Nilsson Helps Injured Vets Launch Construction Careers

Former Marine counsels amputees and started scholarship program

Former Marine Bob Nilsson spent six months working with the wounded when he returned from the Vietnam War and always meant to do more. He has more than made up for that now.

Jason Scott Nilsson (right) mostly wanted to say thank you to those who served.

Right after the war in Iraq began four years ago, Nilsson, retired former president of Turner International LLC, New York City, and now a senior advisor to same, talked his way onto the patient floors at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Md., and shortly thereafter also at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.  He just wanted to say thank you, he says.

Nilsson is one of the few non-amputees in Reed’s official peer-amputee visitor program. Three or four days a week, he talks to amputees in their tough early days at the hospital, listening to them, encouraging them, helping them see that they can have a bright future and helping their families navigate complex paperwork and bureaucracy. And, he recruits the injured veterans into the construction and real estate industries.

Turner has embraced the concept, which would be difficult not to do, given Nilsson’s passion for and dedication to restoring normalcy for the amputees. It has hired several amputees in a variety of positions.

Multimedia  View Award of Excellence Luncheon and Acceptance Speech of Bob Nilsson   April 3, 2008

Nilsson and Jim Todd, president of The Peterson Cos., a Fairfax, Va., developer, had a brainchild of a scholarship for badly wounded veterans who are interested in a career in construction or real estate that would cover living expenses beyond what the Dept. of Veterans Affairs pays. That is now a reality as the ULI Second Chance Scholarship. Nilsson and Todd are governors of the Urban Land Institute Foundation.

Two students already have been awarded the scholarship and three others currently are in the pipeline for consideration.