seven weeks after marrying her hus-
band, Green was on security duty at
a National Police Station in Baghdad.
“We got this eerie feeling that some-
thing would happen,” she recalls. She
climbed to the roof, and a rocket-
propelled grenade whizzed by her,
exploding a barricade. “It clipped me,
knocking me down to my right side.”
She woke up in a hospital bed with
her sergeant standing at her side. “I
said, ‘Sarge, is my arm missing?’”
says Green. She was asking about her
left arm, the one that had tossed so
many basketballs through so many
hoops. “And he said, ‘Yeah, it’s gone.’
I broke down for a second or two.” Her
sergeant did have one piece of good
news: “He said they went back to the
rooftop and got my wedding rings.”
At Canal Park, it’s the bottom of
the fourth, with the game tied at
nine apiece and runners on first and
third. Cody Rice is at the plate. The
first pitch, a strike. Rice readjusts his
stance and cleans his bat against his
prosthetic leg. He smacks the next
pitch into center field. The runners
score, and Rice races around the bases
for an inside-the-park home run. He’s
greeted in the dugout by jubilant high
fives all around. The Warriors go on to
win the game.
“What do you think?” Coach Bucky
Weaver asks a young fan waiting for
an autograph afterward. “Not bad for
missing a couple of parts.”
There’s No Place
Like a Tiny Home
By Ashley LewisT
hey’re small houses, but
they’ve got big ambitions.
Ranging from 240 to 320
square feet, these homes are
large enough for just a single
room with a kitchenette and a bath-
room. There are 26 of them on nearly
five compact acres in Kansas City,
Missouri, painted in rustic shades of
red, blue, green, yellow, and gray. The
sidewalks are straight and pristine.
And there’s an American flag flapping
proudly outside each front door.
This is Veterans Village, a one-and-
a-half-year-old transitional com-
munity designed to help military
personnel get back on their feet. The
initial plan was to create a shared tem-
porary living space similar to a group
shelter, but that can be the wrong set-
ting because shelters often lack pri-
vacy and safety. These small structures
give vets their own front doors—and
more. “It’s housing with dignity,” says
Chris Stout, the CEO of Veterans Com-
munity Project (VCP), the nonprofit
organization behind Veterans Village.
“You get an opportunity to let your
guard down, hit the reset button, and
focus on starting over.”
New beginnings don’t always come
easy for these veterans. Residents in
the village were previously homeless,
and some have mental health issues.narratively.com (august 31, 2017), copyright © 2017
by narratively.
rd.com 71National Interest