Home For Vietnam Vets A `Dream Come True'

I steadied the ladder as Rich Pellerin scrambled to the second floor and disappeared. When I got to the top and squeezed through the exposed wood framework, Pellerin was over by a corner skylight, waving at me.

``Now, this is really something,'' he said, pointing. Pellerin, 47, his doctor's beeper on his belt, peered out through the skylight. He then had me peer out.

``The guys are really going to like this,'' Pellerin said. ``Look. A tree.''

The man was quite proud of his window and you couldn't blame him.

Yesterday, while George Bush was calling up more troops and suggesting a huge desert war seemed inevitable, Dr. Richard Pellerin was still tending to wounds from the last big one.

``Man, it's been 15 years,'' said Pellerin. ``And so many of these guys are still out there, still hurting.''

He began this work two decades ago as a medic with the American Special Forces along the Vietnam-Cambodia border. He continues it today as a member of the Vietnam Veterans Leadership Project, which has helped erect memorials to the dead and promote projects for the surviving.

Defunded by the Reagan administration six years ago, the now-volunteer group has had to scratch up money and assistance for the postwar casualties of Southeast Asia, in particular the Vietnam vets who make up a large percentage of America's homeless.

But now they have worked a small miracle - an old house - and Pellerin was floating about it yesterday, two days before Veterans Day, hardly noticing the place is mostly gutted, partially floorless, and generally blighted.

``Beautiful,'' is what Pellerin saw, hands on hips as he stood within the two-story house, a half-century old, on South Bennett Street, in Hillman City. ``A dream come true.''

With a newly won $400,000 federal-city block grant, the vets group has bought the structure, is remodeling it, and in February will open it up as a five-year project to house and rehabilitate homeless vets.

With that, the Vietnam Veterans Transitional Home, providing space for a half-dozen vets for up to six-month intervals, will therein become the first of its kind in America.

``There are other proposals like it around the U.S.,'' Pellerin said. ``But we jumped through the hoops first.''

The program will concentrate on the large group of vets who are on the streets with alcohol and stress-disorder problems, and who have started rehabilitation programs.

``Some of us were more fortunate than others who made it back home,'' said Pellerin, who practices family medicine in West Seattle. ``Look at the studies. The single largest group of homeless-jobless are Vietnam-era vets.

``They can't get jobs because they don't have a place to live and clean up; and they can't get a place to live until they get a job. We want to break the cycle.''

Most of their Rainier Valley neighbors have warmed to the idea, said Pellerin.

``Generally, they seem to be from the Vietnam-era generation and feel we still owe the 'Nam soldier something.''

But the vet convicted of serious crimes will be excluded.

``We had to draw a line, in fairness,'' said Pellerin. ``But you have plenty of vets out there on the street, believe me, who are guilty of nothing more than bad luck. This place is for them.''

On Sunday night at 7, the new project's beginning will be part of the celebration at Latitude 47 on Lake Union, when John Limantzakis turns his restaurant over to the group for its annual Veterans Day party - all vets invited.

``What's happened to the veteran is kind of reflected in what's happened the seven years we've had the party,'' said Pellerin.

``At the first one, we all just got together and cried. Then each year it got better. And lighter.

``Now, from barely surviving, we've gone to celebrating life. That's why this house means so much. It's not just going to be some s---hole they got assigned to, like in the war. It's going to be a nice place to live.''

Pellerin turned back to the window. He pointed to a maple, shedding orange leaves.

``Great tree,'' the doctor said.

He had me look. I must say, it was an excellent tree.