By ROBIN SHANNON

L’Observateur

RESERVE – In a few months time, residents at the Southeast Louisiana War Veterans Home in Reserve will have their fair share of fresh citrus fruit grown from a new grove of orange trees recently donated to the home.

With the help of Livingston Parish Veterans Affairs, a Baton Rouge branch of the Military Order of the Purple Heart known as Chapter 177 donated 25 orange trees to the residents of the home Friday morning. The donation is one of several being done at veterans’ homes across the state.

“We saw it as a chance to bring something that these veterans always ask for,” said Lynn M. King, chairman of the board of directors for Livingston Parish Veterans Affairs. “We have found that the veterans always ask for fresh citrus, and it is often not on the menu in some homes. Now they can have their own fruit grown right outside their own home.”

King said the program, which he called “Livingston Citrus Revolution,” started about two years ago after he had taken a master gardening class at LSU. King said he used what he learned at the class to plant some orange trees at a nursing home in Denham Springs. He said the story in a local paper caught the eye of state Secretary of Veterans Affairs Lane Carson.

“Mr. Carson asked me what we could do for some of the veterans homes in the state and we got to work,” King said. “Today’s planting is the second of five. We do it out of the respect for these men and women.”