‘Big Blue’ needs a hand helping homeless: Drive launched to raise funds to replace aging mobile medical clinic
PORTSMOUTH — John Pelletier, homeless and staying at a motel in Hampton Beach, was hurting and aching on that January morning almost six years ago.
Someone had told him about where he could get medical care, on a bus run by the Families First Health & Support Center health clinic that made weekly stops nearby.
But Pelletier, a proud and dogged veteran, didn’t want someone giving him a handout. He didn’t want someone pointing their finger at him. He didn’t want someone passing judgment on him.
So, on that January morning, Pelletier went down to the lot where the bus was parked but didn’t enter it. He paced around and around and around until someone — finally — opened the bus’s door and asked him if he was coming in.
He went in. And he’s glad he did.
“By the end of that day,” Pelletier, 59, said, “ I knew that I had COPD, emphysema, high blood pressure, diabetes.”
Pelletier has since been treated and medicated for those conditions. He’s moved into a house in Derry with his wife, Sandy, where they can enjoy a bit of respite and raise a few chickens.
 Click image to enlarge Ryan McBride/Staff photographer John Pelletier, who was a homeless veteran six years ago, stands outside “Big Blue,” the Families First Health & Support Center bus. Due to aging equipment and parts, the Families First Clinic is looking to raise money for a new bus. John is seen here Friday afternoon in Hampton at the Salvation Army building on Lafayette Road. |
But that bus on which Pelletier received his initial medical care is still sputtering to different locations across the Seacoast, helping the homeless receive medical care. And it’s on its last legs.
Which is why Pelletier, now a member of the Families First Health & Support Center’s board of directors, and staff members and supporters of the mobile health clinic gathered at the clinic’s offices in Portsmouth recently.
They need a new bus.
Representatives from the clinic held a prelaunch party Sunday afternoon for a social media campaign they kicked off Friday to raise at least $25,000 to go toward purchasing a new bus. The social media campaign, which is part of a larger fundraiser that aims to raise $270,000 in total for the new bus, runs though Jan. 5.
“We’ve been told the bus needs to be replaced in the next six months or so,” said Margie Wachtel, the communications director for Families First Health & Support Center. “We’ve already put a lot of money into maintenance in the current one.”
Click image to enlarge Ryan McBride/Staff photographer John Pelletier, formerly a homeless veteran, stands inside the cramped Families First Health & Support Center bus, which needs to be replaced. |
The bus, known as “Big Blue,” is 13 years old and was donated to the center a few years back. It makes weekly stops at locations stretching from Exeter to Rochester, where physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses and others provide care to the area’s homeless and indigent. About 700 people receive care through the mobile health clinic each year, Wachtel said.
The center also operates a mobile health clinic out of another vehicle, which it intends to keep in service.
As part of the social media campaign, the center has teamed up with students from Portsmouth High School, Phillips Exeter Academy and St. Paul’s School in Concord to spread the word about the need for a new bus across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. The campaign — which will link users back to the crowdfunding website WeDidIt — went live Friday.
“The kids have taken such a proactive role in this,” said Martha Cunningham, the development director for the center. “They want these services to continue to go out to the homeless population.”
Click image to enlarge John Huff/Staff photographer Bo Collins thanks people for their hard work during a kickoff event for Families First’s “Believe in the New Big Blue” campaign to raise money to replace one of the two health care vans used for the mobile Health Care for the Homeless program. |
Services like those Pelletier received on that January morning almost six years ago. Services he believes helped to save his life.
About a year after he started getting care through the clinic, he said, he insisted that Sandy, his wife, come with him to get something checked out. She begrudgingly went along with him one day, and that something turned into a breast cancer diagnosis. She’s now cancer free.
But Pelletier thinks that if the bus wasn’t there, Sandy — and others — would be a lot worse off.
“If ‘Big Blue’ wasn’t here, the homeless wouldn’t get health care,” he said. “If this disappeared, how many people would be dead in a year?”
Families First Health & Support Center intends to raise the other portion of money as part of the larger, $270,000 fundraiser through corporate donations and grants.
To find out more about the social media campaign, go to http://familiesfirstseacoast.org/newbigblue.html.