About 110 displaced residents of Armed Forces Retirement Home in Gulfport, Miss., arrive to a hero's welcome at the airport Oct. 4, 2010, from Washington D.C. Nearly 150 veterans returned home to south Mississippi after being forced to evacuate five years ago after Hurricane Katrina. (U.S. Air Force photo/Tech. Sgt. Bennie J. Davis III)
Local school children line the street waiving American flags to welcome home 110 displaced residents of the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Gulfport, Miss., Oct. 4, 2010, from Washington D.C. Nearly 150 veterans returned home to south Mississippi after being forced to evacuate five years ago due to Hurricane Katrina. (U.S. Air Force photo/Tech. Sgt. Bennie J. Davis III)
About 110 displaced residents of Armed Forces Retirement Home in Gulfport, Miss., arrive to a hero's welcome at the airport Oct. 4, 2010, from Washington D.C. Nearly 150 veterans returned home to south Mississippi after being forced to evacuate five years ago after Hurricane Katrina. (U.S. Air Force photo/Tech. Sgt. Bennie J. Davis III)
Naval honor guard members raise the U.S. Flag during an opening ceremony of the newly renovated Armed Forces Retirement Home in Gulfport, Miss., Oct. 4, 2010. About 150 veterans returned home to south Mississippi after being displaced five years ago after Hurricane Katrina. (U.S. Air Force photo/Tech. Sgt. Bennie J. Davis III)
About 150 residents checked into the newly renovated and federally-funded, $188 million, 800,000 square foot Armed Forces Retirement Home in Gulfport, Miss., Oct. 5, which was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The AFRH home has 582 beachfront rooms equipped with individual kitchenettes, bathrooms and balconies.
(U.S. Air Force photo/Tech. Sgt. Bennie J. Davis III)
10/5/2010 - GULFPORT, Miss. (AFNS) -- Armed Forces Retirement Home residents expected to be displaced for only a few weeks after Hurricane Katrina damaged their facility in 2005. The first 126 veterans returned home five years later to a larger and more lavish facility.
The residents lived at the Armed Forces Retirement Home's Washington D.C., facility for much of the past five years. Bill Williams, an Air Force veteran, was the first to enter the gate Sept. 4, after driving from Washington in his RV.
"It's great to be back home," Mr. Williams said. "I felt very privileged to have spent the past couple of years in our nation's capital, but I feel like I'm back in my element. I was born and raised in the South."
The Gulfport facility evacuated 416 of its residents Aug. 30, 2005, after Katrina knocked down several buildings and destroyed the steel-and-concrete perimeter around the facility. More than 400 residents stayed in the facility during the hurricane.
Mr. Williams was one of 41 residents who drove home, while the other 85 arrived by airplane to scores of people who greeted them with American flags at the Gulfport airport. About 100 local school children lined an access road outside the retirement home gate with their own flags and hand-drawn signs to welcome the veterans.
More than 90 residents are scheduled to arrive between Oct. 6-15, and another 125 will arrive on an Oct. 25 flight, said Sheil Abarr, an Armed Forces Retirement Home public affairs officer. Another 10 residents will also be moved from area assisted living centers Nov. 2 before the official opening and an all-day celebration called "Glory on the Gulf" Nov. 8.
"For the residents who lived here, this was their home," Ms. Abarr said. "They were displaced within a 24-hour period to never see their room again, although we had everything shipped up there to them. We didn't even start moving their stuff out of the facility until about eight months in.
"What we tried to do as an agency was make them a part of the process, for them to build their home. They have been involved, from looking at blueprints to going through mock-ups of their rooms, so they could put a hand at going back into their home. So not only was it a special homecoming so they could come back to the coast and be close to their families down here, but it's a part of them."
The $187 million, 800,000 square-foot facility offers four eight-floor towers and 582 rooms, with individual balcony views of the Mississippi Sound and the Gulf Coast skyline. The rooms are considerably larger than those in the previous facility and are equipped with kitchenettes and showers.
Other attractions include an indoor bocce court, bowling alley, Nintendo Wii stations, pool tables, swimming pool, hobby shops and a wellness center.
The homecoming was an emotional one for many in the first wave of residents, Ms. Abarr said.
"You can look at pictures, but to walk in with residents when they walk into their rooms for the first time, and a couple of them had tears in their eyes because they were home," Ms. Abarr said. "I told them it's a very grateful nation because this was an appropriation. We consider our veterans our heroes, but for them to walk into their rooms for the first time was what was special."
