Veterans are family to couple

A weathered sign on Marion and Alvin App's garage essentially sums up the feeling of anyone who has spent a few months under their roof.

"We may not have it all together," it reads, "but together, we have it all."

To the Apps, the word "family" doesn't just apply to their daughter, Celena, living in Missouri, or their three grandchildren, 13 siblings and assorted cousins. It also applies to the strangers who have stood on their doorstep with everything they owned and wondered, 'Am I going to fit in here?"'

Michael McCarty knows the feeling. He nervously knocked on the Apps' door in West Valley City eight months ago, but like others, soon realized there was no need to worry.

"You won't find anybody with more compassion," he says of the Apps. "From the very first day, they made me feel like I'd come home."

Michael, 69, was sent to the Apps by the community residential care program run by Salt Lake City's Veterans Administration health-care system. He and another Vietnam veteran, Frank Wood, 54, share an apartment in the Apps' basement for a reasonable fee, ensuring that they won't have to return to a homeless shelter or survive on the streets.

This is the sixth time that Marion and Al have opened their home and hearts to single veterans, who, because of mental health issues or tough times, are unable to make it on their own.

"These guys have integrity — they've done a great deal for our country," says Marion, 54, who spent her youth as a military brat and married Al, a Marine, when she was 18. "When they come to our home, we embrace them as family," she says. "'Stand at ease, soldier — take off your pack,' I'll tell them. I want them to know somebody cares."

With Veterans Day next Tuesday, Marion and Al thought it would be a good time to talk about the residential care program, in the hope of inspiring others with room for another place at the kitchen table to sign up.

Over a Free Lunch of take-out tuna salad sandwiches, chips and pink lemonade, they spoke fondly of the soldiers they have welcomed into their family since they became hosts four years ago.

"It just seemed like a natural extension of what we were already doing," says Marion, who cooked hot meals for soldiers when Al was a sergeant. "He was always bringing guys home on holidays who had nowhere to go," she says. "This is the same thing — they just stay a year or two longer."

Host families are required to meet certain requirements (a safe and clean environment, three squares a day), while veterans agree to follow their medical treatment plans, pay their rent on time and abide by house rules.