But in Fisher House, his family had a place to stay with him that was built on a foundation of love, care and nurturing. It wasn’t just a physical structure, it was a home.

Barnes’ wife, Monica, joined later by their three young sons and by Barnes himself, spent half a year at a Fisher House about 100 yards from the hospital. It’s one of 31 such facilities in the United States (plus two more in Germany) that serve as temporary residences for families of patients at major military and Veterans Administration medical centers. The Barneses were far from Lake Charles, Louisiana, but Fisher House filled in admirably as their home away from home.

“The Fisher House has actually been probably the most important part of my husband’s recuperation,” Monica says. “The people here are wonderful. They bend over backwards to help us in any way they can.”

Because lodging at a Fisher House is provided at little or no cost—typically less than $10 a day, free for families of soldiers injured in combat—comparisons can easily be drawn between Fisher Houses and the better-known Ronald McDonald Houses near many children’s hospitals. “It’s the same concept, but whereas the Ronald McDonald Houses focus on pediatrics, we take in as guests the loved ones of anyone eligible for care at military medical centers,” says Jim Weiskopf, vice president of communications for the nonprofit Fisher House Foundation, which builds the houses and gives them to the U.S. government. The Army, Navy, Air Force and Department of Veterans Affairs operate the houses.

Sgt. Barnes and his family are typical of the families that stay at Fisher Houses. Barnes, a soldier in the 256th National Guard Brigade out of Lafayette, Louisiana, suffered multiple injuries—including a broken leg, extensive nerve and tendon damage, and deep shrapnel wounds—on February 19, when an improvised bomb detonated just one foot away from him during a ground patrol in Baghdad; the blast killed a soldier right beside him.

Within a week, Barnes had been transported to Walter Reed for a series of surgeries—including a finger amputation and a series of operations on his broken right leg—as well as lengthy rehabilitation involving occupational and physical therapy.

Throughout the six months of the 35-year-old sergeant’s treatment at Walter Reed, Monica stayed at a nearby Fisher House—one of three at the Army hospital—so she could support her injured husband. The couple’s three sons—10-year-old Nicholas, 8-year-old Brandon and 7-year-old Matthew—stayed with Monica’s sister in Lake Charles until school was out, then spent the summer at Fisher House. In June, when Troy was released from the hospital but still required outpatient treatment, he, too, stayed at Fisher House, so the whole family was reunited for the first time.

The family occupied one of 11 bedrooms, each with its own private bathroom. In addition to a queen-size bed and rollaway beds, each fully furnished room includes a bureau with a television and VCR/DVD player, and a desk and computer with Internet access. Elsewhere in the house are common areas for all of the families staying there—a living room with library, a study, a laundry room, a large dining area and a kitchen with two stoves, two refrigerators and two microwaves, as well as heaps of donated food that the families can cook themselves or that volunteers turn into hearty meals. Behind the house are a patio and a small play area with swings and a jungle gym. Each house has a full-time salaried manager who relies on volunteers to help keep the house in order on a day-to-day basis.

While having a free place to live during Troy’s treatment lifted a great burden off the Barneses’ shoulders—and allowed them to keep their family together—Monica says sharing Fisher House with other families was equally important.

Air Aid

When Sgt. Troy Barnes’ wife, Monica, flew from Louisiana to Washington, D.C., in February to be with her injured husband, and when their three sons flew up in June, the Fisher House Foundation provided the airline tickets at no cost.

Through its partnership with Operation Hero Miles, the nonprofit foundation reunites families by giving airline tickets to servicemen and -women wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan for a leave or pass from a hospital, or for their families to visit them.

“The larger use is to bring family and close friends to the service members’ bedsides to rally around them as they recover,” says Jim Weiskopf, the foundation’s vice president of communications.

Individuals donate their frequent flyer miles to Operation Hero Miles, and the foundation, in turn, gives them away to injured military personnel and their family members. According to Weiskopf, the foundation has distributed some 4,000 free airline tickets—totaling more than 100 million donated frequent-flyer miles—to war-wounded service members and their families since the program’s inception in January 2004.

The goal, Weiskopf says, is simply to lift another burden from the shoulders of America’s military personnel who have been injured serving their country. “We’re there to hopefully make every problem go away for the family, so their focus can be on their loved one during his or her recovery,” he says.

Delta Air Lines is an active partner of the Operation Hero Miles program. Delta SkyMiles members can donate their miles via e-mail at delta.bids@delta.com, by calling 800-325-3999 or via fax at 404-773-1945. The minimum donation is 5,000 miles. Donors should include their SkyMiles account number and the amount of miles being donated, and should specify Fisher House as the charity to benefit. The word “SkyWish” should also be included in the correspondence.—J.T.

“As an extended family, we’re able to help each other,” she says. “[Troy] is with other soldiers who are going through the same thing as him, and I’m with other soldiers’ wives and family members who are going through what I’m going through. We’re able to live as a family like we would at home, but we also have a big support system here.”

That network of support seems to form at all of the Fisher Houses, according to Kenneth Fisher, chairman of the Fisher House Foundation.

“These are families in a very stressful time,” Fisher says. “They come from all over, but they all have two things in common—they have a loved one who’s been injured on the battlefield or is sick, and they can’t afford to stay in a hotel room for a long period of time. They eat together. They sit together. They talk together. They help each other through the bad days.”

Fisher’s granduncle, New York construction magnate and philanthropist Zachary Fisher, established the Fisher House program in 1990, after learning of the shortage of affordable housing for the families of hospitalized military personnel. The first two houses opened in 1991—at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and at Walter Reed—and by 1993 there were already 12 houses. When Zachary Fisher died in 1999, there were 26 houses, all of which he and his wife, Elizabeth, paid for out of their own pockets. Today, there are 33 houses—including two at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany—and six more are in the works.

According to Weiskopf, Fisher Houses serve about 8,500 families a year, with each family staying at least 11 to 12 days. Some 1,700 families of serv­ice members wounded in Operation Iraqi Freedom since its onset in 2003 have stayed at Fisher Houses, Weiskopf says, for an average of 40 to 60 days.

“We’ve had people stay in our houses more than a year,” Weiskopf says. “The good news is, once you’re in the house, you get to stay until the patient is better.”

Fisher House officials believe what they’re doing is a part of that recovery.

“Intuitively, we all know the healing process is accelerated by having your loved ones present,” Weiskopf says. “That’s our motto: ‘Because a family’s love is good medicine.’”