FISHER HOUSE

You may not have known about these.

I'll be visiting one on Sunday to visit CPT Will. He and his family are in one in Landstuhl.

Worthy of a donation, don't you think?

Read it all.

His wife stayed in the Fisher House at the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Md., the hospital where Alaniz spent his first weeks. His parents stayed at the Fisher House next to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Alaniz one day was allowed to visit.

“My mom cooked,” he said. “That’s when I really realized what it was.” His parents stayed three weeks. A home away from home, he said.

That was the vision of New York building contractor and philanthropist Zachary Fisher and his wife, Elizabeth. Between 1990 and his death in 1999, Fisher had 26 houses built for military and veteran families, taking his cue from Ronald McDonald homes for families of ill children. But the Fishers wanted to expand on their history of helping service families.

Each home has eight bedrooms, a kitchen, dining room, living room and laundry. Six more have opened since Fisher’s death, financed now though fund-raising, private contributions and the Combined Federal Campaign. New homes are being built at a pace of one every eight months.