Disabled American Veterans get a helping hand
By Joey Pitchford
Published in News on November 29, 2017 5:50 AM
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Jennifer Tyndall of Chevrolet of Goldsboro presents a check for $6,100 to Vice Commander Wayne Smith and Commander Tom Callan of the local chapter of Disabled American Veterans Tuesday in the showroom of Chevrolet of Goldsboro. Also pictured, at left, are representatives of the Eastern Carolina Corvette Club, Butch Godlewski, Buster Dawson, Fletcher Bizell and Deens Kornegay, and at right, member of the local DAV chapter, Lafaith Artis, Timothy Smith, Raymond Rogers Jr. and Donald Wooten.
The volunteers of the Wayne County chapter of Disabled American Veterans do not receive any money for what they do.
The organization relies on community donations to function, and it got a substantial one Tuesday, as Chevrolet and Cadillac of Goldsboro donated $6,100 to DAV following its annual Veterans Day car show in early November.
Disabled American Veterans assists veterans in getting access to Veterans Affairs services, helping wounded and disabled veterans from all branches of the military take advantage of benefits they earned but may not have known about.
Commanding officer Tom Callan stood outside the CCOG building Tuesday morning with several other DAV members. He said that major donations like this one are the lifeblood of the DAV mission.
"We don't get money from anywhere, from any government office or anything. Nobody gets paid for this," he said. "We rely on people like this to help us out."
The group has a building at 2212 E. Mulberry St., where five service officers volunteer to help local veterans. In the last four years, three of those officers have been named DAV Service Officer of the Year for the state of North Carolina, Callan said.
The donation itself came from the CCOG Veterans Day Car Show Nov. 4. Jennifer Tyndall, CCOG marketing manager, has been involved with the show for nine years, and she said that the show has grown substantially in that time.
"This was the biggest show we have ever put on," she said. "When I started, I don't think we had 100 cars. This year we had 257 vehicles."
This year's show saw CCOG award $4,000 in best-of-show prizes to vehicle owners in eight categories, which Tyndall said was more categories than in previous years.
The Eastern Carolina Corvette Club has partnered with CCOG for eight years, and handled networking and logistics for the show. Club president Buster Dawson said the club was responsible for setting the award categories, as well as reaching out to its contacts to bring vehicle owners to the show. The club's entire 80-person membership was on hand to help run the show. Dawson said the club's involvement stems from a shared background.
"Almost all of us are veterans," he said. "Any time we can participate in events that bring awareness to the needs of veterans, we're ready to jump on it."
Callan said that the more than $6,000 donation was "huge" for DAV, which he said has an average monthly expenditure of around $3,000. Among the things DAV has to pay for are vehicles, trucks which the group uses to drive veterans to VA hospitals in Raleigh and Fayetteville. Accepting the donation check from Tyndall, Callan thanked her and CCOG for their help.
"It's people like you who keep us alive," he said.