Supporting Aging Veterans: An In-Depth Look at Hero's Bridge and the Challenges Ahead

Have you ever wondered about the unique challenges our older veterans face? Today, we're joined by Molly Brooks, the founder of Hero's Bridge, an organization dedicated to serving the needs of veterans aged 65 and older. Molly paints a vivid picture of her journey, tracing back to her childhood as the daughter of a Vietnam veteran and her 30 years of experience as a nurse. These experiences culminated in a fervent desire to bridge the gap in services for our older veteran population, a mission that Hero's Bridge answers with immense passion and dedication.

As we peel back the layers of the veteran support ecosystem, we delve into the gritty details of navigating the VA system. It's a journey not for the faint-hearted, but Hero's Bridge steps in, providing a much-needed bridge through its battle buddies program. We also venture into the territory of collaborations and expansions. Exciting news ahead as Molly and I discuss the expansion of services into Northern Virginia, along with the power of collaboration between veteran nonprofits.

And if you think the housing crisis is bad, wait till you hear about the struggle for affordable housing for older veterans in the DC metro area. The good news is Hero's Bridge is not backing down from this challenge. Molly and her team are hard at work to provide a 44-cottage-style village specifically designed to cater to the needs of our aging heroes. As we wrap up our conversation, we touch on the topic of food insecurity among older veterans and how Hero's Bridge is breaking down logistical barriers to deliver much-needed aid. So tune in, buckle up, and join us on this enlightening journey into the world of Hero's Bridge and the tireless efforts of Molly Brooks and her team.

Transcript

Larry Zilliox: 0:14

Good morning. I'm Larry Zilliachs, your host director of culinary services here at the Warrior Retreat at Bull Run, and today our guest is Molly Brooks, and she's with Hero's Bridge, which is in Fauquier County, just a little bit south of the retreat, and we've been asked her to stop by and tell us all about Heroes Bridge, what they do, some of the things they got coming up, and I know there's some really big stuff in the future for the organization, so I'm really excited about having her here and having a chance to hear all about it, so welcome.

Molly Brooks: 0:49

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Larry Zilliox: 0:50

Yeah, and so tell us a little bit about Hero's Bridge, how it got started, and really what the focus of the organization is a little bit different than most veteran service organizations.

Molly Brooks: 1:03

Sure. So I guess I have to go back in time a little bit, I guess, to my upbringing. My dad was a career marine, two tours in Vietnam and he retired when I was very young. I was the last of five kids, so I was only six when he retired and I kind of grew up in his footsteps More the other, my older brothers and sisters. He was gone a lot from the opposite for me. He no longer worked and it was just me and him. He bought a small hobby farm. So definitely have that upbringing of being raised by this kind of giant of a man Vietnam veteran. That was amazing but also struggled, like so many of our Vietnam veterans did. He struggled with some mental health issues but also some physical issues. He was diagnosed with diabetes at a very young age, which you know. Just thought bad luck back then but came out later that of course it was age and orange exposure.

Molly Brooks: 2:00

So, I have that background but grew up and became a nurse and I always loved working with older people from nursing school on, and I chose to specialize in gerontology the care of older people very early. So I think you kind of bring your your childhood experiences to whatever your profession is. So I always kind of gravitated in my nursing career to the older veterans and been a nurse now 30 years that's hard to say, it goes by so fast but I noticed that not all, but a lot of our older veterans weren't doing okay, especially our Vietnam veterans as they got older. I noticed it a lot over my career but in 2016 decided you know it shouldn't be this way and decided to found a nonprofit in our kind of small town of Warrington and Fockere County just for older veterans.

Molly Brooks: 3:00

So if you think about 2016, you know Iraq and Afghanistan were still still going on and there were so many nonprofits that were serving our younger veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan and I was glad, like they need that if our older veterans had had that kind of service, back then there probably wouldn't need to be a hero's bridge, but when, as a nurse, I would reach out about older veterans, what they need is so very different than what younger veterans need. So it wasn't always a match and I always kind of like there should be something just for older veterans. And in 2016, I took the leap and founded the organization and really built the programs, I hope, around kind of more what older veterans need.

Molly Brooks: 3:45

So, it's been about seven years now and it's been probably one of my greatest joys in life kind of growing it and taking care of that population of older veterans.

