Rocky Hill AMVETS Donates $12,000 for Gift Cards For Wounded Vets

The Connecticut AMVETS, headquartered here in Rocky Hill, recently donated $12,000 for gift cards to help wounded military men and women at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland, as well as $25,000 to help purchase a van that helps bring those donations to the wounded troops.

For six and half years, groups and individuals throughout Connecticut have sponsored trips to Walter Reed to visit wounded soldiers. They hand out homemade cards with gift cards from the military department store, known as the Post Exchange, tucked inside to as many soldiers as possible. The program is called Operation Gift Cards.

“We go every month and sometimes twice a month,” said Al Meadows, chairman of the program.

During each trip, the volunteers will visit between 50 and 83 soldiers who will get gift cards ranging from $60 to $200. Meadows said he takes between $3,000 and $5,000 worth of gift cards with him each trip. Operation Gift Card has delivered $500,000 in Post Exchange gift cards, corporate donations and other items to soldiers and their families, he added.

Meadows encourages groups to stuff the gift cards full of brochures and informational material the veterans can use when they return home. The cards are not just used by the patients, but also their families, he added.

“The gift cards are just as important to the families as they are to the soldiers.”

Meadows has transported 183 people from 63 different organizations with him during his 78 trips to Walter Reed. He takes up to six people each month.  Firefighters, Elks Lodge members and church groups have all traveled to the medical center, but the most common travelers are veterans’ organizations.

“People just want to personally thank them for their service,” Meadows, who is also the Connecticut Public Relations Officer for the AMVETS, said.

“They cheer us up,” Meadows said about the wounded soldiers. “Their morale is extremely high.”

Each month, the cosponsors of Operation Gift Cards borrow the van from the Rocky Hill state headquarters of the Disabled American Veterans for Operation Gift Cards. However, the trips for Operation Gift Cards were putting more miles on the van than were originally intended.

So the Connecticut AMVETS donated $25,000 to help with the purchase of a new van. The new van, which will have six bucket seats, an electric wheelchair and scooter lift, as well as Disabled American Veterans artwork on the front and back, is expected to cost $57,000.

Anyone who donates $10,000 or more has the option of having their name listed on the back of the van under a section titled “Donated By.”

Meadows said that the AMVETS are the “most inclusive of veterans’ organizations” and the only requirement for a veteran to join is that he or she must have been honorably discharged.

For more information about the Connecticut AMVETS, contact Chad Colter by email at ccolter@amvetsct.org or by telephone at (860) 383-2770.

For more information about the van, contact Al Church, by email at  disabled.veterans@snet.net or by telephone at (860) 529-1759. 

For more information on Operation Gift Cards, contact Meadows at by email at al.meadows@snet.net or by telephone at (203) 929-3357. 

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