Donations

Donations are flowing in at a fast pace. A lot of generous organizations who truly care about our damaged veterans.

The Christmas gift wrapping crew will be coming in today. A big job with almost 100 guys in the house.

"Thanks"giving

The Lutheran church hosted a Thanksgiving meal for all the JH residents at the Prince of Peace Church. The food was furnished, cooked and served by St Paul's Lutheran Church. What a great group of generous giving people.

Our Executive Director has returned for the warm confines of his place in Phoenix. It's good to have him back and involved in the JH operation.

We had a major repair job on the 1st floor of the Bischoff House on Vine Street. The floor was in bad shape from water damage and previous termite infestations. Small matter of $30,000 to bring it up to speed. Contributions would be welcomed.

Our resident population is now hovering around 100 damaged vets. 100 is our capacity.

A lot of activity coming for Christmas. We have received generous contributions from numerous sources. An example is 105 very nice knit hats we received from an organization called "Knitters for Obama". Not really a political organization. Just a group from numerous states knitting to help the needy. How nice is that!

Late in Week

The JH Director has been in Phoenix for a couple of weeks and will return Nov 24th or 25th.

The Prince of Peace church will host the annual JH Thanksgiving celebration. The meal will be prepared and served by St Paul Lutheran Church @ 12Noon.

The JH Christmas party will also be at the Prince of Peace church at 12 Noon Dec 20th. Santa will be in attendance. The meal will be hosted by Christ and St Paul Lutheran churches.

Another Week

After the whirlwind of last week this week is starting out as the boring and mundane. I am trying to get out a Christmas mailing that will include the JH Christmas card and a flyer for next years golf outing. Around 1500 names in the data base. It's a big job - not exciting.

Met with a foundation today that will be giving us $30K in December.

Meeting with the architect tomorrow to discuss renovations that are being done in the Bischoff House.

Tomorrow at 2:30 the weekly clinical meeting will happen. That's always interesting.

Veterans Day Week

Nov 11th was Veterans Day. A lot happened for vets this week.

I attended a dedication service Nov 9th at Deerfield Honors Veteran's Park. I rode in with the Rolling Thunder group. The ride was fine but super cold during the service.

Nov 11th was a Veterans service at the Viet Nam Vet Memorial in Eden Park. Super event attend by about 30 guys from JH.

Nov 13th was the High School Graduation ceremony at Princeton HS. 5 vets from JH received their HS diplomas. The event was very well done.

John Erby, the JH Board President, passes in his sleep on Sat night Nov 8th. The service was held on Friday Nov 14th at Hodapp Funeral Home. Based on the attendance John was loved and will be missed by many.

A week of celebration, happiness, sadness puncuated with glimses of reality.

Recent Updates

It is with heavy sad hearts that we all attended the memorial service for Katie Beeman-Malone on Friday night. It was a celebration of life for our Executive Director Bill Malone's wife, who recently passed away after losing her battle with cancer. Almost everyone from JH was in attendance. The service was officiated by Rev Ron Ewell.

It appears that we have a permit from the city of Cincinnati for the new (expensive) sprinkler system for the Vine Street building. We can now continue with our construction of the 3rd floor.

Our fearless Executive Director left this morning for 2 weeks of vacation in Sun City West. We all hope he has a good and safe trip.

I attended a presentation at Fountain Square today. It was for the Military Order of Purple Hearts. Well done and nicely planned out. Just HOT!

And The Beat Goes On

We have been waiting for the Cincinnati Water Works to hook up our sprinkler system in the Vine Street building for a couple of months. What are they waiting for? Our construction was stopped by the city because the sprinklers aren't in. Our city and regulated utility at work? If we ran our business this way we would soon go the way of the DODO bird!

Electrical work complete at the Parish house. We now have 2 meters in place.

New lockers have been built in the basement of the Bishoff House for resident storage.

City vs Water Works vs JH

We have been waiting on the Cincinnati Water Works for several weeks to hook up our fire suppression system. So we spend the money to install the pipe in the building, the city stops our construction work because we don't have the sprinkler system working but we are waiting for the water works! Go Figure!

The work on the 3rd floor at the Parish house continues. The bathroom plumbing is almost complete. The new electrical work to install new service and 2 meters will start this week - maybe.

Building Progress

The work has stopped at the Parrish House for the moment. The bedroom is nearly complete but the bathroom hasn't started. We hope to shuffle personnel and restart project in around a week. We're waiting for the installation of the new alarm system. The old one is operational but continues to cause problems for our staff and Cincinnati's finest.

