Vets Open Rehab Center

As a war that is decades past still casts its influence on the lives of those who served in Vietnam, a San Diego veterans’ group quietly marked a victory fought in the trenches at home.

On Sunday, they flew the flag over San Diego’s first rehabilitation center designed by Vietnam veterans. After a 10-year labor of love, the Flag Day ceremony marked the beginning for California’s largest collection of veteran-operated social service programs and support groups.

The vets named it, “Fire Support Base 4141,” after they renovated a dilapidated motel at 4141 Pacific Highway in the industrial neighborhood just south of Old Town. Officially the center, which also has 44 beds for the homeless, goes by the name Business Industry Assn./Vietnam Veterans of San Diego Rehabilitation Center.

It’s a place where veterans say knowingly, “takes one to know one.”

They say it often. And often they say it through tears, said Larry Long, 47, a former sergeant in a reconnaissance platoon for the Army’s 1st Infantry Division. Long, a graduate of alcohol rehabilitation and job-training programs run by the same veterans’ group was on hand for the ribbon cutting Sunday afternoon.

“The most important thing I got from other veterans was learning that I wasn’t alone,” Long said.

Programs Long went through were scattered throughout the city, said Robert Van Keuren, executive director of the center. They are now being integrated into the center. Although programs are designed for Vietnam veterans, they are open to all. For more information, call 497-1327.

Renovation and building new quarters at the site cost about $1.1 million, said R. J. Kiddie, the center’s chief financial officer.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development, Center City Redevelopment Corp. and the City Housing Trust helped finance the project.