Sometimes the last straw comes in the form of a leaking roof, a broken lawnmower or a car repair.
But a fundraiser, Deployed Service Members Benefit, to benefit Minnesota military families of deployed service members is aimed at helping families through those rough spots. The fundraiser is planned for Saturday at the Camp Ripley Recreation Center.
The fundraiser, with emcee outdoorsman Ron Schara and his dog Raven, includes wine tasting and a wild game meal featuring pheasant and mallard. The event includes entertainment, live and silent auctions with items like a thrill ride with a professional driver at Brainerd International Raceway, airline tickets, hunting or fishing tripsor LASIK eye surgery.
Yvonne Zappa, coordinator of the Camp Ripley Family Assistance Center, said sometimes it’s just one more bill that puts a family into a spiral. Items they may not have had to pay for before, perhaps an oil change or small home repairs and they no longer have hands at home to do the work. Compensating for a missing parent may mean adding day care charges to a budget that never had to stretch that far before. Or, Zappa said, savings have gone to other needs such as a vehicle repair and then the furnace goes out.
“It adds an other bill and they start going under,” Zappa said. “When it starts snowballing like that, it seems like everything goes wrong.”
Zappa said if the families are taken care of at home, their deployed soldier doesn’t have to worry about them and can focus on the mission at hand.
“If you can think of all the things that can go wrong with your house, it will when you are deployed,” Zappa said. “There are a million different things we can use this for.”
The Family Assistance Center has been able to help get a vehicle fixed or make sure a family continued to have transportation or get a washer and dryer repaired, among a multitude of other needs. Sometimes, Zappa said, a family just needs help through the stress, with budget planning. It may simply be an extra bag of groceries.
Zappa said with 3,000 troops deployed there are going to be issues. Zappa has received a call in the middle of the night with a wife of a deployed soldier faced with water leaking and no idea how to shut off the water. For those without family members in the area, there may be no one to turn to for help with those types of repairs.
“Benefits like this are huge,” Zappa said of the fundraiser.
The fundraiser benefits all branches of the military. No administration fees are taken out of donations. Zappa said if $100 comes in to the Family Assistance Center, $100 goes out to the military families. Individuals sponsoring a VIP table earn a chance at experiencing the Engagement Skills Trainer using an M-1 Tank or Hummer Simulator.
With a deployment, Zappa said the involvement isn’t limited to the soldier serving their country, it’s the family, too. Zappa knows what the worries are first hand. Her granddaughter is in Iraq now.
Ticket cost is $60 per person. VIP tickets are $100. All proceeds go to the Minnesota Military Family Foundation, which is based in c
Cottage Grove. For more information or to order tickets, call (320) 745-2232. For more information or help from the Family Assistance Center, call (320) 616-3119.
RENEE RICHARDSON may be reached at renee.richardson@brainerddispatch.com or 855-5852.
