When Hurricane Helene destroyed the Veterans Restoration Quarters building in Asheville, it upended an already vulnerable community of former service members.
But in the days and weeks after the storm, the displaced veterans shined as beacons of resilience — even as they lost everything.
“They were more concerned about the brotherhood and each other than they were about anything. And a lot of these guys that were at the VRQ, everything they owned was inside of one room — they didn’t care about none of that, they cared about their brother,” said Brandon Wilson, a Haywood County resident, marine veteran and the chief operating officer of Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministry, which operates the VRQ facility.
Hope through resilience
The VRQ provided a home, a community and a place of recovery for veterans in Western North Carolina in need of extra support since 2008. When Helene submerged the facility in 8 feet of water, Wilson and his team scrambled to re-house 165 veterans and craft a plan for a long-term solution…