Larry Zilliox: 3:55

So for a lot of our listeners they may not know that some of the more well-known nonprofit veteran service organizations out there, like the Wounded Warrior Project, just service, post 9-11 veterans and they're a huge organization. They bring a tremendous amount of resources to the table but they're not available for older veterans.

Molly Brooks: 4:16

Right? Yeah, it's funny you say that. So I was fortunate to participate in a leadership program that the George W Bush Presidential Library hosts every summer and I was selected one of 50. And you have to do a project when you go there for the summer and my project was kind of looking at the needs of older veterans. Of course, that's where I wanted to focus, and Wounded Warrior Project was very gracious in digging into their data and they have an amazing call center that serves younger veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. You're right, just post 9-11. But they pulled the data and they receive about 10,000 calls per year from older veterans who isn't in their mission and there's nothing wrong with that. You know, every nonprofit has to choose a mission.

Molly Brooks: 5:04

You can't serve everyone, you can't do everybody, but yeah, the older veterans were reaching out and there really does need to be something just for them.

Larry Zilliox: 5:12

And so help us understand, define older veterans.

Molly Brooks: 5:16

Yeah, well, you know, there's lots of ways to define it. We chose to define it as 65 and older.

Larry Zilliox: 5:21

Okay.

Molly Brooks: 5:22

Just because there has to be a line somewhere. And for me as a gerontologist it was often where people may start having issues. They've retired, they don't know what to do now. You know, maybe lose a spouse that was kind of managing the household, your kids move away. So we kind of looked at that age as sometimes that's where you start needing help and that's where we chose to draw the line. Back then, when I first founded the organization, it also really kind of it bifurcated the two veteran population 65 and older was almost exclusively Vietnam, korea and World War Two and of course all the periods in between. Recently, though this year actually, I guess the Desert Storm veterans are starting to age out because we get now a couple Desert Storm veterans each month on our services. We get calls about them. My husband hates when I say that because that's his generation. He's hard to believe they're getting to where they need help. But yeah, that's that we choose to divide it at 65 and older.

Larry Zilliox: 6:32

Okay, and so you receive calls for all sorts of services. I'm imagining what are some of the primary services that you provide for this older population.

Molly Brooks: 6:45

Yeah, I always like to kind of say it's never the veterans that call us. I could probably we serve about 600 veterans. We follow them and it's I could probably count on one hand the time it was the actual veteran that called for help. We get most of our calls from hospitals, social services, other like nonprofits and churches that have come across an older veteran that isn't doing well or needs help and I think the number one call the reason people call us is a veteran that is socially isolated. So for whatever reason, they've ended up in their later years with no one to help them. And it happens.

Molly Brooks: 7:28

I really think there's a few different kind of veterans that we see. We see veterans that have never been okay since their wartime and they just never had families. And then we have another set that came home and now they're estranged from their families because a lot of our Vietnam veterans did not receive help and sometimes turned to drugs and alcohol and had anger issues and may have lost their family in the process. So we unfortunately have a lot that are estranged from their family and are now alone. And then I think the third set is they've kind of outlived their family. A lot of our Korean war veterans. In World War II veterans have kind of outlived everyone that loved them, so we just have a lot that end up alone. And that is the number one issue.

Molly Brooks: 8:19

We have hospitals, case managers that are trying to send an older veteran home and they realize there's no one there to help them with anything. So what we do about that is we assign every veteran. We get a call about what we call a battle buddy. There's a model of care. We actually train our battle buddies and something called the community health worker model of care and they're first and foremost a friend to that veteran and then but they're also a little bit of a navigator, because it's very different every veteran we get a call about what they need. So we have an assessment that we do and then that battle buddy just starts solving problems as best we can, and so that is number one the social isolation.

Molly Brooks: 9:04

they need a friend and they need a navigator. By far the number two issue is housing related issues Substandard housing, broken housing, housing they've aged and they can no longer get around their own home, unaffordable housing, just a lot of housing issues. So those are our two things social isolation and housing issues.

Larry Zilliox: 9:31

Yeah, and what role does some of the mental health and the self medicating play in this? I mean, it seems to me that I see a lot of situations where it's sort of a downroad spiral and there's a number of factors it's usually not just one factor. And so I'm just curious as to I'm sure you take a kind of all treatment and approach to it and say, okay, what are the different issues and let's get help on each one of these. But who do you reach out for that?

