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Vets down on their luck find safe harbor: this Minnesota program has assisted some 2,600 veterans, giving them a helping hand and a chance for a new start. VFW Posts and members play an instrumental role.

Article Excerpt
On a quiet street in Minneapolis sits a quaint stucco cottage. With its hardwood floors, arched doorways and cozy fireplace, it's a house most people would be proud to call home. In the kitchen window sit plump tomatoes freshly picked from the lush plants growing in the yard. An unsightly tree stump out back has been painted to look like the U.S. flag, and the pansies are in bloom. Vince Hallas, a previous resident, can be thanked for these artistic endeavors.

But after all his hard work, he had to leave. Hallas, 43, wasn't prepared to live alone. Not yet anyway. He was living in the cottage as a guest of Minnesota Assistance Council for Veterans (MACV).

A former Marine, Hallas was sober, but knew that to continue healing, he would need to go back to MACV's Building 47 on the campus of the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Medical Center. It's a place, Hallas says, he can get the support he needs to stay on track.

Since its inception more than 12 years ago, MACV has assisted 2,600 homeless veterans, or about the equivalent of five battalions, as the program's president and CEO, Jimmie L. Coulthard, likes to say.

And for veterans like Hallas, it has become known as a haven for homeless vets. A Marine from 1979-1982, including a year at U.S. Naval Air Station Keflavic, Iceland, where he was a helicopter door gunner, Hallas says he had non-combat-related psychological problems, which he later tried to bury, with alcohol.

After being honorably discharged from the Marines, he went from one job to the next. Undergoing bouts of homelessness, Hallas wound up at MACV a little over a year ago.

He is preparing to move to a state veterans home in Hastings for further rehabilitation.

Hallas' story is like many others who have come through MACV's program, according to Coulthard, who can personally relate to these veterans.

After serving with C Co., 3rd Bn., 196th Light Inf. Bde., in Vietnam in 1967-68, Coulthard found it nearly impossible to reintegrate into society after the war. He was drinking all the time, but admits he was a heavy drinker before he went to war.

Coulthard became a riverboat captain, pushing barges down the Mississippi, Ohio and Illinois rivers. It was a job, he says, that saved his life.

"We worked 30 days on and 30 days off with six-hour shifts," says Coulthard, now 59 and celebrating...

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