The Fisher House, a home away from home for military families

Karen Hamilton talks about the Fisher House Providing a "home away from home" for military families to be close to a loved one during hospitalization.

Mark Eibner: Hi this is Mark Eibner with Broker IPTV and I am here today with Karen Hamilton and Karen, tell me a little bit about the Fisher House, what it does and what we are celebrating today?

Karen Hamilton: Today is the 100th anniversary of Zachary Fisher, who is the patron of the Fisher foundation, and the Fisher foundation has a component that provides Fisher Houses to the military veterans and active duty personnel, who are undergoing medical treatment locally. So here in Denver, they can come and stay at the Denver Fisher House. We have a 46 active Fisher Houses across the country, two of them are Germany and we have a number about three that are erected every year and we are now in the plans, we are planning to construct a new Fisher House, because the Denver VA medical center is constructing their facilities out in Aurora, and so we are going to have a new 20 room Fisher house out close to them.

Mark Eibner: Great, so where does your funding come from then to build these Fisher Houses?

Karen Hamilton: Our funding comes from the community pretty much, individuals we campaign with the combined veteran campaigns which represents the federal employees throughout the country. We will be at some campaigns here in Denver, several fairs, we will have a board there and we also get, we also have some corporate donors I believe we got the Wildwood Casino just put on a special weekend that we were the patrons of a certain percentage of their funds and we also had a similar situation with the Denver Outlaws. They donated a percentage of their proceeds to our cause I think that was about two weeks at one of their games.

Mark Eibner: Any other notable donations made to the organization?

Karen Hamilton: I believe the Coors Foundation donated about six months ago, made a large donation and we are growing, we are hoping for many more.

Mark Eibner: What about Barack Obama?

Karen Hamilton: Oh yes Barack Obama, the President and then in the spring donated his Nobel peace prize to a number of charitable organizations, and the Fisher house foundation received the largest part of those donations. He also came to visit the Fisher house in, one of our Fisher houses in Virginia, and so we are pleased that we have just all sorts of phenomenal support for our foundation.

Mark Eibner: Great Karen, appreciate you being here today and all the work you do, everything you do is volunteer, is that right?

Karen Hamilton: Yes it is yes. I am the President of the Board, we have a board of nine members and then we also have friends who kind of provide direct support to us and then we also have volunteers.

Mark Eibner: Great, thank you good information. This is Mark Eibner with broker IPTV.

Rep. Mike Coffman stops by the Denver Fisher House
A 100th Birthday Celebration for Zachery Fisher

Posted on October 06, 2010 10:03:02 by Blog Author