Molly Brooks: 10:05

Are you using county resources or state resources or private insurance or yeah, so you're right, mental health is often one of the problems that they're facing, and so the battle buddy does an assessment and, as you know, a lot of people think that all veterans get whatever they need from the VA. But it's actually rather complex, and some veterans we can assess and they do rate care from the VA and of course we connect them to those resources, and the VA has really done a lot of work in the last five years to around mental health and the suicide issue. It'll never be done, it'll never be done and it seems like it'll never be enough, but every VA hospital has a suicide intervention team where they follow veterans that are at risk, older or younger, thank goodness. And so that's the first thing is should the VA be helping this veteran? Because small nonprofits can only afford and have the resources to do so much, and we really want the entities that sent them to war, the government, to kind of be doing what they're supposed to be doing.

Larry Zilliox: 11:15

So that's the first step, and let me just point this out the older you get, the older you get, the hard is to navigate the VA system. Oh my goodness, oh my goodness. It's a struggle. It's a struggle for young people right. Yes, it is Just the paperwork. The time it takes, it's frustrating and if you have issues that you need to help with, you need that help now. It can be overwhelming and having that navigator that advocate it's so important.

Molly Brooks: 11:52

Yeah, thank you for saying that. You're right. It's even difficult for our younger veterans to navigate. The first thing they do is tell you to go online, like oh, go online and fill this out or fax us your DD 214. Now, who has a fax?

Larry Zilliox: 12:07

Right there, you see that they're just opposing things, because the younger veteran doesn't hardly know what a fax is and the older veteran probably hasn't had a computer that works in years.

Molly Brooks: 12:21

Really, or ever. Yeah, there seems to be a cutoff line somewhere between 75 and 80 where they never did the technology thing, like they don't have a smartphone, they don't have a printer in their house. So our battle buddies can kind of act as a liaison. They can take a tablet to the home and here's the VA site. We can't do it for them, we're not allowed to, but we can sit beside them as they fill out the online form. The VA still, remarkably, relies on fax a lot, so we had to have a fax line added to our office. The T-Mobile was like what? Like nobody asked for that anymore and I said well, talk to the VA because they do. So, yeah, our battle buddies do help navigate that system. But for the veterans that won't connect with the VA my father never would connect with the VA and there are many Vietnam veterans that for a variety of reasons will not or the ones that are evaluated and they don't qualify for certain benefits Then the battle buddies do work really hard to connect them to local resources, mental health resources.

Larry Zilliox: 13:25

How about the Virginia Department of Veteran Services?

Molly Brooks: 13:28

Yeah, we love them.

Molly Brooks: 13:29

We love them. I'm really proud of the state of Virginia, the Commonwealth, and what they've done for veteran care. So they have a whole line that will navigate them through the benefits and then they have a whole nether. I'm sure you know family support, family services and supports. That's been spun up a lot in the last five years and we rely on them a lot. We hope they also rely on us for older veterans, because I'm not sure if this is still the case. They used to have a rule where they couldn't go to the veterans home. The veterans had to go to their state offices. So sometimes we would be that liaison that would run over to the home and have something filled out or something. But yeah, we love the Virginia Department of Veteran Services. They've always been really good to us and our veterans.

Larry Zilliox: 14:16

I have, yeah, we've worked with them a fair amount as well and they do a tremendous job, and especially now we have a real push on for PAC Act claims with the Agent Orange and things like that and with the August 9th deadline coming up for that one year compensation. They're just working nonstop over there and we really appreciate the work they do. What about what's in the future?

Molly Brooks: 14:48

Oh, so we just, on June 1, expanded our services into all of northern Virginia and out to the West Virginia state line. We received state funding from two different departments in the state of Virginia. The Department of Veteran Services gave us some funding, as did the Virginia Department of Rural Health, who is very worried about seniors living out in the rural areas, so we received funding. We've always served a five county area since we were formed and now we just expanded to like 11 counties and it's a little overwhelming, but we're excited and blessed to have the support to do that.

Larry Zilliox: 15:32

Did you go to them or did they come to you? The Rural Health Department.

Molly Brooks: 15:36

The Rural Health Department came to us. They heard about our work and you know what, I don't know. I started to say funny, but I'm not sure if it's funny. There was so much money given out by the federal government during COVID as, like COVID, recovery money, and it filtered to the states and I think the states actually had trouble matching the money to people that were actually really doing good work. And so they found us and the Department of Veteran Services. It was a little bit mutual. We've worked really closely. So I had met with the commissioner and he said, hey, we have this grant coming up and you need to apply. So I guess I don't know who found who there, but I think that just kind of enforces the collaboration between veteran nonprofits.

