Local vets home is located in Fergus Falls

By Tom Hintgen

Otter Tail County Correspondent

Many military veterans from Otter Tail County are fortunate to be living at the Minnesota Veterans Home in Fergus Falls. This facility receives rave reviews as a leader in skilled nursing care delivery.

The holidays are a special time to point out that the mission of the vets home in Fergus Falls is CARE: 

• Creatively to deliver focused care

• Acknowledge military heritage

• Reconnect residents with the community

• Enhance life’s experiences

Residents at the Minnesota Veterans Home in Fergus Falls receive specialized and individualized care through a team approach. Veterans and their quality of care is a top priority and employees strive to help military veterans maintain the greatest possible independence in their lives.

The vets home in Fergus Falls, in 2011, opened a Veterans Village which consists of two households of 10 and 11 residents each, designed to offer medical services in a home-style atmosphere. This community approach and design creates a sense of place for dementia residents by providing a familiar home-like environment.

The Fergus Falls facility also contains a VA community-based outpatient clinic.

Vets home history

The Minnesota Veterans Home in Fergus Falls was home to two Pearl Harbor survivors, the late Ervin Nelson and the late Leonard “Gene” Davis. Nelson was only 22 and Davis was just 19 when the attack on Pearl Habor, Hawaii, took place on a Sunday morning on Dec. 7, 1941.

Nelson and fellow sailors, after their ship (the Oklahoma) was hit by the Japanese, were forced to jump into the water and swim through oil and fire to nearby Ford Island. His ship took 429 of her crew with her as she capsized.

Davis was among the first crew members on his ship, the California, to see the first wave of Japanese planes, and the falling bombs. His ship sustained damage but was later repaired in Bremerton, Wash. The ship and crew were able to successfully do their part during the war effort, from 1941 to 1945.

Both men died in 2016. Nelson was 97 and Davis lived to the age of 94.