HOME AWAY FROM HOME

Fisher House offers comfort, togetherness for families struggling with long medical rehabilitations

A Christmas tree stands in the living room; toys lay scattered bumble-tumble underneath and around it. The voices of small children can be heard throughout the large house. In the foyer, strollers and wheelchairs line the hall walls.

For Monika Offenburger, of Miami, Fla., her husband, Spc. Barry Offenburger and their two children, Hailey, 2, and Alexander, 3 months, Fisher House on the Walter Reed Army Medical Center is home.

Walter Reed doctors recently diagnosed Specialist Offenburger with Hodgkin's disease, a cancer of the lymphatic system. While stationed in Kabul, Afghanistan, last year, physicians found tumors in his legs and sent him stateside for further care.

When he was transferred to Walter Reed, his wife and children followed without a clear idea of where they would be staying or how they would manage to live during his treatment and rehabilitation.

Monika made reservations at a nearby hotel but received a call from her husband's social worker about staying at Fisher House. She was uncertain about it, since she'd never heard of the Fisher House program before, but took a chance anyways.

"I was pretty nervous," she says. "But when I got here I saw how beautiful it was. There was a big Christmas tree with lots of toys and we were welcomed with open arms."

Now she doesn't know what they'd do without Fisher House.

"It's helped us a lot, you know, just being able to be around other people with the same circumstances or away from home, and feeling at home," she says. "You're around people you can talk to and not have to feel pity. It just feels like you're at home."

There are two Fisher Houses on the Walter Reed base and one within close walking distance.

The Fisher House Foundation, started by philanthropist Zachary Fisher and his wife, Elizabeth, in 1990, built and donated the houses to the hospital. In total, there are 32 Fisher Houses nationwide, all located on military installations or near Veterans Administration medical centers.

The Fisher House Foundation builds homes, not houses, for military families, who often have to travel far to be where their loved one is receiving care, whether it be unexpected illness, disease or injury.

Fisher House provides a low-cost home away from home alternative to expensive hotels and lodging costs, and most residents will agree that it is the best place to get support from others in similar situations.

Although the houses are set up in a care-for-yourself way, house managers and volunteers strive to make life easier by providing guests with whatever they need, be it diapers, mayonnaise or washing powder, so they can devote the bulk of their time to their loved one, Offenburger says.

The houses are equipped with a fully stocked kitchen, laundry room, a comfortable den area with toys and television and private bathrooms in each room. Each house can accommodate approximately seven families.

Staff Sgt. Dale Beatty, a member of the North Carolina National Guard's 1st Battalion, 113th Field Artillery, his wife, Belinda, and their two children, Dustin, 2, and Lucas, 7 months, are also staying at the Fisher House.

Belinda says that staying at Fisher House has been a truly wonderful experience for them.

Her husband was injured on patrol in an area north of Baghdad near Tikrit, when his vehicle struck a landmine.

He is now a double amputee below the knees, but Belinda says he is taking it very well.

"He's a positive person. And I think the support from the Fisher House and his family and friends has really made a great deal of difference," she says.

Belinda says they will probably stay at Fisher House until her husband completes his physical therapy, which could be another year or so.

"If it wasn't for the Fisher House, we'd have to try to get transportation from here to the hospital," she says. "Since we're right on base, we can walk to the hospital."

"We have to grocery shop often. In a hotel, you have a tiny, tiny refrigerator. Here they have this great huge refrigerator. It's just a wonderful, wonderful place."

The Offenburgers' stay may be just as long, as he goes through the chemotherapy and rehabilitation process, Monika says.

"If I'm going to be somewhere for a year, I'm glad it's here," she says. "I thought it was great. I had no idea that this was here. I was expecting something more along the lines of a hotel."

Both women say the base day care, which is within walking distance of the houses, and family support group meetings held every Tuesday, have also been a Godsend.