Molly Brooks: 16:24

There's so many of us, thank goodness but, we're so much more powerful when we work together. I was so happy to you just gave me the tour of your beautiful property here and I just hope we're all friends and collaborate and we're just so much stronger network when we do that.

Larry Zilliox: 16:42

I have found that here with the we call it the regional veterans collaborative, which is a combination of VSOs here in Prince William County and Fairfax, and then we have the Northern Virginia Veteran Suicide Coalition, which is a number of VSOs that come together to try and help combat that issue, and I can say we're we've launched, we're getting brochures made for a new program called Operation Save the Number. It tells a veteran how to save the new 988 plus one number in their buddy's phone.

Molly Brooks: 17:22

Oh good.

Larry Zilliox: 17:23

And says and so there's instructions on saving it in the Android and instructions on saving it in an iPhone. I love it and say hey, if you're having issues and you think you need help, call me. But if you can't get hold of me, press this button here and talk to a VA counselor.

Molly Brooks: 17:42

I love that.

Larry Zilliox: 17:43

That's an amazing campaign. So we're very excited about that and we're also working with somebody who's in your neighborhood, is Czech, and his guys down at the VFW in Warrenton. They have started dog tags for life and it is a dog tag with the 988 plus one number on it, and what's really nice is that the metal that it's made of when you put it on your keys it makes a particular sound. So every time you pick up your keys you think of that number.

Molly Brooks: 18:12

You kind of remind you.

Larry Zilliox: 18:13

Yeah, and so I definitely want to put you in touch with them. We need those yeah. And they are crushing it with those dog tags. They were here for our vets, for vets, and gave out a lot of them. Okay, I also want to. Are you working at all with the Home Depot Foundation?

Molly Brooks: 18:31

The Home Depot Foundation has been good to us for kind of major home repairs that we come across with some of our older veterans. For instance, we had a complete heating system go out for one veteran. He was carrying water from a boiler like up and down the steps. It was terrible and they bought him a whole new heating system like $5,000. We are talking to them about our village project, which I know you asked me what's on the horizon and we should probably talk about that. I'm really excited about that.

Molly Brooks: 19:00

Yeah, so are we, and I got it more excited looking at everything you're doing around here. But we are talking to the Home Depot Foundation about hopefully helping us with that project. They've been following it and say they probably will, but yeah, they do great things for veterans.

Larry Zilliox: 19:16

They really do. They're goal, from what I understand, is to reach that half a billion dollars worth of assistance to veterans and veteran organizations by 2025. Nice, and they do crazy stuff for us here. When we need help with something, they are the first ones to step up, either with volunteers or with material, or both. Yeah, or both yeah, so yeah. So tell us about this plan for the tiny village.

Molly Brooks: 19:47

Yeah, well, I think, as I said, our number two issue is housing problems and some of our veterans. We're visiting them in their natural habitat, so we're going into their own homes and sometimes when we leave their house we just have to sit in our car for a while because we feel so bad and they have infestations or the house is falling down around them or there's not good heat or cooling, and that's happened for years and the board and I began to talk about how do we stop putting a bandaid on some of these situations, because some of the homes can't be remediated. They're either rentals we're not gonna fix up a house for a landlord or the house is it's a trailer that just really can't be remediated different situations. So how do we stop putting a bandaid? These veterans need to just be brought into a safer, more supportive environment.

Molly Brooks: 20:41

So we started looking at some of the micro housing projects around the country, the tiny homes. I'll be the first to say they're not all done well, it really takes a quality organization that's thinking through the permanent supportive services that are built into the village. But we visited a couple that we loved and we declared our intentions. I guess it's been about two and a half years that we were gonna do a micro housing project in Fockere County, the village that we loved the most. It wasn't for veterans, but was in the Ozarks, where I grew up, which I don't know some people may not know this, but it's a very economically depressed part of the country and they had a beautiful community and I thought, you know, if an area of the country that is so economically depressed can build something like this, we can do it in the 11th wealthiest county in the country.

Larry Zilliox: 21:37

If we can't.

Molly Brooks: 21:38

we just don't want to. So I came back and started talking to the county supervisors, because there's just so many zoning and land use issues when you try to do something and I was scared to death. I see all the fights about land use and zoning and the data centers and, to my surprise, the county supervisors could not have been more excited and supportive and got that. We're in a little bit of an affordable housing crisis across the board, not just for veterans or seniors.

