Grass-Roots Army Forms to Aid Those Left Behind : Home front: Volunteers and local charities pick up the slack for overburdened military relief system.

Never has the home front been this hectic for the graying warriors of American Legion Post 790.

Joe Chilelli, a retired plumber and Korean War veteran, is running a hot line for GIs’ families out of his La Puente home. Past Commander Eileen Krizansky has been commandeering baby-sitters from all over town. Others from the West Covina post have been dispatched to mow lawns, fix washing machines and hang American flags.

As the Persian Gulf crisis enters its seventh month, grass-roots volunteers and hometown charities increasingly have been needed to buttress an overburdened military relief system struggling to handle an array of hardships--some mundane, others heart-rending--created when war tears families apart.

“We’ve done baby-sitting for two and I personally did a plumbing job for one,” Chilelli said of his hot-line callers. A senior past commander of his post, he responds to as many as 40 calls a day, directed to him by San Francisco-based switchboard operators of the legion’s new toll free hot line.

“One (caller) needed a psychologist for a 4-year-old,” Chilelli said. “One needed a psychologist for herself. Four wanted American flags.” Three callers were husbands left behind by military wives. “They want to know can my wife give a recipe that’s easy to cook for kids.”

Traditional military aid organizations, such as the Army, Air Force and Navy/Marines relief societies, have been swamped by the Persian Gulf situation, reporting a record demand for food giveaways, counseling and interest-free loans. Into the breach have stepped veterans, traditional charity groups, college students, radio disc jockeys, telethon hosts, one-phone hot line operators--the largest mobilization of wartime relief, some experts believe, since World War II.

Many people involved say the outpouring easily has eclipsed that experienced during the Vietnam War, testimony to the support for this conflict and, some argue, lessons taken from the failure of the last war.

“Since Vietnam, we as a nation have grown into a more caring population--one that recognizes the psychological and social needs associated with war,” said Diane Powers, spokeswoman for the American Red Cross.

Some of the efforts are decidedly grass-roots. In Montgomery, Ala., the manager of an automobile parts store raffled off an engine recently to benefit the families of Operation Desert Storm. Sixty Orange County hairdressers grabbed their scissors last weekend and sponsored a six-hour wartime “cut-a-thon.” In Detroit, a group of college students sought advice from the Red Cross on how to send food to Iraqi civilians caught in the war. Radio telethons to benefit military families have sprung up from here to Washington.

“A lot is being done by the military, but when they can’t do it, we step in,” said Ildefonso (Al) Tercero, department adjutant for the American Legion in Arizona. “We take them to the grocery store if they don’t have transportation. We take them to the hospital. Baby-sit. Do storm windows. Do the lawn. One woman whose furnace was out of whack bought the parts and we put them in for her.”

To those who have been left behind by Gulf-bound service members, the needs can be as tangible as a $1,000 bill for collect calls from Dhahran and as subtle and psychologically crippling as the lack of someone sympathetic to talk to each night at home.

Pam Smith, a 36-year-old mother of five, said that after her Army Reservist husband was activated and shipped out from Ft. Ord, the household income dropped from $2,600 to $900 a month. By Christmas, just one month after his departure, she was cadging powdered milk and canned soup from the charity Food Locker on the base--and still coming up short on the rent.

“It’s unimaginable,” said Smith. “We’ve had nothing but trouble since (my husband) has been gone--nothing but. It’s a lot on you.”

Smith, who eventually found help from the American Legion, is typical of thousands of families who, when the war began to unfold, turned to mainstay military relief societies to keep food on the table and creditors at bay.

What they found instead were waiting lists, long lines and a shrinking pool of funds at the private, nonprofit relief societies, which have been traditionally supported by peacetime donations from within the three military branches.

Air Force Reservist Linda Pietropaula, whose Marine Corps husband is stationed in the Persian Gulf, sought help from the Navy/Marine Corps Relief Society only to be told that “there would be a substantial wait to get assistance.” Pietropaula, 37, needed financial aid and other help when she was reactivated for duty last month, and had to move from Camp Pendleton to Norton Air Force Base near San Bernardino, more than 100 miles away.

With nowhere to turn, Pietropaula, the mother of three children including a newborn, was referred to a group of military wives from Camp Pendleton called Operation Home Front. The group, which started in San Diego in September with two members and a Marine Corps recruiter, now claims 75,000 volunteers from throughout Southern California, and 400,000 nationwide.

“We’re donating a moving truck, boxes and volunteers to move Linda to Norton, as well as money for the $1,500 she’ll need for first and last months’ rent,” said Linda Seymour, 31, a co-founder of the group.

