it when she called Gursky to let him know that the board had voted to donate $10,000 to Purple Heart Homes.
“The board just loved David’s presentation,” Harmon said.
Gursky said work will be completed at the veteran’s home in a few weeks.
“By Christmas, they will have hot water,” he said. “I want everyone to know that Purple Heart Homes is here [in Fredericksburg] and we mean it.”
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