Bethesda, MD (December 2, 2010) - Michelle
Obama, First Lady of the United States of
America joined Ken Fisher,
Chairman of
Fisher House Foundation and veterans and
their families to officially dedicate the first
of three new Fisher Houses – joining two others
already in operation – on the campus of the
Bethesda Naval Medical Center, Bethesda,
Maryland here today.
Each of the 16,000
sq-ft., two-story buildings will join the
network of 50 Fisher Houses operating in the
United States and Germany and will be gifted to
the military. Each house consists of 20 suites,
each with a private, handicapped-accessible
bathroom and common areas that include a
multi-cooking station kitchen, large communal
dining and family rooms.
President Obama has supported the Fisher House
Foundation on numerous occasions in the past
year. Just this month, it was announced that
the after-tax proceeds from the book “Of Thee I
Sing,” written by the President for his
daughters, would be donated to Fisher House
Foundation. Earlier this year, President Obama
donated $250,000 from his Nobel Prize award –
the largest single donation to a not-for-profit
charity from that prize – to Fisher House
Foundation, which was used to construct a Fisher
House at Dover Air Force Base in Dover,
Delaware.
Founded in 1990, the Fisher House program builds
“comfort homes” for families of wounded service
members, and other military or veteran patients,
receiving medical treatment at VA and military
hospitals around the world. Since its
inception, more than 130,000 families have
stayed at one or more Fisher Houses – saving
more than $150 million in lodging costs alone.