THAT’S THE SPIRIT

Veterans Victory Garden gets Native American blessing

TROY, N.Y. » During the course of the last several years, local military veteran Christine Rem has had a vision to help support female veterans.

On Wednesday afternoon, Rem had the chance to make part of her vision come true, with the opening blessing ceremony of a Veterans Victory Garden, which is located behind Rem’s old family house at 515 1st St.

Rem, executive director of the Capital District Women Veterans Program Inc. Christopher’s House, was joined by many other local veterans and volunteers Wednesday afternoon for a traditional Native American blessing of the garden, which was recently completed.

“I am an Operation Iraq Freedom female veteran myself and I was in the Army Reserve for 30 years, with the last six years pretty much on active duty,” explained Rem be-

fore the ceremony. “I know that our veterans need assistance and need help, so as a woman I felt the need to help other female veterans with this property.”

Right now the property does not house any female veterans, but Rem is hopeful that the home will soon be able to be transformed into a place for female veterans to live.

“Our dream is to have this be female veteran housing,” said Rem. “I had always envisioned that we would get the house open for female veterans and then turn the backyard into a garden.”

Rem said she heard about the idea for a Veterans Victory Garden through the Heroes at Home organization, which is based in Rensselaer County and is a veteran peer agency.

According to information from the county, gardening can be therapeutic for veterans. The tools will be provided to participants, and the crops will be donated to local food banks or sold at farmers markets.

“This home originally belonged to my grandparents, but Heroes at Home came out with this fantastic idea to do this Veterans Victory Garden and I thought that we had the perfect plot of land behind this property here to do that,” said Rem. “So we have been working together, although the weather really wasn’t good to us in May with all the rain, but we managed to fence in the back and then

we started doing some of the planting.”

“We have been working with Chris for several years, who for several years, has been trying to get a supported

housing program up and running for female veterans, so thought if we could combine our efforts a little bit that we would be able to try to help her out with her endeavor,” added Ray Reuter, the project administrator for Heroes at Home. “We saw the perfect opportunity to not only open a garden that area veterans can participate in, but at the same time being able to bring exposure to Chris’s cause.”

NICHOLAS BUONANNO — NBUONANNO@TROYRECORD.COM Guests are seen looking over the new Veterans Victory Garden behind 515 1st Street.

NICHOLAS BUONANNO — NBUONANNO@TROYRECORD.COM Local veteran Christine Rem is seen in the center speaking during the Native American blessing of the Veterans Victory Garden in South Troy.

NICHOLAS BUONANNO — NBUONANNO@TROYRECORD.COM People gathered behind 515 1st Street Wednesday afternoon to attend a traditional Native American blessing ceremony for the opening of the newly Veterans Victory Garden.

NICHOLAS BUONANNO — NBUONANNO@TROYRECORD.COM Three Native Americans are seen preparing for the blessing of Veterans Victory Garden in 1st Street in Troy Wednesday afternoon.