Sharing St. John

Local villa owner helps war veterans put their deployment behind them

by Kelly O'Brien

Two years ago, about a month before Christmas, Lee Morris sat down to write her Christmas cards. As with every year, there was the normal round of holiday salutations, sent out to friends and family, but this year, Morris also penned an extra two dozen cards, made out to complete strangers. And into the mail they went, destined for recovering servicemen and -women in the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Unfortunately, a few weeks later they all returned to Morris, marked as undeliverable.

"I was furious," Morris says, shaking her head at the memory. She'd addressed the cards to Recovering Serviceman and Recovering Servicewoman, but that, apparently, wasn't specific enough for the army hospital. So now, Morris found herself with a mission. "I wanted to do something to help our service people."

So she reached out to returning veterans another way - through her vacation rental. Morris owns Sugar Bird Hill, a beautiful house overlooking Pillsbury Sound, and she rents an attached one-bedroom apartment, Sugar Bird Nest, for short-term stays. In her ill-fated Christmas cards, she'd invited the veterans to come and spend a week in the apartment, to "de-stress and decompress" as she puts it. Carrying this idea forward, Morris now offers a seven-night stay for the cost of just two to returning servicemen and -women.

Morris just had her first takers this fall - Ken and Linda Schwartzlow, both Master Sergeants in the Wisconsin Air National Guard. Over the past year, the Schwartlows have been apart far more than they have been together. From last September to this January, Linda was deployed in Balad, Iraq, and just four months after her return, Ken left for a 5-month stretch at Al-Udeid airbase in Qatar. While Ken was gone, Linda went looking for getaway options - after such a hard year, you can imagine how badly they needed a vacation.

Finding Morris' offer on Vacation Rentals By Owner, Linda and Morris began to email back and forth, making the arrangements, with Ken all unaware. Although Linda's original plan was to surprise Ken with the trip when he returned, things didn't quite work out that way.

"He was having such a rough month in August and September - it was horrible," Linda says. "He worked 3 straight weeks, 14 hours a day. He didn't get a day off. I could just tell it in his voice - he needed something to look forward to."

And St. John did the trick. Once Linda spilled the beans, Ken went online and scoped it out, keeping pictures of beaches and blue water in his mind through the remaining weeks spent coaxing aging radar equipment back to life, pulling 14-hour shifts, and suffering through 104-degree weather.

Ken returned to the States on October 5th and on the 23rd, he and Linda were on a plane to St. Thomas. Ken says the trip has been a great help in easing back into civilian life. "It was nice because usually that first month back, it's very difficult living with the person who just came back because they've been going, going, going."

"To come back from something like that," says Linda, "and then to come here and be able to decompress - it's huge. The opportunity to do that is just wonderful."

The Schwartlows' week on St. John was not only a fantastic experience for them, but for Morris as well, and it's got all of them hoping that other villa owners will consider offering similar deals to servicemen and -women.

"They wouldn't have to be out any money," says Morris. "They could do it in off-season - there's lots of months when there's nobody in these homes, and it's still beautiful here."

Morris has one more potential taker lined up - the aunt of a serviceman, hoping to surprise her nephew with a vacation - but for now, she's happy to have been able to give the Schwartlows the trip they needed.

"Coming here, being able to share this place together just bonds our relationship," Linda says, smiling at her husband. "It makes it stronger, it creates memories, and that time apart...just kind of fades away."

Editor's Note: Whether you own a villa or not, spend some time this holiday season thinking creatively about how you could give back to the members of our armed forces, who give so much for us every day.

December 2009