Over Veterans Day weekend, Greensboro-area residents who have worn the uniform for their country shared stories about the struggles they have overcome, thanks to a Triad group that helps homeless vets.
More than 33,000 former military members across the country are homeless, but the Servant Center in Greensboro is helping some of the local veterans get back on their feet.
“I moved here to look after my mother and father in Elon, North Carolina,” George Almond, one of the Center’s beneficiaries, told WFMY News 2. “After they passed, I had a breakdown.”
That left him struggling to keep a job and a place to live.
Almond, a Coast Guard veteran, says he would be “homeless, in the middle of self-abuse, drug use, whatever,” without the Center’s help. “Yeah, that’s what it would look like for me, lost.”
He has spent months going through programs that will help him sustain himself.
“This place gave me a place to rest, think about things, what I wanted to do, the opportunity to engage with people who knew how to help us and put things in order,” he told WFMY News 2.
It’s not always a short-term project. The Servant Center helped an Army veteran for more than a decade.
“I landed a job, a nice job, and I was there for like 12 years and things changed from there,” Marion Riley told WFMY News 2.
Before he got help, he was living in a Winston-Salem shelter, struggling to find his next step in life.
“Then I ran into one military vet who pointed me in the right direction to another vet, and then I wound up here,” he said, according to WFMY News 2.
He received housing, food and assistance in finding a place of his own.
Those two men are just some of the veterans who are looking forward to regaining their independence while being able to spend more time with their families.
“I get to spend more time, or try to spend time, with my kids and grandkids,” Riley said, while Almond hopes to go to Norway to be back with his family.
The Servant Center is located on Glenwood Avenue in Greensboro, serving homeless men at its shelter.
