Helping Our Wounded Warriors
date:
1/8/2015
Above is a photo of who volunteered for sixth annual steak BBQ dinner on the 4th of July weekend. Attendance this year was 650 plus over 100 people assisting.
This is our sixth year assisting Wounded Warriors, other ill veterans their families and staff at Walter Reed, now a part of Navy Med in Bethesda. We are assisting and cooperating with other Members of the Order who are active at Georgetown University, Ft. Belvoir, Richmond VA hospital, Houston VA Hospital and Chicago.
A Catholic Church in New York has provided gift cards which we have used to defray expenses and to purchase hardbound journals for the caregivers of the Wounded Warriors to take to medical appointments and record the physician instructions and medical notes, as well as coffee pots, pitchers, cooking pots, stock pots, frying pans and drinking glasses for a lending closet and financial assistance for families in need.
Our Knights, Dames, Auxiliary and volunteers from the Chicago, Houston, Richmond, Northern Virginia, DC and Maryland regions, in cooperation with the Johanniter Order (who are affiliated with the Lutheran Order and are an Order of Saint John who also trace their beginnings to ours), and with the help of a Malta grant and other donations have provided:
- clothing including formal wear, moving assistance, prayer breakfast and luncheons
- guest speakers
- job placement and career training assistance
- crisis assistance
- plants for rooms
- babysitting
- airport transportation for those going to the Military Pilgrimage to Lourdes
- transportation to and gift cards for a farm market
- sixth annual steak BBQ dinner on the 4th of July weekend
- Fisher House dinners on the third Wednesday of each month, where regular attendance has grown to more than 70. Most of the food has been provided by Knights and Dames and volunteers including Tenna Hourigan who has coordinated Bethesda restaurants (Barking Dog, Hard Times Cafe Bethesda, Ledo River Road and Ledo Westlake, Smoke BBQ and Yamas). George Nash and the Bethesda Rotary Club families have provided dinner over the past year and we have enjoyed getting to know more members of our community. Below is a photo of who volunteered for this particular event.
We never know what need we will find during our events or when the phone will ring with a special request, but we always strive to find ways to say yes by providing things the military may not provide and do our best to make the day better for those who have sacrificed to allow us to live in freedom.
"Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought." - Pope John Paul II
Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta
Federal Association, U.S.A.
1730 M Street, NW | Suite 403 | Washington, DC 20036
202.331.2494 | Email Us