WMAL Brings it Home

Last year, Washington, D.C., local radio station, 630 WMAL, took on the Fisher House Foundation as its annual holiday project. The fund raising drive's success took everyone involved by surprise.

Michael Graham, host of the mid-morning show, "The Michael Graham Show" got the idea from one of his listeners.

"Every week we have a listener lunch. People e-mail the station and register and then the station randomly picks five people to have lunch with me. They picked David Coker," Graham says.

David Coker is the executive director of the Fisher House Foundation. While they were at lunch, Coker introduced Graham and the station program director, Randall Bloomquist, to the Fisher House program.

"We were both so taken aback by this Fisher House," Graham says. "We couldn't believe we never heard of it. So we arranged for [David] to bring in more information and we followed up."

Before going on-air with the idea, Graham visited one of the houses. He said he was amazed by what he discovered.

"It's not the Fisher barracks or the Fisher hut or the Fisher hotel. It's really like a house," Graham says. "[They] are beautiful and they're comfortable. It wasn't like you were going to some morgue or a hospital."

Graham spoke with soldiers and families staying there and was further impressed by their zeal for life and desire to get well and go on with their lives.

"When you see a young man who's 22 or 23, a soldier who's lost an arm or a leg or both in battle and he has a more positive attitude about life than people you run into every day," he says. "You want to do anything you can for them."

Graham kicked off the event on-air Nov. 5 from Walter Reed. Though he felt strongly the drive was something listeners could really get behind, he set "an aggressive but reachable goal" of $250,000.

"But here's what I discovered. I failed my listeners. I underestimated them. I really messed up. I just didn't see the depth of their support for our soldiers and this mission in Iraq," he says.

The support was overwhelming. The station raised more than $1.7 million, in less than two months, a rate of about $40,000 a day, Bloomquist says.

In the first week, the station collected $250,000. It passed a million the Friday before Christmas and the flow did not slow. Another $700,000 came in right after the holidays.

"We have a fair amount of military listeners and ex-military, you expect them to step up but it was across the board," Graham says. "All I had to do was tell people about Fisher House and its mission, how it gives wives of wounded soldiers and parents of wounded soldiers a place to stay."

"You don't normally get this kind of desire by the listeners to find you and to give and to give again and again," he says.

Graham says people latched onto this project because it is one that most can relate to.

"They really believe in the mission itself. As opposed to the givers who say, well you have to support the soldiers despite the mission. These people say 'I support the soldiers and the mission,'" he says.

On the air, Graham would allow listeners, mainly military or military family members, to tell their stories.

"One thing we talked about was ... these families living around the country and coming to a very expensive place to stay," he says. "Families are often young couples, new wives or families with small children. They have a mortgage or a rent payment back in San Diego or wherever they're from."

"Without Fisher House they would be looking at either the wile not being able to come or the parents not being able to come or going through a financial disaster back home," he says. "There's no need for that to happen when the Fisher House is prepared to give them a place to stay. All the Fisher House needs is the money to keep the doors open."

Coker says there has never been a drive of this magnitude for the foundation.

"It's been unbelievable. We never anticipated that the campaign would be as successful as it was," he says. "It's humbling to know there are so many people out there that want to help and honor the service of soldiers, sailors, Coast Guard and Marines." He says the money will help the foundation continue to support the families at the Walter Reed and Bethesda, Md. houses, and those families who cannot get in the houses.

It will also go toward home improvements. One such improvement at Walter Reed, because of the high number of amputees staying in the houses, is having the existing doors replaced with handicapped accessible doors.

The drive helped exceedingly in other ways as well.

"Maybe the biggest thing Michael and company have accomplished here is not only raising the actual $1.7 million but also an awareness that Fisher House even exists," Bloomquist says.

Coker says the publicity will serve the Fisher House community well, especially in terms of getting word out to volunteers and gift givers.

Graham says he and the community at large were only glad to be of service.

"There are many worthy causes in the world but none more worthy than the Fisher House," he says.

Copyright National Guard Association of the United States Feb 2005
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