New Veterans Center Opens In Broken Arrow

Broken Arrow opened a new Veterans Center next to Veteran's Park on Main Street. There was a lot of excitement in the room at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

"We got this building up in 11 months and we're tickled to death over it," said Mitch Reed. Reed is the director of the new home for Veterans of Foreign Wars, Vietnam Veterans, the Military Order of Purple Heart, the American Legion and one more special group. "The unique thing about this is we brought blue star mothers in because they do so much for all the veterans and that meant a lot to me," said Reed.

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The entire back room is specifically for the Blue Star Mothers. "Every child over there, every son or daughter over there, it's as if it's my own son or daughter. So I just want to end them some love," said Christy Brown.

Brown said their old building got vandalized twice, so being in the new building gives them security and plenty of room to pack up hundreds of boxes to send to military members. "We sent 100 boxes and they were all very thankful to get the boxes. In fact, they had a visiting group of Marines that were there and they shared their boxes with the Marines. So some of the marines were sending us pictures saying thanks for the boxes," said Brown.

Reed said he hopes this is a place for people to come together. "We have a nice banquet room in there, we have a nice catering kitchen in there. But there is other things to veterans, just getting together and hanging out. Because every veteran I say has PTSD," said Reed.

He said they already have plans in the works for several different events happening over the next few weeks at the new Broken Arrow Veterans Center.