On a chilly, damp day in North Little Rock, six men form a tight huddle, swapping jokes and news of the day. There is nothing particularly distinguishing about them, especially here on the grounds of the Eugene J. Towbin Healthcare Center, a facility of the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System.
Patients and staff enter and leave the facility, passing by the group without so much as a sidewards glance. In their jeans and ball caps, the men pass for any of a hundred kindred military spirits, some long past their fighting prime, but somehow, still in one kind of battle or another.
But on the other side of the hospital’s front doors, past the gurgling fountain and the Christmas lights, away from doctors and therapists and the ghosts that seem to surround so many here, these men are far from ordinary. To the men and women they serve, they are so much as angels.
“I do this because it makes me feel good,” said Don Zaloudek, a Fourth Degree Knight of Columbus and parishioner of St. Anne Church in North Little Rock.
Though one of the elders of the group, an impish grin creeps across his face as he speaks. “It’s a way to give back to those who have given so much.”
The gift that Zaloudek and his co-patriots from Knights of Columbus Council 6253 deliver every month doesn’t seem like much — a simple bingo game, complete with prizes and refreshments — but that depends on your point of view. To the seven knights who bring the recreation to the patients at the hospital, it is a calling identical to that Jesus challenged the faithful everywhere.
“In what we do for others, we do for our Lord,” said Calvin Chunn, who launched the game eight years ago and at nearly 81 is the group’s senior statesman. “You know, its like ’When I was naked you clothed me, when I was hungry you fed me.’ We are our brothers’ keepers.”
The idea for the project came from Chunn’s observations of what other veterans’ organizations such as the VFW and American Legion were doing on behalf of soldiers recuperating at the hospital. The idea gained favor with his fellow knights at Council 6253, which funds the activity’s $150 monthly budget.
Hospital administrators were equally enthusiastic, Chunn said, to have volunteers provide activities for patients. In fact, the only red tape he said the volunteers encountered was routine background checks and credentials necessary to get into the building.
From relatively humble beginnings, the 90-minute game has grown to host as many as 100 recovering soldiers at a time. One reason why the game has enjoyed such popularity over the years has been the unique added incentives Chunn and his committee have built in. For instance, patients play to win “currency” that can be used in the hospital canteen for shaving gear, snacks or other items. And, ice cream sandwiches and cookies are served at every game.
“I’m telling you, they love the cookies and the ice cream sandwiches,” said Del Gieber, a former military policeman and member of Immaculate Conception Church in North Little Rock. “It’s not that they want to get something for free. It’s knowing someone on the outside cares and that they aren’t forgotten.”
They marvel at how young the vets today seem and how young it makes them feel to be around them. They grow somber telling of noticing an empty chair where a regular player had sat just one month ago. They swell with pride at the thought of providing their comrades with an escape from boredom or malaise, of which both the short-term patient and those battling chronic demons are susceptible.
“A lot of these guys have a lot of time on their hands,” Chunn said. “We’re here to help them battle the boredom and keep up their morale.”
After eight years, word has gotten around the hospital so that even new patients know to attend the bingo game put on by the knights. Those who aren’t ambulatory are wheeled in so that no soldier is left behind. Chunn says his concerns for the activity’s future are for continued funding as numbers at Council 6253’s twice-weekly public bingo games, which generates the group’s monthly budget allotment, have dwindled.
The Knights’ bingo game takes place the fourth Monday of the month at the hospital, located at 2200 Fort Roots Drive in North Little Rock.
