enlarge John Ewing/Staff Photographer

Navy veteran Ken Jacobs was one of the veterans waiting outside the Preble Street Resource Center in Portland for a ride to the Togus facility on Saturday morning, as part of the annual Maine Homeless Veterans Stand-Down. Officials believe Maine has about 400 homeless veterans.

enlarge John Ewing/Staff Photographer

Homeless veterans in Portland board an Augusta-bound van during Veterans Stand-Down, an annual event that puts homeless vets in touch with services and assistance.

PORTLAND — For Maine's homeless veterans, Saturday may have lacked a parade and speeches, but otherwise it was their own Veterans Day, a few days early.

The Department of Veterans Affairs sent out vans to nine locations early Saturday, giving vets a ride from a handful of communities to the Togus VA Center in Augusta. Waiting for them was an array of people ready to provide services and necessities.

Saturday was Maine Homeless Veterans Stand-Down, a way for the VA to keep tabs on and help a tough-to-reach constituency.

"We try to help them break the chain" of homelessness, said Jim Doherty, an agency spokesman.

Doherty estimates there are about 400 homeless veterans in Maine, based on periodic surveys done at shelters. He said about five dozen tended to take part in each of the Stand-Down activities during the previous 11 years it's been offered.

At Togus, veterans were checked in and assigned to a squad with three other veterans and led by a reservist. Doherty said VA officials checked the vets' records and did an assessment of their needs. Then they could seek out help on everything from substance abuse issues to legal problems, treatment for illnesses and even assistance on tax matters from an IRS taxpayers advocate. Seasonal flu shots were also available.

After lunch, they were given new winter clothes – a set consisting of underwear, long johns, sweat shirts, a hat, a heavy-duty coat and boots, Doherty said. On their way back to where they were picked up, they were given a "ditty bag" of toiletries put together by an American Legion auxiliary group, calling cards and a booklet of coupons to McDonald's.

Ken Jacobs, 58, was waiting for the van in the 8 a.m. chill Saturday outside the Preble Street Resource Center along with about eight or nine other veterans. He said he hoped to find help in getting Social Security disability payments, which he said have been hung up by problems getting the proper records from the Navy.

He served in the mid-70s, doing in-flight maintenance on sub-hunting planes and packing parachutes, primarily for survival packs to be dropped during search-and-rescue missions.

Jacobs enlisted as the war in Vietnam was winding down.

"The closest I came to combat was running from the Shore Patrol in Florida," he joked.

Jacobs said he ended up homeless after a downward spiral that begin with severe depression, followed by diabetes and arthritis that cost him his job as a pipeline inspector three years ago.

Nearby, Henry Taylor was hoping the VA could find him a place to live. Taylor, another Navy vet, served in the early '90s and said he's hoping officials at the Stand-Down can help him find housing.

Doherty said the VA was able to get federally subsidized housing for 34 vets last year and have vouchers for another 35 this year.

He said the VA works with dozens of other federal and state agencies to reach homeless vets with information about the Stand-Down, posting information with veterans' organizations, soup kitchens and town offices.

"We have quite a lot who come every year," he said, even though the goal is to see fewer by getting them the help they need to climb out of homelessness.

"We will serve them every year they come," Doherty said.

Staff Writer Edward D. Murphy can be contacted at 791-6465 or at:

emurphy@pressherald.com