Holiday party for local Stryker Unit

In a perfect world, behind every military serviceman there would be a support system. That’s the way it was for 10 close friends of Pete Stinson, chapter president of the Pennsylvania-Delaware chapter of Operation Homefront, who served.

“Whenever my friends came home, we rolled out the red carpet,” he says. “We planned their return for months. They should feel welcomed when they come home.”

Once back, Stinson says they’d often open up, and gush emotion. He’d sit in silence and listen—a service in itself. “Talking is therapy,” he says.

Support also ran deep in Ken Vennera’s extended family—Italian-Americans—who proudly served in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II and since then. “Those who served were heroes,” Vennera says.

Shifting Sentiment

Sentiment, however, shifted during the Vietnam era, when support for America’s foreign wars was no longer an automatic. The country’s perception of its military underwent another change and seemed to recover in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but as Vennera, the local chapter’s board chairman who is otherwise a corporate lawyer, says, “not nearly as much as needed.” Active or recently-returned servicemen, and their families, are often in harm’s way.

Since 2002, Operation Homefront, a national non-profit with 23 chapters, has provided millions of dollars in confidential emergency assistance, and in morale programs, to those deployed in all armed services, including reservists in the National Guard, to their families back home and to wounded, discharged warriors for up to six months, though that window is under review and could be expanded, Vennera says.

The local chapter, founded in 2005, canvasses both states, but the bulk of the families served are in Philadelphia and northern Delaware. Funds may purchase groceries, clothing, baby formula, appliances or technology to help a family stay in touch. Or pay a rent bill or a mortgage, or cover the cost of heating oil. It may pay for car maintenance. Financial need might emerge from a medical condition.

National Guardsmen—and there’s a particularly large concentration of those units in Pennsylvania—make a specific sacrifice. When activated, they’re typically older demographically, are probably leaving a civilian job, and have to surrender a salary that’s more than the fixed-rate (by service rank) they’ll receive when they’re called up.

Helping Families Stay Together

All aid helps avoid crisis mode. Without intervention, families split. Hopelessness can lead to suicide. Though the non-profit doesn’t provide specific marital or suicide counseling, it’s helping families stay together, strengthen and prevent hopelessness. “We can make an incredible difference in what becomes a one-parent household,” Pete Stinson says.

Only food assistance is immediately paid out directly to a family. With all other requests, if qualified, vendors (a landlord or auto mechanic) are paid, not the family. Unusual cases go before a granting committee.

But rather than become an organization that simply writes checks, Operation Homefront gets at and solves the genesis of each problem. It checks if a qualified family is on the right path to stability, and sustainability, so these honorable, self-sacrificing Americans can become self-sufficient again.

Stinson, who is in his first year as chapter president, was never in the service. A graduate of Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, he connected with Operation Homefront while writing the non-profit’s workmen’s compensation insurance policy.

On a daily basis, he manages cases, networks, builds relationships with families, finds and creates funds through partnerships, plays secretary to calls and emails, applies for grants, monitors the organization’s Facebook account (www.facebook.com/ohpade) and grows the chapter. He’s spearheaded substantive change. Now, the chapter serves upwards of 50 or 60 families a year. “We’ve built an awareness,” Vennera, the corporate lawyer, says, “but there’s more work to be done and even more awareness to create.”

Wars No Longer Front-Page News

Today, everyone has their own problems, but part of the challenge in raising funds for Operation Homefront is that war is so commonplace it’s not front-page news anymore. “People do forget that Americans are deployed,” Stinson says. “But those sacrifices are still being made so the rest of us can sleep at night.”

Since 96 cents of every Operation Homefront dollar raised goes to help local military families, every dollar counts. Stinson has worked with a local Chick-fil-A, even a bar in Doylestown, and other sponsors. On June 10, the 3rd annual Col. Lyle Hohnstine Memorial Golf Tournament is scheduled at Bear Tray Dunes in Oceanview, Del.

The local chapter also benefits from national morale-boosting events. For example, Outback Steakhouses recently raised $1 million for Operation Homefront. Dollar Tree stores sponsor two annual in-store collection drives: one in the summer for school supplies, and another in late fall-early winter for toys for the holidays. Last year, $500,000 in toys were collected in Pennsylvania and Delaware Dollar Tree stores, alone. At units throughout the chapter’s territory, school supplies are distributed at family readiness weekends. The toys go out to military families at holiday parties at various units.

“The need has always been there,” Stinson says. “for that almost-forgotten generation of Vietnam veterans, there was no safety net, and today what you see is that a certain percentage of the homeless on the streets are those same veterans because their needs were never addressed.”

(For more information, please visit  http://www.operationhomefront.net/pade/