“We got to watch people who are now our chosen family heal and got to see their journey while we were going through everything,” Cynthia Phelps said of staying at the Joint Base San Antonio Army Fisher House two times. “So it was great, even though it wasn’t something that we originally wanted. You know, nobody is expecting to be there, most of us are just kind of thrown into it.”
Nobody wants to need a Fisher House, but the Phelps family had orders to Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado as James started in the Air Force Wounded Warrior Program during his medical retirement in 2022. When Cynthia suddenly went into pre-term labor with their third daughter, they had to immediately pick up everything and head to the best hospital.
“At that time my wife went into preterm labor and was informed she would not be allowed to fly back to Alaska,” James said, “Peterson didn’t have a NICU so we made the decision to make it to Texas because [Brooke Army Medical Center] was there and had all the services that my wife and our daughter would potentially need.”
While at the house, the Phelps met more families going through other struggles, bonding with them and with their newborn daughter, Rossi, during their five-month stay.
They threw a baby shower for us at the Fisher House,” Cynthia said. “And not just for us, there was another family that was there who had preterm labor with twins, and so our 2-year-old has birthday buddies from the Fisher House.”
Their experience was so good that, when their next pregnancy was ruled high risk and their doctor in Alaska was unable to support the surgery, they asked to go back to San Antonio and Brooke Army Medical Center.
And they tried to give back to the house by taking care of all the kids that were there at the same time as them.
“There was a family that had flown in from Germany,” Cynthia said, “and the husband, they believed, had Leukemia, but they were waiting on his diagnosis. And so we watched their five kids along with our four kids at the time, so there were like nine kids in one house, and we helped them so that she could be there for her husband’s Leukemia treatments.”
James and Cynthia have celebrated James’s progress along his own medical journey, especially as James competed in Invictus Games Vancouver Whistler 2025, earning some medals and making many memories. Cynthia and their youngest daughter, Laramie, were cheering him on courtside. Fisher House Foundation is proud to support families like the Phelps, not just within the walls at Fisher House but beyond our doors by supporting Team U.S. and the Friends and Family program at Invictus Games.
The whole Phelps family, including the couple’s other daughters – Dakota Jones, Kimbers, and Oakleigh – are back in Alaska, healthy and growing strong.
