JACKSON – She was raised in Jackson, has lived for three decades in Point Pleasant and by the end of the year Army Major Dolly Harris will be moving into her fully customized home in Howell thanks to Homes For Our Troops (HFOT).
“I never thought I’d be a candidate for this,” Harris said. She remarked that HFOT volunteers were like “a family that you can count on and they don’t forget you.”
Harris said she loved her Point Pleasant home but that due to her disabilities it was becoming increasingly difficult to live there. Her current non-adapted home has narrow doorways creating daily challenges with moving from room to room. The new home in Howell has an accessible shower, open floor plan, and a kitchen with pull-down shelving.
She enlisted in the New Jersey Army National Guard in 1988.
“In 2005 I was exposed to environmental toxins,” she said. This happened during her combat deployment in Iraq when she was serving with the 42nd Division as a logistics officer. She was exposed to burn pits and damaged vehicles.
“This resulted with mobility and balance issues and ultimately a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis,” she added.
Since her diagnosis in 2006, her condition has significantly declined. She is unable to move her legs, and damage to her spinal cord continues to progressively limit mobility in her arms.
Harris noted that she joined the military after graduating from college “and I would go to work and I would go home and then I’d be, now what? It wasn’t fulfilling.” Then she met a friend who used to be in the Air Force who was “the first female veteran that I met. Then I was in the post office and saw a poster for the New Jersey Army National Guard and that was one of the top three decisions of my life.”
“It was fun. It was adventurous. It was great,” Harris remarked. “After 9/11 everything changed and I was activated in June 2004 and went overseas in January 2005 to Iraq. When I got diagnosed for MS, they never gave a question of whether it was service connected. There was a lot of bad exposures. I had to get the serial numbers off the vehicles that were destroyed. That was my job. There was a burn pit on my base.”
She said she initially started finding it difficult to maintain her balance. “That was obviously not like me. I was active. I was fit. I did not want to be sent back home.” She looked up symptoms on the internet and knew what her diagnosis might be upon her return home to the United States.
Harris is involved with the Ocean County Coin Club, where she has made many friends. She told this newspaper that the most treasured item in her coin collection was a gold coin that she acquired.
A former active member of the VFW, she is looking forward to her HFOT home giving her the freedom to participate in community events again, as well as allowing her to return to fishing, her favorite activity.
“An adaptive home will allow me to feel better about myself. It will encourage me to focus on what I can do versus what I can’t do,” she said.
HFOT held a community kickoff event recently at the Columbian Club on Bartley Road. It signified the start of the building process for a specially adapted custom-built home that will be donated to Harris.
“Thank you for caring about veterans. I am so thankful for HFOT – thankful that you seek to improve a veteran’s living accommodations and improve a veteran’s existence,” Harris added.
HFOT is a publicly funded 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that builds and donates specially adapted custom homes nationwide to severely injured post-9/11 veterans, to enable them to rebuild their lives.
Like Harris, most of these veterans have sustained life-altering injuries including multiple limb amputations, partial or full paralysis, and/or severe traumatic brain injury. Their new homes restore some of the freedom and independence veterans sacrificed while defending our country, and enable them to focus on their family, recovery, and rebuilding their lives.
HFOT builds these homes where the veteran chooses to live, and continues its relationship with the veterans after home delivery to assist them with rebuilding their lives. HFOT has built over 415 specially adapted custom homes, 72 ongoing projects, and another 1,800 plus veterans who may qualify.
Celeste Baptiste serves as chief financial officer of HFOT and said during the ceremony, “we don’t see what we do as charity; we really see what we do as a moral obligation of the citizens of our country to repay a very small portion of a debt that will never be completely repaid to these veterans and their families. We are not federally or state funded.”
Harris’s adapted home will be located in Howell and she got a special welcome from Howell Mayor John Leggio who noted “Howell is a wonderful place to live,” a presentation by Monmouth County Commissioner Director Commissioner Thomas A. Arnone who said “we are all united” and a greeting from Congressman Chris Smith’s office by his director of public affairs and outreach, Jessica Rohr.
Also present were Major General Lisa Hou, the director of the office of the Joint Surgeon General National Guard Bureau and retired Major Jeanette Nieves-Ayala along with Casey Rech who has been a member Harris’s care team for eight years. Noted singer and veteran Ron Brooks sang the Star-Spangled Banner early in the ceremony.
For additional information about the organization and Major Harris, visit hfotusa.org and hfotusa.org/dharris
