Beyond the Uniform - How Cambridge Veterans Services Continues a Legacy of Service

This Veterans Day, meet the team whose commitment to veterans goes beyond benefits and paperwork and whose greatest successes are sometimes the challenges they prevent.

For many veterans, the end of military service marks the beginning of a new chapter. But navigating that transition and the challenges that come afterward isn’t always easy.

At the City of Cambridge Veterans Services Department, the team works every day to make sure veterans and their families don’t have to face those challenges alone. It’s about continuing a legacy of service.

“It Is Just in My Blood”

For Veterans Services Director Cynthia Harris, who served in the U.S. Air Force, helping others has always felt natural.

“It’s probably just in my blood,” Harris says. With veterans across generations of her family, Harris has seen firsthand the challenges that can follow military service. This lived experience inspired her to continue serving in a different capacity.

That commitment is shared across the team.

Project Administrator Siobhan Stoney grew up in Cambridge, where her father, an Army veteran during Vietnam War, helped inspire her path into public service.

“I know it’s going to sound cheesy, but it is a calling,” Stoney says. “Even if it’s a little difference, you’re making a difference.”

For Programs and Benefits Manager Herman Sanchez, an Army veteran, the motivation is personal, too. After experiencing an abrupt transition out of military service, he wanted to help other veterans navigate the challenges of returning to civilian life.

“It Is More of What We Prevented Than What We Fixed.”

At Veterans Services, every day is different.

One day, the team might help someone file a VA claim or access financial assistance; another day, they might help a veteran order a hospital bed or navigate technology.

Sometimes, the most important work happens before anyone asks for help.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the department began making proactive wellness calls, checking whether veterans had enough food, stable housing, and necessary medication.

Those calls have helped the team identify urgent needs and arrange everything from groceries and transportation to assistance obtaining medication during a winter storm.

For Harris, these everyday interventions reflect a different way of understanding success.

“We have a lot more successes than a lot of people may realize we have,” she says. “That success is more of what we prevented than what we fixed.”

Preventing homelessness, helping families remain in their homes, or ensuring someone has enough food for the weekend may not make headlines. But these quieter victories can make an enormous difference.

“We Are Here to Hear and Help”

For the Cambridge Veterans Services team, creating a welcoming community is just as important as providing benefits and assistance. And sometimes, making people feel welcome takes a little creativity, and a few unexpected guests.

At one community event, Sanchez helped bring ponies, a lamb, and even chickens into the mix. The animals delighted visitors, though the chickens also gave City staff an unexpected challenge when officers had to help round them up.

That same warmth and humor carries into the office, where team members joke with one another, share stories, and try to make visitors feel at ease.

The initiatives behind this community work is the team’s commitment to addressing stereotypes about veterans, and further raising awareness of available services, and helping more veterans achieve long-term stability and independence.

“We’re not here to judge. We’re not here to criticize. We’re here to hear and help,” Sanchez says.

Looking ahead, they hope to strengthen partnerships, reaching more veterans and families, and preventing homelessness before it happens.

“Until we can say there’s not any homeless veterans, I think we still have work to do,” Stoney says.

As Cambridge honors those who have served this Veterans Day, we extend our deepest gratitude to all Veterans for their service, sacrifice, and enduring contributions to our community and country. We also thank the Veterans Services team whose dedication helps ensure Veterans feel supported, valued, and connected.