This weekend is Memorial Day, a day we remember service men and women who paid the ultimate price for their country and our freedom. Lynne Magistrate from WNY Heroes joins us to day to talk about a new facility and to talk about women who served our country.
Lynne says, “After service I joined this wonderful organization, WNY Heroes and we had so many programs, so many moving parts going on and I was learning the business, I was learning the family, I was learning all the programs at hand and I had a lot of people reaching out saying we need a female veterans group and I thought, oh no, no, I have a lot going on, I’m just learning this, I’m trying to maneuver my own way through retirement and then one day I got the nerve and I did it. We started with eight and now we are at over 350 female veterans in Western New York in a private Facebook group that we can just open the floor and chat and see how each other are doing and checking in and going from there and it’s been wonderful.”
Lynne says they didn’t realize how much it was needed until they started the talking. She says, “you have a lot of people asking for help and don’t know how to get it, you have a lot of people who just want to go for a walk and want someone to join them or grab a cup of tea or maybe their fridge just broke and someone else has one sitting in their garage that they have been wanting to get rid of, so it just has been a beautiful, I want to say small community, but to me it is huge.”
Lynne says they are going to have a brand-new facility. It is in the process, and it is going to be on the East Side of Buffalo. She says, “we are very, very, very excited and obviously with these unfortunate events that we just faced two weeks ago in Buffalo, in our hometown, it is needed even more so now. We have been looking at this place for over two years now and we are so excited to be able to share this announcement when it is official-official but we are going to be over at East Delavan and we have so much thanks to our friends over at OSC for helping us accomplish this and move forward into our new place.”
Lynn shares other things you should know about WNY Heroes. Lynne says the last Friday of every month they have a veteran’s breakfast.
They will be having their fourth annual female veterans retreat on September 30th, October 1st and 2nd. Lynn says to please call the office and get some information on that. The information will be posted on their WNY Heroes Facebook page and all over their social media platforms.
They also have a private female veteran’s group and that is at WNY Heroes Female Veterans Group.
For more information go to wnyheroes.org
