Long Beach Fisher House: A home away from home
Fisher House Foundation staff, Long Beach VA Healthcare System staff, Fisher House Southern California board members, and other Fisher House supporters, broke ground Oct. 7, 2015. Photo courtesy of Fisher House Southern California

Long Beach Fisher House: A home away from home

In 2012, the VA Long Beach (Calif.) Healthcare System was identified as a facility in need of a Fisher House. Since then, The American Legion Family of Southern California has been a major contributor to an exceptional outpouring of support from the community of Long Beach.

The American Legion, the Long Beach Rotary, and the American Gold Star Mothers Inc. formed a group to help raise the money needed to build a Fisher House. Fisher House Southern California Inc. President and CEO Steve Kuykendall, a life member of Legion Post 496 in Long Beach, announced that the organization had not only reached, but significantly surpassed, its goal of $6 million to build a place where active-duty military and veteran’s families can stay at no cost while a loved one is receiving treatment.

Long Beach VA Fisher House broke ground Oct. 6, 2015, and will open for families to stay in the fall of 2016. Long Beach VA serves more than 55,000 veterans and active-duty personnel, with nearly 20,000 from the Iraq or Afghanistan conflicts and more than 9 percent of those are women. Many specialty services also bring in patients from outside the local area.

Kuykendall has been a patient at the Long Beach VA and though he lives nearby, and therefore doesn’t need a place for his own family to stay, he has a passion for serving the families of veterans who do.

“If you are sent to Long Beach VA because this is the largest spinal cord injury system and that's where you're going to get some treatment, your family might be directed to go stay at the Fisher House while you are getting your treatment," Kuykendall said. “Blind rehab and spinal cord injury usually have pretty lengthy stays. So while the loved one is in the hospital, and it could be an elderly veteran or it could be an active-duty person whose been transferred here to be in proximity to whatever service they needed, they will be in the hospital but their family this way can stay in the Fisher House for no charge and there's no limit to how long they can stay.”

Kuykendall is a former member of the House of Representatives from California’s 36th congressional district. He served in the Marine Corps from 1966 to 1973 and did two tours in Vietnam. He’s involved in many civic organizations and has a special skill set for raising money. “I've done a lot of fundraising over my lifetime,” he said. “Whether it's politics, or church or school, I've raised millions of dollars for those different kinds of uses. It was a good fit of my background and my interest, and I knew how to do this. It wasn't something where I had to learn.”

There are six American Legion members on the Fisher House Southern California volunteer board, including Kuykendall. “We're all volunteers," he said. “We have no paid staff, and we don't have an office. We do it out of our homes or out of our own offices, wherever we happen to do our work. Because of that we have a very, very, low cost of fundraising, less than a couple of percent, and we have a high ratio of the dollars go to building the Fisher House.”

The American Legion has been a key element in helping to build Fisher Houses at VA medical centers across the country.

“The American Legion should be very proud because of their role in helping build Fisher Houses,” Kuykendall said. “The story is told frequently when I'm in different groups. In Pittsburgh it just wouldn’t have happened if it hadn't been for The American Legion coughing up $750,000 to get it off the ground, and it seems like the places you go it's American Legion, it's Gold Star moms, and it's (the) Rotary. In Gainesville, Florida, it was the veterans group of the Rotary that created the entity that then did the fundraising, but they were helped by The American Legion and these other groups. It's those kind of partnerships and all of us have minimal or no staffs - it's all volunteer work. It takes a lot of people, a lot of energy.”

The first two Fisher Houses opened in 1991 and there are now 70 Fisher Houses serving military veterans and their families around the world. The houses are built to preapproved plans on federal campuses, either VA or the Department of Defense (DoD), so a home doesn't have to go through a local government jurisdiction for zoning and building approval. The homes are usually built in about nine months from ground breaking and when completed, a Fisher House is donated to the VA or DoD and is governed by federal regulations as to their use.

Kuykendall explained the organizational requirements for building the Long Beach VA Fisher House as a three-legged stool with the federal government (the VA), the Fisher House Foundation (national organization), and the Fisher House Southern California (the local group). Each has their role – the Long Beach VA will take control of the house when it’s complete, so they have specific requirements; the Fisher House Foundation donated half the money and handles construction management; and the Fisher House Southern California raised the other half of the money and is involved in community outreach.

When they broke ground last October, Fisher House Southern California still needed to raise about $500,000 to reach their $6 million goal. To accomplish that, its board of directors formed a Campaign Completion Committee. Kuykendall touted the board enthusiastically for accomplishing that goal and more.

The major contributors will be listed on a wall at the Long Beach VA Fisher House and one of the featured names will be “American Legion Families of L.A. and Orange County." The Legion raised about $130,000 in donations from posts, Auxiliary units, Sons of The American Legion squadrons and individual donors. Newport Harbor Post 291 Legion Family is said to be one of the largest single donors.

Getting to the construction phase took some time because of special requirements on government land, but since it got underway it has been moving forward aggressively. “Once we broke ground, were going gangbusters," Kuykendall said. “It's eight months in, and they're almost finished. If you went by the house today, my guess is they are doing finish work on the inside, doing landscaping on the outside, the final touchup of the exterior of the building.”

The Long Beach VA Fisher House is a beautiful two-story building near the entrance of the facility, and it will be the eighth Fisher House in California.

Construction is scheduled to be completed around the first of August, then it will take up to six weeks to meet specific needs of the VA.

“Once we finish the house, and by finish we mean it's got all the furnishings, all the housewares, all the appliances, everything is in it, it's ready to go to work, except for things that are specific to the VA, we then dedicate the house to the (Long Beach) VA," Kuykendall said. "It becomes a federal asset, to the (VA), and it'll fall under the director of the Long Beach VA. It'll become one of the resources managed to deliver health care.”

For more information about Fisher House Southern California Inc., and the Long Beach VA Fisher House, visit www.fisherhousesocal.org or call (562) 432-8252.