GI Family Groups Look to O.C. for Guidance

In the burgeoning network of military support groups, part of the nation is looking to Orange County for help.

Not even Kathy Collier, who heads the Anaheim-based Support Group for Proud Families of Our Military, thought it would come to this.

Since her appearance on network television this week, when she described the comfort that group meetings have afforded those with relatives stationed in the Persian Gulf, Collier has been fielding telephone calls from military families in Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas and elsewhere asking how they can organize their own groups.

At the same time, she has watched her membership grow, attracting families from East Los Angeles to San Clemente. The meetings, once comfortably situated in a room at Anaheim’s Crescent Baptist Church, will now be moved to the church gymnasium.

“I’m getting calls from all over the nation,” Collier said, adding that people have been interested in tips on organizational structure and meeting activities. “They just want to know how to go about it.”

Most of the attention came after the group was featured Wednesday on ABC-TV’s “Home Show,” which taped portions of the group’s special Sunday meeting, the first gathering since the war began.

Collier, whose son Darrin is stationed in Saudi Arabia with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, formed the group Aug. 15, soon after her son left for the gulf.

Starting from scratch, she began with a committee meeting and then sought out a meeting place. Today, there are volunteers staffing committees on kitchen duties, decorations, care packages, child care and car-pooling to and from meetings every first Sunday of the month.

One woman who owns a local flower shop donates an arrangement for every meeting; it is the subject of a raffle for family members to take home. Speakers have come to talk about subjects ranging from the contents of military field rations to how families will be notified in the event loved ones become casualties of war.

Collier said that programs are created to outline the activities for the meetings and that they are mailed to loved ones overseas so that they can keep up with the family’s activities at home.

Part of each meeting is also set aside for relatives and friends to share letters and photographs from the gulf region.

“I got a call from one woman who said she didn’t have any relatives there but had been writing to 150 servicemen,” Collier said. “She called from Long Beach to say she needed a support group. She doesn’t drive, so we’re making arrangements to have her picked up.”