Molly Brooks: 22:07

Everywhere you look, yeah, it's bad, and it's bad across the country, I think. But the DC metro area it's terrible. They're just not enough stock. So we've been working on it. We've found our spot. It's right in the town of Morenton. The engineers and architects, we did the feasibility phase and they planned 44 cottages. We don't call them tiny homes because people seem to get allergic to that term. They start worrying what you're gonna build? Sure, and they're actually not quite as tiny, I think. A lot of times people picture like the tiny home nation show where they're, like climbing up a ladder into a loft, yeah, that's not gonna work.

Molly Brooks: 22:43

No, not for our veterans, but they're about 560 square feet, which we did a market study, and that's kind of similar to senior apartments in our community. They'll be all aging in place, zero step, all the other aging related wide doors, accessible bathrooms and everything. Fundraising has gone well. We think we need about $6 million to do this project and we have commitments of almost 2 million, either cash that people have given or commitments of 2 million. So we have a ways to go. But yeah, it's been really amazing to see how excited people are about it.

Larry Zilliox: 23:24

I think a lot of people realize that housing for older veterans is a serious issue because, as you say, they're in a house that they may have been in for a long time and it is way bigger than their needs. The older they get, the harder it is to keep it up. They are on a pension or receiving some disability pay, so they don't really have the money to pay $8,000 for new gutters or even $1,500 for a ramp. So this idea of putting them in that zero barrier, smaller home, that it's not tiny and that they're constricted, it's built for their needs and the size that they need and the size that works for them.

Molly Brooks: 24:16

Yeah, it's funny you say that because a lot of our veterans, even if their home is kind of single family or bigger, they've often hollowed out a certain section they live in and they don't use the rest of the house. So you're exactly right. And the other thing is the yard maintenance.

Larry Zilliox: 24:32

They just physically can't do it, not pushing them more when it's 110 degree heated.

Molly Brooks: 24:38

Exactly, yeah, we don't even wanna do that right yeah?

Larry Zilliox: 24:41

for sure.

Molly Brooks: 24:42

Another important part of the village is that there will be a community center in the middle and we wanna build in supportive services. So we wanna have benefits officers that visit once a month, a physician that visits once a month. We wanna have a small food pantry that if they forgot something at the store, they can grab it real quick. Of course, volunteers that come in and support them and you told me about so many amazing things you guys do here and it gave me a hundred ideas. So there will be a place where they can gather and receive a lot of supports within the village too.

Larry Zilliox: 25:15

And is food insecurity something that you see amongst the older veterans?

Molly Brooks: 25:21

It is, and sometimes it's financial. They can't afford food, but you know what it's often they can't drive.

Larry Zilliox: 25:29

Transportation.

Molly Brooks: 25:30

Yeah, so they can't get to the grocery store, right, it's also there's some barriers I think people don't think about. There's one gentleman he can't drive so people were bringing him groceries. But he was blind. He has macular degeneration and has lost most of his vision, so he couldn't see to cook well either. So he really needed prepared meals. But he was a little bit over the income to qualify for meals on wheels. So we have a program it's called Moms Meals. It's a big nationwide company. It's kind of like the Amazon of food delivery, so it's prepared meals. All they have to do is warm it and it comes right on their doorstep every two weeks and it's super simple. So sometimes it's finances, but sometimes it's kind of more logistical barriers. So we do send those meals to several veterans. Now we're starting to send them to veterans around the country with our expansion. It's just easy for them and they need good nutrition and they can be tailored to diets like there's cardiac ones or diabetics ones.

Larry Zilliox: 26:35

Oh, that's great. Yeah, oh, that's huge actually.

Molly Brooks: 26:38

Yeah.

Larry Zilliox: 26:39

Yeah, because you know, anybody who lacks the financial resources to be able to put into the type of food they're buying usually ends up with the cheapest food, which is the worst for you. Yes, absolutely, and you know that's just gonna aggravate conditions that they may have, such as memory issues or, you know, just health issues that are gonna cause them to fall or anything like that.

Molly Brooks: 27:05

I'm sure you've seen it too. Sometimes they like one month they'll buy their medicines and then the next month they'll stock up on groceries. So they're kind of choosing between critical things that they need.

Larry Zilliox: 27:15

So if we can, solve the nutrition issue.

Molly Brooks: 27:18

We're always happy to do that.

