August 2005: Denzel Washington at Brooke Army Medical Center -
the story as I heard it from a friend ...

Denzel Washington - One Fine Gentleman ... Don't know whether you heard about this but Denzel Washington and his family visited the troops at Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC), in San Antonio,Texas the other day. This is where soldiers that have been evacuated from Germany come to be hospitalized in the States, especially burn victims. They have buildings there called Fisher Houses. The Fisher House is a hotel where soldiers' families can stay, for little or no charge, while their soldier is staying in the hospital.	BAMC has quite a few of these houses on base but as you can imagine, they are almost completely filled most of the time. While Denzel Washington was visiting BAMC, they gave him a tour of one of the Fisher Houses. He asked how much one of them would cost to build. He took his check book out and wrote a check for the full amount right there on the spot. The soldiers overseas were amazed to hear this story and want to get the word out to the American public, because it warmed their hearts to hear it.	The question I have is why does Alec Baldwin, Madonna, Sean Penn and other Hollywood types make front page news with their anti-everything America crap and this doesn't even make page 3 in the Metro section of any newspaper except the base newspaper in San Antonio.

For those who question the accuracy of the story distributed above, check out the Urban Legends take:

Urban Legends and Folklore

Denzel Washington Personally Funded a Fisher House for Military Families

Comments:  Partly true. I contacted the Fisher House Foundation for verification of this rumor and was informed by VP of Communications James Weiskopf that while Denzel Washington, whom he says "has shown great compassion in support of service men and women," indeed toured Fisher Houses at Brooke Army Medical Center in recent months and pledged "a substantial donation" to the Fisher House program, he did not "write a check for the full amount" to build one as claimed in the email rumor.

The additional claim in an early variant of the message that Denzel Washington has a son serving with the Marines in Iraq is completely false, according to Weiskopf. The actor has two sons, one of whom is attending college in the United States and the other is all of 13 years old.

The snapshots of Washington's visit to BAMC began circulating with the later variant. The photographer is unknown.

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