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A free home away from home for families of patients at George E. Wahlen Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center is under construction on Salt Lake City's east side.
Dignitaries gathered Friday for a ceremonial groundbreaking, but the frame is already halfway finished for the new Fisher House, which is similar to a Ronald McDonald House near a civilian hospital.
Fisher House is on the southwest portion of the hospital campus, which is just south of the University of Utah.
Derek Donovan, vice president of Fisher House Foundation, said the 17,000-square-foot home will have 20 suites for 20 families at a time.
"You can figure out what the savings are going to be to families," he said. "But the real value is it's a home away from home."
Salt Lake City's VA hospital serves veterans and active-duty men and women from a wide geographical area — southeastern Idaho to east-central Nevada to southern Utah.
The fact that many patients and their families travel far for treatment is one reason the medical center was chosen for a Fisher House, Donovan said. The foundation's motto is "A family's love is good medicine."
Steve Young, director of the VA Salt Lake City Health Care System, said there was another factor as well.
"The other big piece is they need to see a dedicated commitment from the community," Young said.
Donovan said the Fisher House, which will be completed by early next year, will cost between $5 million and $6 million.
The foundation asks each community to raise about half the cost and then "pay it forward" for another Fisher House to be built at a VA hospital or military base.
However, Ray Bachiller, a retired Marine colonel from Sandy who is heading up the fundraising effort, said he expects to do even better.
"I want to surprise the Fisher people and say I don't need their money," said Bachiller, who is confident patriotic Utahns will contribute more than $3 million. "Just today, I picked up $3,000," he said.
The 21-year-old Fisher House Foundation has built 54 Fisher Houses on 38 military bases and next to VA hospitals throughout the country and in Landstuhl, Germany. It was founded by the late Zachary Fisher, a New York real-estate developer and philanthropist who focused on the military.
Every house bears the names of Zachary and Elizabeth Fisher, but the one in Salt Lake City is the first to honor someone else, Donovan said.
It will be dedicated to Chance Phelps, a 19-year-old Marine from Dubois, Wyo., who died in Iraq in 2004. His story was the subject of the 2009 HBO movie "Taking Chance."
Phelps' mother, Gretchen Mack, attended Friday's groundbreaking and said she had passed on $5,000 that she and her daughter raised for the Fisher House. She was stunned, though, to learn the new home would be dedicated in her son's memory.
"I'm still working on them to get one in Wyoming," Mack said.
How to helpthe Fisher House
O More information about the Fisher House Foundation is available.
> fisherhouse.org
To give • Donations to the new Fisher House at the George E. Wahlen Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salt Lake City can be made through Ray Bachiller, 801-545-8762, or bachiller1@aol.com.