“The Navy Relief Society is really being hit hard right now and a lot of wives are having a tough time affording things like groceries and long-distance telephone calls from their husbands,” Seymour said. “The hardest thing in the world is having to say, ‘Sorry, I can’t accept a call from my husband because our income has been cut.’ ”

In addition to the financial aid offered by private, nonprofit military relief societies, the armed forces provide a broad range of services on base for personnel and their families--from financial counseling to discounted groceries at base commissaries.

But not every reservist lives near a military base, and the relief societies are limited in fund-raising capability as well as burdened with waiting lists. Even for those who live near military facilities, the programs are limited.

“The programs we offer, for example, do not include picking people up in vans or taking them to get their groceries or wherever they need to go,” said Lt. Greg Smith of U.S. Navy headquarters in Washington. “And there are relatives of service members--moms and dads back in Iowa--who need support too, when all our programs are where the ships are, back on the base.”

Smith said the demand for services “has been up at all our facilities, mainly because of the large number of people who have been deployed all at the same time.”

“It puts a strain on the system,” the lieutenant said. “There’s no overestimating the need.”

In Southern California alone, that need has spawned more than a dozen new charities, ranging from groups such as Seymour’s Operation Home Front to a new Orange County legal clinic specializing in the financial and legal problems of the families of Desert Storm.

When KFI-AM radio in Los Angeles put out a call for donations to military families, it collected $30,000 in less than two weeks, said Bill Lewis, manager of marketing and promotions. Students at A.E. Wright Middle School in Calabasas donated a portion of their lunch money this week. Eye Perfect, a retail sunglasses store in Seal Beach, pledged 15% of its February sales. In addition, KFI has been inundated with a steady stream of personal checks ranging from $1 to $500.

Meanwhile, more than half a dozen Southland hospitals are offering free psychological support sessions.

“These people are riding an emotional roller coaster,” said Dr. John Perez of LifePlus Coldwater Canyon Hospital in North Hollywood, which has seen a steady stream of people in recent months for war-related grief. “It’s the E-ticket ride you never wanted--because it follows the course of the war.”

Of particular concern is the sudden spread of what Perez calls “CNN Syndrome”--a combination of depression and anxiety that manifests itself, in part, in an inability to tune out the news of the war. People with this problem, Perez says, stay glued to the television day and night in hope of catching a glimpse of their relatives or a snippet of news about their well-being.

“I have it bad,” said Riva Scher, 48, of Granada Hills, whose 22-year-old son is on duty 20 miles south of the Kuwaiti border. “My syndrome also includes CBS, NBC, ABC and any other station I can find doing a war story.”

Scher attends a support group at LifePlus weekly.

With so many people in need of such support, Perez said, his hospital and others nationwide have begun talking about a national mental health network for families of war. As it is, he said, psychotherapists “are operating like revolutionary cells in a vacuum.”

Coordination has been less of a problem for the American Legion, which has set up one of the nation’s most comprehensive charity networks in the wake of this war. John Minnick, spokesman for the Indianapolis-based veteran’s group, said the Legion’s coast-to-coast Family Support Network--which reaches via the Legion’s 3.1 million members into every small town in the United States--was the product of an important shift in the organization’s leadership.

“All but two or three of our national staff and our last three national commanders are Vietnam veterans,” Minnick said. “Back in August, we realized we would almost certainly go to war, and we decided to take a look at what didn’t happen for us.”

Through a toll-free number, the Legion’s leadership decided to mobilize volunteers in its 16,000 posts to handle some of the most labor-intensive charity work being conducted on the home front. The requests for assistance paint a poignant picture of life for the families of those who have been deployed.

Chilelli, who handles these calls for Legion Post 790 in West Covina, said he has passed along his wife’s version of macaroni and cheese to several flustered husbands of women at the war front.

“One asked, ‘How much soap do you put in a washing machine?’ Don’t laugh,” he added. “I have had people call and ask how to balance a checkbook. Remember, these people are 18, 19, 22, 23 years old.”

Then there are the sort of hot line requests that old warriors and retired plumbers rarely come across in their everyday lives.

“My last call the other night was at a quarter of 10,” Chilelli said, “and all she wanted was to talk to somebody. She wanted encouragement, more or less, and I read her a prayer that somebody sent me once.”

Unfolding a worn scrap of paper, the veteran read the prologue to the Prayer of St. Joseph:

“Whoever shall read this prayer or hear it or keep it about themselves shall never die a sudden death . . . neither shall they fall into the hands of the enemy nor shall they be overpowered in any battle. . . . “