A One-Room Building Rich In History & A Rich Future

The one-room building was part of the 1950's Nike Missile Program Rockland Headquarters on a parcel of the WWII Camp Shanks, which is one of Rockland's proudest military history stories.

1.3 million GI's from all over the USA left Camp Shanks to cross the Atlantic Ocean to fight the nazi army. The camp was closed down right after the war, but did not return back the property of over 2,330 acres it purchased or leased all at once. The parcel was probably the last to be declared surplus.

When It was declared surplus it was available only for 2 or 3 purposes, the most important had to be used to serve our homeless.

When the highly successful charity of Rockland's Loeb House, Inc., which provides community supportive homes for our mentally ill learned this, it spinned off a sister charity named "Rockland Homes For Heroes" to apply [and succeeded] for the lease of the parcel with the mission of serving homeless Veterans on what was sacred military land.

The first thing we did was build 8 apartment in two buildings on the Western Highway tier [the parcel has 3 levels/tiers] in Tappan that were the offices of the Nike Missile Program Headquarters. Total success. Lives turned around.

Ergo, it was decided to build 14 more happy homes on the second level of the parcel by recycling what were the class rooms and meeting rooms, etc. We salvaged the foundations, walls & roofs.

They will be ready for 14 homeless Veterans this summer !

Also on the mid-tier was the one-room building used as a military PX/Post Office [with no bathroom].

Who came to the rescue was the "Habitat For Humanity" heroes who restored the building at no cost to us ! Next came former NY State Senator Elias Echlin-Melnick who graciously gave us a State Grant to build a bathroom. Soooooo we will have a historic building turned into an office/meeting room and a mini/micro military MUSEUM !

It will be used to deal professionally with all the needs of the 22 veteran's living in these apartments.

Loeb House, under the fantastic leadership of Kelly Kohlbrenner and her dedicated team, provide day-to-day support to the residents and so many others who are so generous to our veterans

As an example, Mark Woods who runs the Joseph P. Dwyer Veteran Peer Support Program, which is named in honor of Joseph P. Dwyer, a US Army Medic in the Iraq War who, in the earliest days of the invasion in 2003, was pictured cradling a wounded boy while his unit was fighting its way up the Euphrates to Baghdad. Dwyer’s post-war struggles with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) resulted in his untimely and tragic death in 2008.

The Dwyer Program was created by then-New York State Senator Lee Zeldin. It began in Suffolk County and quickly expanded to almost half the counties in the state. Zeldin served four years in the Army active duty, deployed in 2006 to Tikrit, Iraq. Beginning in 2012, the Program now offers peer to peer counseling for Veterans suffering from PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and any Veteran looking to reintegrate into civilian society.

We are talking with Mark, also a Veteran, steeped in the world of people with mental problems about what supportive services he will bring to our 22 residents who will not need to travel for these services

And to top the cake, Margaret Fitzpatrick, who is part of Rockland Homes For Heroes and my wife Eileen have volunteered to decorate the room with a military history decor.

PS If you have a precious military relic you would like to see on display, please email me a photo of it at murphy6288@icloud.com with a photo.