With just days remaining until the cessation of services at the Georgia War Veterans Home’s Domiciliary Unit in the Pete Wheeler Building, a community group has taken the relocation of veterans into their own hands and has found the benefit of helping those in need.

Morris Graybeal, director of Georgia War Veterans Home, said that by Friday afternoon, all the veterans displaced by the closure of the unit will have found homes.

“We have ten left and they should all be in their new homes by Friday afternoon,” Graybeal said. “Everyone has been taken care of.”

The Displaced Veterans Project Team, a loose coalition of churches, laypeople and community partners, has pulled together to provide the necessary supplies for setting up a home thanks to generous donations from the community.

“The outpouring has been unbelievable,” Sue Wright said Tuesday. “It’s difficult to find everything you need to start a house all at once.”

Since news of the domiciliary closing, the community has rallied around the veterans who need help finding a home and the Displaced Veterans Group has organized the donations of food, furniture, appliances, linens and cookware.

“We’re thrilled,” Alan McGee said of the response of the community to the veterans. McGee allowed warehouse space at his business, Hard to Find Ironworks, to be used to sort out the donated items. Different groups of volunteers have over the past few weeks, sorted out items and grouped them for veterans leaving the domiciliary and moving into residences. The veterans have in the mean time have come by and picked out items for their new homes.

“One fellow came in and we knew he needed a queen-sized blanket,” Linda McGee said. “He’d gotten everything else on his list. He got one blanket and we offered him another blanket, but he said, ‘no, I’m going to leave that for my buddies coming behind me’.”

The McGees said that the community outpouring has inspired some of the displaced veterans to take an active role by volunteering in the future.

“One gentleman told me, ‘as soon as I get settled, when I unpack, the first thing I am going to do is find a place where I can volunteer and pay it back’,” Linda McGee said. “This is healing time.”

Although the volunteers and donors are far too many to name, the group feels like the community has responded in the correct, compassionate manner. Much of the organization of the group was spearheaded by Father Don Caron of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church and the Milledgeville Ministerial Association.

Items that are not used for the veterans will be donated to the Maranatha Mission Home.

“We’re just thrilled,” Alan McGee said. “One vet told me that ‘Christmas came early’.”

“We just want to welcome them into the community,” LInda McGee said. “But, oh what a gift to me.”