Tony & Maureen LaBoa

WHY I GIVE

We can’t write big checks, but we can talk about Semper Fi & America’s Fund so that folks donate what they can.

Part of our fundraising used to involve a massive yard sale. At one of these, a WWII vet (I could tell by his baseball cap) walked up the driveway, asked who was in charge, and demanded that I promise him that his money would indeed get to the Fund. I assured him it would, and that in fact, we would have it matched when it was donated the next day. He opened his thin wallet. He held a bill between his fingers for a second, and then handed it to me. It was a single dollar bill, and I could see he only had one other one in there.

That was not our biggest donation, of course, over all these years. And yet it was. As he walked purposefully back down the driveway to his old car, I wondered what he had seen and survived that made him understand the importance of assisting our veterans. That man donated half of the money he had on him and didn’t want anything in return, except the assurance that we weren’t going to screw up. I didn’t need to tell him about how all donations add up; his generation knows that sometimes one person alone can’t do much, but everyone working together can really make a difference. He brought tears to my eyes that day, and when thoughts of him pop up at random times, he still does.

We are thrilled to support an organization who knows what to do with big checks, but also with any donation. I can’t say that any of them are small. The Semper Fi & America’s Fund knows how to make them add up so that every single dollar makes a difference. They have been responsible stewards of people’s donations from the very beginning, and this has made it easy to support them, and the important work they do for our nation’s heroes.