For Eva Ford, helping veterans has been a labor of love for years.

A lifetime member of the American Legion Auxiliary, she has been active for 40 years, belonging to both Legion posts in Vicksburg — 213 and 3.

“I was with 213 when it started and was with it more than 20 years,” she said, adding she went to Post 3 at the request of the Legion’s Mississippi Department to help build up its auxiliary “so it wouldn’t lose its charter.”

“I didn’t know anybody over there, but when I got there, it was all good, and I have kept charter going; I’ve been at 3 since 2011,” she said.

Ford has used the Legion as a vehicle to ensure people in Vicksburg remember the sacrifices of America’s veterans through helping organize the city’s Veterans Day observance and calling attention to their service.

“I’m involved with everything the veterans do in the city and outside,” she said. “I do what ever I can to help them.”

Sunday, her life in the Legion’s Auxiliary reached a high point when she was sworn in as the Legion’s Mississippi Department’s Auxiliary president.

Besides her activity with the American Legion Auxiliary, she is a member of the NRoute Board of Commissioners, which oversees the city transportation system’s operation.

But helping veterans has become her passion. So much so, she is working to develop a shelter where veterans returning home after serving in combat areas like Afghanistan can go and make the transition back to civilian life.

A graduate of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn., and the wife of a veteran who’s had brothers, a son, grandson and nephews in the service, Ford is retired as a practitioner from the Veterans Administration, where she managed three clinics in Mississippi that cared for veterans.

“So I’ve been exposed to what life is like in terms of the veterans, and what they go through, because they come back a whole different person, with the mentality,” she said. “Their needs are different when they come back, and having to live with what happened to them. It’s not easy.

“When I retired from the VA, I saw the need for various things they (veterans) couldn’t get, and were not open to them because their problem was not service-connected,” she said of the idea for the shelter. “They’re not ready (to make the transition to civilian life) when they come back, and they need to be in a place where they can get adjusted and get better physically and mentally when they make that change.

“Observing that, I felt our veterans deserved more. For a long time, I thought about what could I do as a citizen to make it better for them, but I didn’t have the resources, nor did I have a way for this to happen. You have a sympathy for them that they can’t do anything about what happened and physically they do not have a place to stay, and some of them start drinking and some do drugs, but for the grace of God I’d do it if I were in their shoes. We never know.”

Ford discussed her idea for a shelter with other people and the conversation, she said, was overheard by another person. Her unidentified benefactor called and asked to help.

“I told him I didn’t have any money,” she said. “I didn’t have a place, and all I had was a desire and a love for the veterans and I would like to do this to help them and I wished we had a place for them. This person volunteered to give me a place and I almost went into shock when he told me, ‘I’m going to give you a place.’”

Under the Legion’s policies, Ford said, all a member could do was give a donation to help a veteran, “But that’s not solving the problem that haunts them. What good would $200 or $300 do but buy a little food temporarily of get you a room someplace.

“Mentally, they need rehabilitation to serve in the community and make it home again,” she said. “They come back with nothing. So many people think Uncle Sam pays them. But Uncle Sam gives them their last check. When you come home, you get your check. But that’s not a continuous thing; they don’t keep on paying you.

“Even if you are injured, you have to be injured to the point where you can’t move, almost, for them to continue your check, and then you have to be in a hospital or a veterans nursing home. But if you come home able to do for yourself and you don’t have a home, you’re in trouble; big trouble.”

Some veterans, she said, have children and no means to take care of them, and they have wives, and some of the wives are in the service.

“They don’t have the means to take care of their families,” she said.

She said the VA has started a program to help veterans can get a home when they return, adding, “that’s fine, but who’s going to pay that house note, whose going to pay to take care of the children, who’s going to buy furniture, who’s going to pay the utility bill?

“When you can’t do that, what’s going to happen? You’ve got to be able to earn to survive, and you first have to get mentally prepared to do what you’re going to do. It really just bothers me to know that our veterans really can’t depend on our government to make sure they have all the help they need when they come back, because they’re not ready.”

The shelter, Ford said, will give returning veterans a place where they can go and get help adjusting to civilian life and help finding a job so they can be independent.

“It doesn’t help with the world is like today, to come without back without a home and job,” she said, adding once it is open, the shelter will be the only one of its kind in the state.

“That’s all I want to see,” she said. “I don’t want money from this, I want to make sure they have a building, make sure they have a bed, make sure they have food on the table and have a job, and feel like a man or a woman again.

She said she and volunteers are working to get the shelter open, adding a lot of the work involves converting a commercial building into a residential building and meeting city and state regulations.

Ford said the Vicksburg Warren Veterans Transition Center, the shelter organization, is a 501(c)3 organization and can accept donations.

She said she plans to use her position as state auxiliary president whenever she cam to be a platform to bring veterans issues to the public.

“I’ll feel good if we can get that shelter open,” she said. “God will answer my prayer. I don’t want to see a veteran in Vicksburg on the street, hungry and sleeping. I don’t want to see it.”