Valley Views: Support during scary times

Last Sunday’s Veterans Day Parade was dedicated to Pleasanton Military Families, with founders Chris Miller and Pat Frizzell and current president Kim Beatty serving as grand marshals.

Miller organized Pleasanton Military Families as a support group during the Gulf War in 1991, and he and Frizzell started it up again in 2003 when we went to war in the Mideast following the attacks of 9/11. At that time, reservists were called up to active duty and young people enlisted, leaving families to cope with uncertainty and fears as well as wanting to help their troops.

Several times a year, members have gathered for “packouts,” to assemble care packages (food, toiletries, books, games, etc.) to mail to troops overseas. And when military members return, they are thrown a party in front of their home, complete with music, city officials and the Warriors’ Watch Riders motorcycle brigade.

The organization grew quickly, received its 501(c)3 nonprofit status, and held big fundraisers to pay for mailing the care packages, which cost around $20 each. At Miller’s request, we began to mail the Pleasanton Weekly to the PMF’s list of those serving in the Mideast.

Now, I wondered, with the U.S. military out of Afghanistan and our combat operations in Iraq winding down, what is happening with the group? A phone call to president Kim Beatty brought me up to date.

Kim’s son Alex, a Foothill High grad, joined the U.S. Marine Corps toward the end of 2009 and was stationed at Camp Pendleton in a unit that had just returned from a deployment.

“I was at Safeway one day and ran into someone I knew,” Kim recalled. “Her son was in the Marine Corps and she had a business card for PMF. She said, ‘You’ve got to contact these people.'”

Kim, her husband and daughter went to the Christmas meeting and found it informative — and fun.

“When your kid or spouse go into the military there is no handbook about it, what to know and what to expect,” Kim said. “You even have to learn the talk: What’s this ‘MOS’?” (It’s “military occupational specialties.”)

But it was about more than learning the lingo. She saw that everyone at the party was in high spirits.

“OK, if they’re all happy, it will get better,” Kim remembered realizing. “And it certainly did.”

Currently PMF has about 250 families on the mailing list but a core group of about 20 is “pretty tight,” she told me, and they reach out to take new military families under their wing. But things are winding down.

“We used to have monthly support group meetings but they have gone by the wayside because of COVID,” Kim said. “We still do three packouts a year, in March, June and November.”

Just a handful of local troops are deployed now, she noted, but they are averaging about 200 care packages per packout, sending some to special forces units.

PMF’s last homecoming celebration was in January.

“He was very surprised,” Kim said. “These kids are very humble — they don’t think they’ve done anything special.”

A few years ago, she volunteered to emcee the homecomings.

“Their family will surround them at the end, and I give them the mic and they say their thank-yous,” she said. “What is so cool is that 99% of them are so articulate.”

Now PMF is struggling for new members, Kim said.

“Have we run our mission?” she asked. “We have met on that topic. We kind of keep putting it out there. It’s sad, but it’s not a bad thing that we’ve run our mission.”

“They started out as this little group, and I think they met every week,” she added, “It was bad back then, so scary.”

Kim said her son Alex, discharged in 2013, used his G.I. Bill to attend Northwest Lineman College and works in the field of electrical lines and systems where he enjoys the camaraderie of his co-workers much as he did in the Marines.

And she continues with PMF, which was there for her when she needed it.

“It’s the greatest group of friends that a person could hope for,” she said.

Editor’s note: Dolores Fox Ciardelli is Tri-Valley Life editor for the Pleasanton Weekly. Her column, “Valley Views,” appears on the second and fourth Fridays of each month.