Support center helps vets readjust

CINCINNATI (AP) — For years, the Yellow Ribbon Support Center sent thousands of boxes of snacks, toiletries and games to troops on active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now it’s also helping veterans readjust to civilian life.

“It just worked out that way because they know who we are,” founder Keith Maupin said. “Our mission is to support them, to make sure they’re not forgotten like those guys in Vietnam.”

Maupin and his former wife, Carolyn, established the center in 2004, a few months after their son, Matt, was captured and murdered in Iraq. His remains were found last year.

Some returning soldiers experience sleep disorders, depression that can lead to drug or alcohol abuse, or have trouble rejoining in family activities with spouses and children.

For some, the long separation leads to divorce, which reinforces depression and more abuse problems, even suicide.

The Yellow Ribbon Support Center doesn’t operate its own programs, but many soldiers and their families gravitate to the center for referrals.

“Some of them come in. Sometimes it’s parents and wives who come in,” said June Izzi-Bailey, a volunteer who coordinates the center’s scholarship program. “They just seem to find their way here.”

The center helps them take advantage of Veterans Affairs and National Guard programs, and to find groups such as The Thank You Foundation and AFTA, the Armed Forces Ticket Association.

When their son went missing in Iraq, Keith Maupin recalls that the family met with President George W. Bush at least 16 times, and the support center sent thousands of boxes of treats and necessities to soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait and Bosnia.

Bush has autographed a baseball to be auctioned at tonight’s fundraiser here, where scholarships of $1,000 each will be awarded to college students in the name of each of the 53 Cincinnati area-soldiers who died in Iraq or Afghanistan.