Home sweet home
“He was deployed to Iraq, where he was severely injured… . A blast of shrapnel struck him in the upper torso and face, with the largest piece piercing his left eye.”
This is how the paper described what happened to Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Cory Hixson of Conway in a sixhour firefight in Fallujah in 2004.
Battlefield injuries like this happen all too often in war to the brave men and women who put their lives on the line for the rest of us. And too often when veterans come home, injured or not, their service might be forgotten.
Enter New Braunfels, Texas-based Operation Finally Home.
According to its website, “Operation Finally Home provides mortgage-free homes, home modifications, and transitional housing to wounded, ill and injured military veterans and families in honor of their service and sacrifice to country and community.”
Operation Finally Home has completed, or is in the planning stage of building, 430 home projects in 32 states. And whether that construction is a modification to a house to accommodate medical equipment, or is ground-up construction of a free-standing house, it’s free to the veteran or first responder.
The company partners with corporate sponsors, builders, builder associations, remodelers, developers, individual contributors and volunteers. It effectively extends a hand-up, not a handout, to people who have earned it from their service and sacrifice.
The founders of Operation Finally Home should be applauded for their vision and hard work in making it all happen; so should their partners and volunteers who pay for and provide the construction work.
Bret Franks of Bret Franks Construction can count himself among the caring and patriotic. His company, which builds Southern-style houses blended with current trends, was a major part of the Conway project. He puts things in perspective when he said the other day, “I didn’t have to sacrifice something big.” Not like Cory Hixson.
The fact is, few of us have ever had to sacrifice “something big” like that.
But thanks to caring and patriotic individuals who partner with Operation Finally Home, Lance Cpl. Hixson and his family have what few people in America have—a mortgage-free house. Then again, few people in America have put their life on the line for the rest of us.