My husband and I have been married since 1978, we have one beautiful daughter and three extremely (of course!) beautiful grandchildren, and we live in a small rural town in upstate New York. We both have full-time jobs, and we also have a website design business named 'Cross Creek Designs. We love this country and we are unabashedly patriotic - but like any good red-blooded Americans we also holler loud and long when we disagree with policies or politics.

We have always had a desire to help people, and have always looked for ways to help make other's lives just a little easier. One of the things we've done was to co-found the Adoption Triad Outreach, an on-line support system for those touched by adoption. Click here to learn a little more about that if you'd like.

We are not what you would call a 'military family', but for generations we have believed that we are indeed blessed to call America home, and that it's our duty to serve if needed to protect her. During World War II, my great-uncle was killed in Germany; my father enlisted in the Army and my husband's father joined the Marines; most of our uncles on both sides of our families enlisted in various branches of the armed forces, and many of our aunts contributed to the war effort by working in various factories as "Rosie the Riveters". My husband enlisted in the Navy during the Vietnam war immediately after he graduated from high school at the age of 17 (over the very strenuous objections of his mother!). Whether we agree or disagree with any type of war or conflict is immaterial - we always have and always will stand foursquare behind the members of our armed forces wherever they are asked to serve.

Our families have been especially blessed because even though so many members have served in the armed forces, almost all of them were able to return to America and build the lives, homes and families that they had dreamed of. I made this design to honor and in remembrance of all the brave souls who were not able to seek their dreams because they willingly answered the call to serve our country, but they never came home again.

How The AFFAR™Fund Came To Be

At the beginning of Operation Desert Shield in late 1990, my cousin became very worried that her husband, a longtime Reservist, would be called to serve overseas. Some of the men and women stationed at the base that her husband reported to eventually were sent overseas, but fortunately no one in his unit was deployed.

As the conflict heated up and more and more troops were deployed, my cousin began hearing about some of the Reservist's families that were experiencing financial difficulties. Many of those families were facing real hardship because their income had been significantly reduced as members were suddenly called into active duty and away from their 'regular civilian jobs' and were now earning only standard military wages.

My husband and I felt very strongly that anyone who was actively serving our country - and who was facing the possibility of injury or death on a daily basis - shouldn't have to bear the additional burden of knowing that their absence from their home was causing their family financial difficulties. We also felt that the families of these brave men and women, who were living day in and day out with the fear that their loved one was in harm's way, should not also have to worry about how they were going to pay their rent, or their utilities, or buy clothes for their children. We decided that we were going to do something about the situation, if we could.

Armed only with good intentions and a few ideas, we decided to set up a fund to help as many of the military families that we could. We decided that we would design patriotic T-shirts to sell and put all of the profits from the sales into that fund.

While this plan sounded good to us, we knew that we didn't have the know-how or the resources to start or manage a fund, or to be able to distribute money to military families in need. We realized that we needed to find a reliable and trustworthy organization to oversee the fair and equitable distribution of the money we planned to raise

My husband thought of the perfect solution - the USO, an organization that he knew was reliable, trustworthy and had the resources to determine which military families were in need. We contacted the local chapter of the USO (the USO of Metropolitan New York), told them what we wanted to do and in January of 1991 we went down to New York City to meet with Hazel Cathers, the Director of Program Services, to discuss our plans. My husband and I had already decided on a name for the fund - the Armed Forces Family Aid and Relief Fund™ (AFFAR). We had also decided on what we wanted the fund to do - it should provide immediate financial aid to military families in financial crisis due to the sudden deployment of their family member. The USO of Metropolitan New York signed an agreement with us stating that they would maintain and administer the AFFAR Fund and distribute the money that we collected, and we were off and running. We called our little two-person operation "Independence". We began by selling a few shirts here and there, and then a few more, and then people at our jobs who had purchased shirts began telling their families and friends about the shirts, and before we knew it we were selling a few dozen shirts a week. When a local paper picked up word about what we were doing, the phone started ringing off the hook for weeks on end with orders.

We raised $5,000.00 by selling those T-shirts; we went back down to New York and gave it all to the USO. That was the first 'official' contribution to the AFFAR Fund. The USO of Metropolitan New York also held a radiothon to help raise money for the fund, and in time the AFFAR Fund grew to over $180,000.00. The money was distributed by the USO to military families in sudden financial crisis, and the fund helped them pay rent, fuel bills, medical bills, and other needs that otherwise would have gone unmet.

The USO of Metropolitan New York continued to administer the AFFAR Fund until March of 2008. For more information, click here.

Click here if you want to see copies of a few of the newspaper articles from when we established the AFFAR Fund.

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are trademarks of Never Forget Flag; reproduction is strictly prohibited. ©2004 - 2008 Never Forget Flag

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