Mission and Vision
We envision a joyful connection between retired enlisted veterans and community members who give back to them. A place to have fun, enjoy solitude, and build friendships with neighbors.
Since November 2011, Friends of the Soldiers Home has provided the most comprehensive support and companionship to the veterans living on the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Washington DC. We are constantly evolving to meet their needs.
Starting with a Jingo volunteer night, FOSH went on to partner with the AFRH to conduct more than 300 volunteer events from 2011 -2018.
Since the pandemic we are ramping up our regular monthly events.
FOSH also holds annual community celebrations with the Home, including Independence Day Fireworks, and Fall Festival. Each December, FOSH and the AFRH residents gather together for the annual holiday tree lighting. Thousands of people from the community attended these events to better connect the residents and historic campus with the surrounding nation’s capital.
Our Values and Impact
The Friends of the Soldiers Home (FOSH) believes in promoting awareness and education about the Armed Forces Retirement Home DC campus. We foster a spirit of service and community building with those who served. We maintain a strong presence and connection to the surrounding communities that neighbor the home. We advocate to advance our mission of camaraderie and solidarity with the residents of the home and our local ANCs.
Every year we throw fourteen events that are attended by dozens of residents and thousands of community members. Residents of AFRH tell us that our efforts greatly improve their quality of life and bring them into regular contact with thoughtful neighbors who support their needs. Being a retirement home for enlisted service members, many residents of the AFRH live far away from their families. FOSH volunteers provide companionship to those whose children and grandchildren are stationed all across the globe.
History of the AFRH
The Washington DC Armed Forced Retirement Home is America’s oldest enlisted veterans’ retirement home. It is the national promise we keep for those who served - that they will always have a place to live. Four of the original buildings still stand and are listed as national historic landmarks. Two of the buildings, Quarters 1 and the Lincoln Retreat, served as the summer White House for U.S. Presidents Chester Arthur, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Buchanan, and most notably, Abraham Lincoln.
By 1851, General Winfield Scott was a hero in the Mexican-American War. He was paid reparations in lieu of ransacking Mexico City. With this money Scott paid his troops and gave the rest to Congress - petitioning it to open a home for old and infirm soldiers.
A rustic country cottage owned by the prominent Riggs family was purchased as the site for the new home. This cottage sat high atop a breezy hill overlooking several hundred acres of farmland in rural Washington. The Old Soldiers’ Home began with just one resident. Before long, more soldiers moved in, and they outgrew that cottage. So a larger dormitory was built.
President Abraham Lincoln loved visiting the Solders’ Home, as did presidents before him. After it grew, he asked to use the cottage for a summer home to escape the humidity and political pressures of D.C. All told, Lincoln spent one quarter of his presidency in the cottage including the months when he penned the Emancipation Proclamation.
Soldiers were expected to work to earn their keep. The Soldiers’ Home had a 300-acre dairy farm, so residents could cultivate food and remain self-sufficient. In the 20th century, the Home evolved with the times as the focus shifted away from work toward leisure. As the military evolved, the Soldiers’ Home would go on to admit airmen—and women. And, the cow pastures became a nine-hole golf course and resident gardens.
Today that original cottage is splendidly restored as President Lincoln’s Cottage, a National Landmark. The Scott building was renamed the Sherman Building, and it serves as offices for the AFRH agency staff. The new Scott Building, which opened in 2013, is a model of modern retirement living. Today, residents actively contribute military memorabilia and original artwork to its hallways.
Since the Home’s beginning, operational funding came from the soldiers (and later, airmen) themselves. A permanent trust fund was established nearly 150 years ago, and was fed by monthly, active duty payroll deductions of 25 cents, when the average pay of a soldier was $7 a month. Fines and forfeitures from the armed forces and the monthly withholding have provided the principal support for the Home throughout its history.
In 1991, Congress incorporated the U.S. Naval Home in Gulfport, Miss., and U.S. Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home into an independent establishment in the Executive Branch of the Federal government known as the Armed Forces Retirement Home (AFRH). Since 2001, they have been known as the Armed Forces Retirement Home – Gulfport and the Armed Forces Retirement Home – Washington, DC respectively.
