Nearly five years ago, Midwest Veterans Closet founder and President Mary Carmody, a group of vets and local officials broke ground on a permanent location on Green Bay Road in North Chicago for the organization, which feeds and clothes vets and active-duty military personnel.
With a lot of fundraising from small donors, and faced with the sale of their temporary location a few blocks south on Green Bay Road, Carmody raised enough to build the first 4,850-square-foot building — nearly 3.5 times larger than the temporary facility — on 3.71 acres.
Already on the property was the one-acre Hero’s Haven Farm Garden Carmody started with the help of active-duty sailors stationed at Naval Station Great Lakes. The “farmers” kept some of the produce, and the rest provided freshly picked vegetables and fruit for the closet’s guests.
The Midwest Veterans Closet opened its permanent food, clothing, housewares and book store on July 21 in North Chicago giving military veterans and active-duty military personnel the opportunity to select food and other items without cost three days a week.
“It’s just beyond words how grateful I am that God put us in the position to succeed,” Carmody said. “As a pastor told me, ‘When God gives you a calling, He’ll make sure you have the tools to succeed.’”
Each month, Carmody said approximately 700 veterans and 400 active-duty military personnel — around 2,000 people when family members are included — come through the closet’s doors to shop as they would at a retail store.
“They don’t make enough money,” Carmody said of the active-duty personnel and their families who are guests of the closet. “We are their support system.”
With the land and building acquired with donated money, Carmody said approximately $1.9 million was required for the first building. Another $150,000 is still needed to fully pay for the project, but it is currently working efficiently.
When people walk in the door — the only requirement is an identification card showing they are veterans or members of the U.S. Armed Forces — they see racks of clothes and shoes, as well as some housewares and books. Some guests browse there before entering the food pantry.
Once inside the food pantry, guests use boxes on carts to select meat from the cooler, fresh milk, produce donated from local supermarkets, canned goods, packaged food and most anything else they find in a grocery store. There are some limits.
“We want the 22nd person in line to be able to get the same thing as the second person in line,” Carmody said. “That’s why we have to have limits.”
Clothing and housewares work the same way. Over the years, Carmody learned the needs not only of veterans, but people stationed at Great Lakes. She sees families arrive from warmer climes not prepared for a Chicagoland winter. Sometimes, they move faster than their possessions.
“Families arrive from their last assignment before their things,” she said. “They don’t have their kitchen (wares), so we have housewares for them.”
Open between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, dozens of volunteers arrive hours before to stock the shelves and get everything ready for the guests, like Georgina Matthews of Winthrop Harbor and Jon Powers of North Chicago.
Matthews is a Vietnam-era veteran who spent seven years in the Navy. Spending a lot of time caring for her parents, she learned of the Midwest Veterans Closet from a caregiver at the James A. Lovell Federal Healthcare Center at Great Lakes.
“Oh my gosh, a lot of people are here and they need help,” Matthews said, “This gives me purpose. People who served in Vietnam were not treated well. There were very few women in the Navy then, and we weren’t treated well. It’s much better now. I was a pioneer.”
Powers said he is the son of a 30-year Navy veteran and it is important to him to help veterans and members of the military.
Learning to grow produce from her mother when she was young, Carmody said she had a vision for a garden on the acreage she acquired for the Midwest Veterans Closet. She reached out to the Navy for help and the Hero’s Haven Farm Garden was born.
“Active-duty (sailors) came here on their days off,” Carmody said. “They tilled the land and got it ready. They loved the work. They were young, muscular sailors. They pick what they want, but most come to the pantry.”
Carmody said the Midwest Veterans Closet began in 2014 with a landscaper’s van on a field in Wadsworth. It eventually moved to its initial North Chicago location before being housed in its own facility.
Neither a veteran herself nor from a military family, Carmody said she was inspired to help veterans from what her mother told her about her experience immigrating to the United States by ship from the former Yugoslavia. Her mother was pregnant with her at the time.
“She said, ‘When I saw the Statue of Liberty, I knew I was free,’” Carmody said. “I did this for the veterans who made this possible.”
