Dear Editor,

As we celebrate this holiday season, let’s all think about our veterans and especially our homeless veterans and most of all, our homeless female veterans. I am a Longwood University student, a senior majoring in communications studies.

For an interactive media project, I focused on homeless veterans and I learned a very disturbing fact: the large number of female veterans we have and the more complicated issues they face.

Through contacts at Farmville’s VFW Post 7059, I learned more about this unacceptable situation and then I visited Hunter Holmes McGuire Veterans Hospital in Richmond and my heart sank as I heard about the continuing problem of homeless veterans. When I was told by officials with McGuire’s Health Care for Homeless Veterans program about the extra needs for homeless female veterans, I had to take a step back.

We are, after all, talking about women. The center has a constant need for, I was told, everything from A to Z for women.

To make the situation even worse, some of these women have kids and/or are pregnant.

For more information on donating the much-needed items for homeless female veterans, please contact Brooke Pendelton, HCHV coordinator, (804) 675-5000 Ext. 2438, Brooke.Pendleton@va.gov. 

Tom Lanigan

Keysville