Sales at Encinitas book reading to help military families
By: ALEXANDRA DeLUCA – For the North County Times
ENCINITAS — Sales of copies of the “Operation Homecoming” anthology Friday night at the Encinitas Community Center will benefit local military families.
Borders book store is donating 10 percent of the proceeds from sales at the Encinitas book-reading event to the Victory Fund, a nonprofit organization that provides financial support to military families throughout San Diego County.
“Operation Homecoming” includes more then 100 letters, e-mails and other writings by troops and their families. The book’s editors and some of its contributors are on a speaking tour of 30 cities around the country.
The Victory Fund is a program of the San Diego Nice Guys, established in 1979 by a small group of San Diego businessmen to help local families in need. The goal of the group, which now has a membership of more than 160 men and women, is to help people who have fallen on hard times get back on their feet and become self-sufficient.
“It’s a hand up instead of a handout,” said Encinitas resident Jack Kelly, a retired Marine colonel and longtime San Diego Nice Guys member.
The Victory Fund was created three years ago in response to the growing number of local Marines and sailors returning from Iraq and Afghanistan facing financial hardships due to injuries they suffered during the wars.
“In 2003, we got a donation from the Bob Baker Foundation of $10,000 to be used exclusively for wounded sailors and Marines from San Diego County and their families,” said Kelly. “That became the Victory Fund.”
Kelly said the Victory Fund helps with expenditures not covered by the government, such as the cost incurred by a service member’s family members who travel to a hospital to be with them, or the income lost when a spouse must leave a job temporarily to help take care of their injured husband or wife.
“It’s not that the government doesn’t do this —- there are expenses above and beyond,” said Kelly. “That’s where we step in, to help with extraordinary expenses the family may have.”
Kelly is among a committee of San Diego Nice Guys members who oversee the Victory Fund and work with a network of contacts to identify local military families in need of help.
“We coordinate through the military and wives clubs to see what kind of help we can provide,” said Kelly.
One of the nonprofit organizations the Victory Fund works closely with is the Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund, a national nonprofit organization that provides financial help to the families of Marines and sailors injured in combat operations and training accidents, as well other service members who are injured while serving with Marine Corps forces. The Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund’s founder, Karen Guenther, the wife of an active duty Marine, was inspired to start the charity when the Victory Fund provided a brand-new, fully equipped wheelchair van to a Camp Pendleton Marine whose injuries, hurt during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, left him a quadriplegic.
“We work in conjunction with them,” said Kelly, who helped Guenther establish the nonprofit organization in 2004.
Since its inception in 2003, the Victory Fund has raised and donated more than $100,000 to local Marines, sailors and their families, most of which came from private donations. As there are no administrative costs, 100 percent of the money donated to the Victory Fund goes directly to local military families.
“For every dime that comes in, a dime goes out,” said Kelly.
— To contact the Victory Fund, call (858) 597-9397.
This story on the Nice Guys Victory Fund
appeared in the September 21, 2006 edition of
the North County Times
and is reprinted with their permission.