“One team!”
The cheer echoed three times in the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center conference room, uniting a group of men and women under the same jersey logo dedicated to a single cause.
Chicago sports legends Sidney Green, Denis Savard and Minnie Minoso were sitting on the same bench. But they won’t be competing for a championship. This time, they say, their goal will be much more important.
“The words ‘homeless’ and ‘veteran’ should never be in the same sentence,” said former Chicago Bull Sidney Green.
Green, who was with the Bulls in the mid-1980s, was brought together with Savard, who played with the Blackhawks in the 1980s and mid-1990s, and Minoso, a White Sox star leftfielder five different times, starting in the 1950s for the effort. They are teaming with more than 70 community, government and faith-based organizations to help the Edward Hines VA Hospital and Brown in launching the One Team Chicago campaign.
The goal? To end homelessness among Veterans in the Chicago area by 2015.
“Is it a lofty goal? Yes. Is it an achievable goal? Yes, also,” said Michael Anaya, director of the Brown center.
Two former homeless veterans were invited to share their stories and explain how they were able to get off the streets.
Donald Hendrick, 63, said he was homeless for nearly one year before he reached out to Hines.
“No one wanted to talk to me when they learned I was coming back from Vietnam,” Hendrick said. “They hated me, and I didn’t understand why, but it didn’t help me love myself.”
After sleeping on concrete throughout the city for 12 months, Hendrick turned to Hines and got a trainee job, which was enough to get him under a roof. But he would soon face another challenge when he applied for a job at the center.
“The last question was: Have you been convicted of a felony in the past 10 years and I just rolled up that paper into a ball and threw it on the floor,” Hendrick said.
“But then my estranged wife turned on the calculator in her head and counted it down and it turned out I was good by only a couple of weeks, so I picked up the ball, smoothed it out and sent it.”
Hendrick got the job and has never spent another night sleeping in the streets.
Others, like Barbara Wonsley, 46, found it more difficult to reach out for help. It took Wonsley nearly 20 years to make the phone call that changed her life.
“First it was fun, but then the next thing you know, I was selling drugs,” Wonsley said. “That got me in jail and then I knew one thing I wanted to do was not go back.”
Hendrick and Wonsley say the greatest problem is the loss of pride and respect that comes with living on the streets. Their challenge to Chicago is to engage with the homeless community and listen to what these people have to say.
According to HUD and VA’s last assessment, nearly 76,000 veterans nationally were homeless on a given night in 2009. One Team’s goal is to bring that figure down to 60,000 by June.
The VA expects to spend $3.4 billion to provide health care to homeless veterans and $800 million in specialized homeless programs this year. The campaign took on a special meaning for one of the athletes involved.
“I am proud to say that I got my US citizenship six months ago,” Savard said. “I am so, so proud to be able to give back to those who risked their lives for my new country.”
Savard surprised everyone at One Team when he announced that the Savard Foundation was pledging to donate $5,000 to the cause.
The VA is urging those who know homeless or at-risk veterans to call their toll-free service at 877-4AID-VET (or 877-424-3838).
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