Disabled BI veteran to receive custom accessible home

For many veterans, coming home is one of the greatest moments of their lives — but in Kitsap, they are already home.

Homes for Our Troops, a nonprofit dedicated to building custom homes for veterans injured in the line of duty since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, will unveil its first build on Bainbridge Island and third in Kitsap County this spring, following a dedication ceremony Nov. 8 that about 120 people attended.

Captain Tim Bomke, a veteran who lost part of his right leg during deployment in Iraq in 2005, will receive one of HFOT’s custom-built homes for himself and his family in the Fletcher Bay neighborhood on BI. It won’t be a big change of scenery — his family currently lives less than a mile away from the new site — but it’s symbolic, he explained.

“When you get wounded in combat, you’re evacuated to various hospitals and just going through the surgeries and stabilization medically, you lose that joyous opportunity of homecoming, or being welcomed home. It just goes by the wayside,” said Bomke. “We arrived to the ceremony with an escort of the Bainbridge Fire Department and some other veterans, cars and motorcycle clubs and riders, and everyone was outside with a flag, cheering and welcoming us. It’s just something that you maybe aren’t even aware was missing from a long time ago until you experience it. It really did fill a gap for me from back then.”

The project will feature over 40 state-of-the-art accessibility measures for Bomke and his family’s needs, particularly for the use of a wheelchair.

Some of the amenities include: wide doors and hallways, key-fob or hand wave-automated doors; roll-under countertops and roll-in showers with benches; mirrors that tilt at a 90-degree angle; bidet; a whirlpool and bubble jet bathtub, many wheelchair-height adjustments to sinks, windows, light switches, electrical outlets, and oven doors; pull-down shelving and clothing racks, a generator, a steel-reinforced master bedroom closet that doubles as a safe room or storm shelter, hardwood floors, a front-load washer and dryer, and a wraparound sidewalk.

“We expect our veterans to live in their homes for the rest of their lives. This is where the grandkids will come for holidays and family events, so we build with high-quality products that will last a lifetime and with experienced, high-quality builders. We consistently ask for feedback from our veterans and their spouses for what we can do to improve our home designs, and tweak our plans just about every year based on that feedback, as the veterans and spouses know best what works and what doesn’t,” said Bill Ivey, HFOT director. “We also tailor the home to the injury. For example, blind or veterans with quadriplegia have homes with more motion and voice-activated features; depending on the injury, we install a lift system in the primary bedroom and bath; countertops for blind Veterans are normal height because that is what they are used to (they are still roll under).”

The nonprofit offers four-bedroom, two-bathroom homes for its clients, each about 2,800 square feet, with energy-efficiency measures made to minimize the cost of utilities for the homeowner. Bomke and his family of four chose the “Patriot” model, with some minor tweaks to fit the site — the garage will be on the right side of the house, rather than the left.

“Part of what this house represents is peace of mind,” said Bomke. “Knowing that in the future — I’m hoping my health and mobility won’t change drastically any time soon, but if they do, I know it will be tremendously easier to care for me, and easier for me to be in that house, rather than a standard house.”

HFOT also partnered with a local construction company to build the homes: KFM Construction, a residential contractor based in Port Orchard.

As veterans themselves, it was a natural fit, explained KFM owners Katherine and Derek Moore.

“It was and still is an amazing feeling to have been selected as the builder for this project. It combines our passion and spirit of service for this great country with our passion for building homes,” said Katherine Moore.

KFM aims to complete the house by the week of April 6, Moore said, based on HFOT’s 210-day build timeline. The materials for the project were donated by the nonprofit’s corporate sponsors, which presents some logistical obstacles, but building for accessibility is familiar to the husband-and-wife team.

“We’ve been incorporating a lot of these items into our projects over the years more and more, through a process called ‘Aging in Place’ design and build, where our clients can age comfortably in their forever homes,” said Katherine Moore.

Ivey, a veteran himself, served 31 years in the U.S. Army, including six assignments, and spent several years as an operations advisor in Iraq following retirement. He joined HFOT in 2014 because the nonprofit embodied the values he saw championed by skilled leaders in the Army, he said: patience, poise and selflessness.

“Our team is a handpicked group of great Americans, most without any connection to the military, who believe in helping the American people repay the debt we owe our severely injured veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts,” said Ivey. “You can’t beat a mission that truly changes the lives of these service members and their families, and the veterans are an amazing and resilient group. These are the kinds of people I was able to spend most of my life with, and in several cases, the exact same people I served with overseas.”

Bomke, Ivey and the Moores agreed that Kitsap County is a uniquely well-suited area for veterans to live. The presence of military operations in Bangor, Keyport and Bremerton means that there are many fellow servicemembers around, plus they provide access to military medical care, base exchanges, and commissaries.

The county also has a very supportive community, Ivey noted. Bomke’s family and the Moores bonded instantly, Bomke said, and he looks forward to getting to know them over the course of the build.

As an athlete, Bomke has also found community in the master’s swim team program at the BI Aquatic Center, he said. The build has begun to connect him even further — one teammate mentioned that she realized he lives across the street from her home, thanks to the large sign HFOT placed at the build site.