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VOL. 4/ISSUE 52
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2016
Florida names veteran homes after Medal of Honor recipients Patrick McCallister FOR VETERAN VOICE
pmccallister@veteranvoiceweekly.com
Thousands of folks drive by the Emory L. Bennett State Veterans’ Nursing Home in Daytona Beach every day having no idea who the namesake is. Bennett — who was born in New Smyrna Beach and grew up in Brevard County — is one of 23 Medal of Honor recipients credited to Florida. At least three others were born in the Sunshine State, but lived elsewhere when they entered the services. Steve Murray, communications director at the Florida Department of Veterans Affairs, said the tradition of naming state veterans homes started with the Robert H. Jenkins Jr. Veterans Domiciliary in Lake City. “Beginning with that facility in 1990, the decision was made to name it for a Medal of Honor recipient from the area,” Murray said. The state now has six veteran nursing homes, along with the domiciliary. It plans to start building its seventh and eighth homes next year. One is already named: the Ardie R. Copas State Veterans’ Nursing Home in Port St. Lucie. The other is a vacant Department of Veterans Affairs’ nursing home at the Lake Baldwin VA Outpatient Clinic in Orlando. The federal government turned the facility over to the state earlier this year. The state will have to do extensive renovations to open a veterans nursing home there, and it hasn’t started the naming process. Bennett was born on Dec. 20, 1929. When he was 6, his family moved to Brevard and ran a fish
See HOMES page 1
Photo courtesy of the Halifax Humane Society An inmate at Tomoka State Correctional Facility trains a dog for a veteran. The Orlando VA Medical Center, Halifax Humane Society and correctional facility have a joint venture, Paws of Freedom, that gets trained dogs to veterans with post-traumatic stress and other anxiety and mood disorders.
Inmates, dogs forge bond to help veterans heal Patrick McCallister FOR VETERAN VOICE
pmccallister@veteranvoiceweekly.com
Jennifer Muni-Sathoff is in the business of getting veterans connected with the best mental-health therapists around. Dogs. “I’ve had so many people tell me they didn’t kill themselves because of their dogs,” she said. Muni-Sathoff is a mental health social worker at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Orlando Medical Center’s William V. Chappell Jr. Satellite Outpatient Clinic in Daytona Beach. She started Paws of Freedom with the Halifax Humane Society’s Prison Pups N Paws program at the Tomoka Correctional Institution in 2011. Over her career as a mental-health therapist Muni-Sathoff has heard a story repeatedly: people turn to their dogs even when they won’t turn to other people. Back in 2010 Muni-Sathoff was pretty new at the VA. But she threw in her idea for Paws of Freedom — connecting veterans with post-traumatic stress and other anxiety and mood disorders with obedience trained dogs through the local humane society’s
program — into the VA’s annual Innovation Initiative. VA workers throughout American annually submit ideas they have for improving services to veterans. The VA picks winners — those proposals it’ll temporarily fund. “They had more than 4,500 submissions for that go around of suggestions,” Muni-Sathoff said. “They selected 30 and we were one.” With that temporary funding the program got out for its first walk in 2011. Muni-Sathoff got word out to mental-health and other care providers at the Orlando VA that Paws of Freedom was seeking veterans who’d benefit from having dogs. It paired 10 veterans and dogs the first year. It’s placed another 76 dogs with veterans since then. Only three pairings failed. The West Volusia Kennel Club, Halifax Humane Society and Tomoka Correctional Facility launched Prison Pups N Paws back in 2010. The club helps fund a program for the Halifax Humane Society to send healthy spayed and neutered dogs to the nearby state correctional facility for seven weeks.
See DOGS page 7