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College Dedicates New Veteran Residence

The College of Saint Rose in Albany dedicated a new residence hall specifically for student veterans this evening.

The Veteran Residence is a 6,240-square foot Victorian-style house on the Madison Avenue campus. Next door to the college's Veteran Center, the house has six large bedrooms,  2½ bathrooms, and shared kitchen, living room, and laundry facilities.

Renovation of the 1889 house was made possible by the Massry Family, which includes Saint Rose Board of Trustees Vice Chair Norman Massry:  "Being involved with St. Rose for over 30 years, I've been part of many endeavors there and as we started to get involved in the area of helping veterans with their education, I got to know it more. Once I saw the opportunity that it affords, I got more interested. We set up some scholarships for veterans and family dependents. And then when I saw the Veterans residence which is next door to our Veterans main building, being in the real estate business, I looked at it and I said 'I think we can make this better and set a nice standard.'"

Mark Jarvis is a student-veteran from Greenfield Center, New York.    "When I first heard the idea of the house I wasn't sure there'd be a need for it, and I proved to be completely wrong about it because we have five out of the six rooms filled up already and veterans living in the house were commuting nearly two hours coming down to school every day, so having this here and being a part of the Albany community and being close to everything is really helpful."

Nick Lanier is the Assistant Director of Veteran Recruitment at St. Rose.  "A house like this for the residents here really eases that transition, so with St. Rose it has truly developed that mentality of we're here to help them academically but we're also gonna help student-veterans as they transition out of the service, have the opportunity to kind of become something new, and it's great because these students are part of the community, part of the campus, and it makes that transition that much easier over the longterm."

As for possibly expanding the program or adding additional residences, Lanier says the school is "incredibly open" to the idea that the more student veterans are located on site, the more positive an impact on the campus.

Dave Lucas is WAMC’s Capital Region Bureau Chief. Born and raised in Albany, he’s been involved in nearly every aspect of local radio since 1981. Before joining WAMC, Dave was a reporter and anchor at WGY in Schenectady. Prior to that he hosted talk shows on WYJB and WROW, including the 1999 series of overnight radio broadcasts tracking the JonBenet Ramsey murder case with a cast of callers and characters from all over the world via the internet. In 2012, Dave received a Communicator Award of Distinction for his WAMC news story "Fail: The NYS Flood Panel," which explores whether the damage from Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee could have been prevented or at least curbed. Dave began his radio career as a “morning personality” at WABY in Albany.
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