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Work on veterans' center part of Home Depot Foundation’s Celebration of Service
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Emily Caroline of Boardman puts her back into her volunteer work during a Home Depot Foundation Celebration of Service project. Employees from the Boardman, Austintown, Niles and Salem Home Depot stores gathered at 305 Elm St. in Struthers Tuesday to help turn an old church building into a job assistance and training center for veterans. Approximately 85 employees volunteered their time.
By Jeanne Starmack
Struthers
Behind the old church building on Elm Street on Tuesday, it looked like a scene out of a summer carnival.
People were munching food at tables under a tent next to a trailer that was sending out mouth-watering wafts reminiscent of the Canfield Fair.
These particular people appeared to have a real affinity for the color orange, too — every one of them had on an orange shirt, and those shirts were so bright they were almost sunglass-inducing.
Out in front of the church building were more people in orange shirts. Some were laying a retaining wall out of decorative stone, and some were raking dirt to become a garden area. Some were building a wooden wheelchair ramp up to the entrance of what had been the Struthers Baptist Tabernacle Church until it closed about five years ago.
Still more orange shirts stood out starkly inside the sanctuary and in the downstairs rooms against the fresh white paint the volunteers were slathering on the walls.
That orange is a familiar color to anyone who’s ever shopped at a Home Depot — and those volunteers, 85 employees from the Boardman, Austintown, Niles and Salem stores, had gotten together to work all day Tuesday to turn the old church into a career-training center for veterans.
Ohio AMVETS Post 44, a veterans service organization, plans to open that center in another month, said post treasurer John Brown, who attended the project Tuesday.
The project was part of the Home Depot Foundation’s Celebration of Service that is donating $9 million between Sept. 11 and Nov. 11 for 200 projects that help veterans nationwide.
“We feel that for what the veterans have done for our country, it’s the least we can do for them,” said Boardman store manager Buddy Colley.
In Struthers, the four regional stores were using donations from some of their vendors to do the work, said Colley. Glidden had donated 100 gallons of paint and some volunteer work; Pavestone donated block for the retaining wall and also lent a hand through volunteers.
Jim Molnar, a friend of Brown’s, donated the food, trailer, table and tent to feed the volunteers.
The Home Depot Foundation also has donated $10,000 to help AMVETS remodel the inside. AMVETS bought drywall and drop-ceilings and remodeled bathrooms so they are accessible to disabled people, Brown said.
There are 61 AMVETS centers in Ohio, including one in Trumbull County and one in Columbiana County, Brown said, but the one on Elm Street is the only one in Mahoning County.
“We’re so proud they came to Struthers,” said the city’s mayor, Terry Stocker.
AMVETS centers offer career training and employment assistance for veterans and active service members including the National Guard and reserves.
They help with career assessment and exploration, training, licensing and certification assistance, resume writing and the job-search process. They provide free registration for hundreds of Internet-based training courses.
Family members can use the centers for a $100 fee, Brown said.