The Vine Street building is waiting final inspection from the city so we can activate the sprinkler system. Not sure what the hold up is. But you can't fight city hall.

The second phase of construction has started at Vine. The 3rd floor back will house 9-10 beds when the build out is finished. Probably 3-4 weeks for that to wrap up. What's next? Perhaps a rework of the 1st floor setup.

Misc Stuff

We are almost complete with the revamp work going on at the Parrish house on Race street. When complete we will provide a nice residence room for a guy moving on in his life transition process. We should see the installation of a new alarm system in that building next week some time.
The PA system installation by the JH staff is moving along. The wiring and speakers are in place for the 4th floor. Hopefully the other floors will be done by the end of the week and we can test. We'll then extend the system to the Shaw House and Bishoff House. Should end up as a very cost effective system that will solve some of our in-house problems.
Battles with bed bugs continues. Agencies in the Cincinnati area are having the same or worse problems than we have. We are fortunate to have a property manager who is quite knowledgable and is on top of the problem.
Phase 1 buildout at the Bishoff is complete. We are waiting for a bid to do the Phase 2 construction. Sprinkler system is waiting final inspection and hookup.

This and That

We signed a contract to install a new alarm system at the Parish House. Should take care of the surprise visits from Cincinnati's finest!

The first phase of the build out is complete at the JH Vine Street location. The sprinkler systems are almost completely installed. We are waiting for a bid for phase 2 at that location.

I joined the JH staff as a full time employee last week. I am working 4 10 hour days and am responsible for the administrative operations. I have 3 staff members reporting to me.

Alarm System & Construction

We received a quote for a new alarm system for Parish house. We'll see what we can arrange financially with the church. The exisiting system has been a real pain.
We are doing the rebuild on the 3rd floor of the Parish house. That is progressing well.
The build out of the Vine street building is nearly complete 3rd floor front. Guys have moved in but sprinkler system is still in progress. We will soon do some work in the back section of the 3rd floor to also increase capacity.

Been a while

We have now signed a lease for the 3rd floor of the parish house, in addition to the 2nd. The alarm system is still causing headaches.
Tomorrow is the JH board meeting at 7AM
Not much else, just the day to day in the dreary month of Feb. Cold and snow.

Admin Update

The move by the Executive Director into the admin building on the 2nd floor is complete. The antenna for WiFi was pushed up a bit and now the Internet connection is adequate.

We are still struggling with the security system. The police were called again this AM because we blew it!

I think we may also occupy the 3rd floor. A few more details to be worked out before that can happen.

Admin Building

We moved our Executive Director into the admin building this week. The guys did a great job with fixing it up.
The antenna doesn't seem to pull enough signal from the main router to maintain lock. Guess more work is to be done. Perhaps put antenna up higher?
We will also be renting the 3 floor of the building for a residence. The second floor conference room will be utilized for group on Monday and Thursday. That will give Chaplin Ron and his group more room to spread out. Also very quite and private there.

A Day Off

Joseph House is in a stand down mode on Monday, Jan 21st for the observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Some other events that occurred on the same day in history:

• 1954 - The first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, is launched in Groton, Connecticut by Mamie Eisenhower, then the First Lady of the United States.
• 1968 - Vietnam War: Battle of Khe Sanh - One of the most publicized and controversial battles of the war begins.

Antenna Update

The antenna went up on the admin building today. It is pulling a strong signal from the main router and is seeing as many as 15 other APs! Should give us good service when we move into the office space.

Dave and Jeff did a super job on the installation. Looks real high tech!

Jan 16th

Certainly is chilly here in Cincy. The installation of the WiFi antenna has been delayed as a result of snow and ice. We will attempt to put it up today since it is supposed to be the warmest day of the next 7.

Someone broke into the admin building last Friday morning. The trashed the place, stole a PC an some other items and broke the glass out of two doors. Certainly makes you aware that you can't let down your guard.

First Month Of '08

Well here we are in 2008, another year has passed. JH had a wonderful holiday period because of the generosity of many.

We are still in the process of our build out. Work should begin on our Vine Street building any day. When complete we will have the capacity to house 92 veterans.

We now have wireless Internet for our staff at the Vine Street building. An antenna is in place that picks up the signal from the Republic Street N router. The next task will be to put up an antenna at the administration building on Race Street to accomplish the same thing. It's a bit more challenging because of the buildings in between. Should work, I think.

Other than that it's just the normal day to day activities of serving our homeless addicted veterans. Always a new challenge.