Larry Zilliox: 27:19

Yeah, that's great, and you know, and I had somebody tell me one time well, yeah, I know they can't drive anymore, but you know you can order your food online and they'll deliver it to you. And I'm like they don't use a computer, exactly.

Molly Brooks: 27:34

They can't door dash and not to mention the expense or the rural areas.

Larry Zilliox: 27:38

Yeah, that's right. It's not available everywhere you live in a city.

Molly Brooks: 27:41

Yeah, you can't door dash in Amosville, so it's nice to think that way and it may work in some situations.

Larry Zilliox: 27:48

So for those of you who are listening that are not in the area Amosville, your cell phone doesn't work there. Very true, yeah, well that is just super exciting news. So, before we go one, what's the best way for people to get hold of you? If I have a friend or a relative who needs help, who's in your area, what's the best way for them to get a hold of you?

Molly Brooks: 28:18

Yeah, so it's funny you say that we just established our first toll-free nationwide number. It's 866 Old Vets, which we hope isn't offensive. We actually polled a lot of our older veterans Right, that was their favorite one out of our options. So 866 Old Vets will get you into our call center and we'll take down the information and go from there. You can also go to our website, which is just heroesbridgeorg, and there's one of those contact us forms that you can fill out.

Larry Zilliox: 28:50

OK.

Molly Brooks: 28:52

Or we have an email info@ herosbridge. org if you prefer just to send an email.

Larry Zilliox: 28:58

OK, and the reason for the nationwide number. I mean, you're now going to get calls from all sorts of crazy places, yeah. How are you going to provide services for them?

Molly Brooks: 29:10

Yeah, well, we already are getting the calls from. We have been for probably about the last year. I guess people are just starting to hear more about us. We had an article in the Epic Times which I had never heard of, but apparently a lot of other people have, and we got a lot of calls after that. My participation in the Bush Institute's program kind of got us a little bit of publicity.

Molly Brooks: 29:38

The VA in June sent out, did a little surprise to us. We didn't know it. They did a blog that went out to 13 million veterans and we got 300 calls within 72 hours. So the word's getting out. So we're just taking a leap of faith and, as the state has given us some funding to hire a couple of dedicated people, so we're a little nervous. But we're taking a leap of faith and we've had to do that a few times over the years. Like can we really offer veterans meals? Like how are we going to? And I'm just, we've always been supported by the community. So we're taking another leap. We are a little nervous about it, but we feel like we can do it and we feel like we have to do it. I actually never wanted to start a nonprofit. I wish Heroes Bridge wasn't needed, but it is. So sometimes we just say we're going to do this and that's what we're doing with the toll free number Great.

Larry Zilliox: 30:39

Yeah, well, great, well, you're doing amazing work, and I would encourage anybody who has an extra $6 million laying around to give Molly a call, because this is very important. The cottage, little village, sounds just so amazing, and what would be even better is if you build it, and now there's a blueprint for it. And then there was one built in Iowa, and there was one built in New York, and there was one built in Connecticut, and every state should have one.

Molly Brooks: 31:09

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and certain states would need more than one, and we have had reach-outs that have heard about the project Like we would love to do that here, and I always say, well, let me get the first one down, because you're right, I think once we it's very difficult, complex, but then it will be repeatable, the business arrangements will be done and you just repeat it and learned so much and finding the right spot and the right land for it. So we are excited and I really hope people are excited when they hear about it. You asked how to reach out, but I really hope people will follow us. So we have a pretty active Facebook page if anyone wants to follow us on there, and then on our website you can sign up for our newsletter. We don't spam. We usually just send that one newsletter a month and it'll just kind of keep you updated on everything that we're doing.

Larry Zilliox: 32:02

Yeah, I get the newsletter. I read it every time it comes and it's great because it does give us everything you guys are doing and I love the stories that are in there about the contact with the veterans and their personal stories that are included in the newsletter.

Molly Brooks: 32:19

It's really something, yeah, thank you.

Larry Zilliox: 32:21

So listen, thank you so much for coming and visiting us here at the Warrior Treat and taking time to tell us all about Heroes Bridge. It's an amazing veteran service organization. It's just doing incredible work here in Virginia and we just wish you all the luck in the world.

Molly Brooks: 32:39

Thank you so much, Thanks for what you guys do here and thanks for having me.

Larry Zilliox: 32:43

Yeah, so we'll have another episode next week. Until then, thanks for listening.