Caring for the elderly is in CalVet’s DNA. It can be traced back to the opening of the Veterans Home of California-Yountville in 1884; and is flourishing today at all eight Veterans Homes located across California. The quality care that is provided to senior veterans at Yountville — which is slated to open a new […]
Providing access to mental healthcare services and benefits is a key element in CalVet’s vision of ensuring California’s veterans are connected, protected, and respected. The month of May is National Mental Health Awareness Month, presenting a prime opportunity to highlight the statewide programs and initiatives designed to reach and help veterans in need. Focusing on […]
Marine veteran Albert Bonin had one last hill to take — one last mission to carry out — as his health began to fail in 2008. This one involved memories and words instead of bullets, mortars, and grenades. The Irvine resident, then in his late 80s, deemed it nearly as important as what he and […]
Dr. Julie Fields will tell you that once a soldier, sailor, Marine, or airman—always a soldier, sailor, Marine, or airman. “Our veterans, like the active duty sailors and Marines I served, tend to be extremely resilient and sometimes downright stubborn,” said Fields.
Several winters ago, Lois Cornish says she met a real Grinch: a notoriously cantankerous veteran who lived at the Veterans Home of California-Chula Vista. In our ongoing “Volunteers Serving Veterans” series, CalVet highlights Cornish, who began volunteering at the Chula Vista Home when it opened in 2000. She soon started recruiting some of her American […]
Whenever Dorothy Lipps volunteers to work in the tiny store inside the Veterans Home of California-Redding, she comes dressed for the part. “I’m very patriotic,” said Lipps, who began helping out at the Home seven years ago. “I always wear red, white, and blue. My two sisters and I always have done that, even when […]
Shortly after the Veterans Home of California-Fresno opened in October 2013, Gladys Garza-Brown took her former husband, an ailing veteran, there to scout it out as a place where he might live. She also brought along her Border Collie, Chase. The moment they walked through the doors, staff immediately began recruiting her and Chase to […]
As the Korean War raged in 1951, Lois Sweeney decided to become one of “The few. The proud. The Marines.” She enlisted and soon found herself at Parris Island, South Carolina — one of the 138,000 recruits who trained there throughout the war. “I was in the swamp,” the 92-year-old resident of the Veterans Home […]
Arlene Kepplin loved volunteering so much at the Veterans Home of California-Yountville that she did so for more than two decades. Her remarkable span began in 1998; she kept going strong until the pandemic in 2020 severely limited all volunteerism at Yountville—and at all other seven Veterans Homes. The majority of Kepplin’s volunteerism was at […]
Long before Marcus Langley made his reputation as a concrete contractor in Sacramento, he made history as a member of the 14th U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery unit fighting for the Union during the Civil War. The 14th was formed in North Carolina, his birthplace, in 1864. Langley, a 25-year-old who listed his occupation as a […]
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