Iraq Afghanistan Deployment Impact Fund Grant Profile:
Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund

The call came in at 6 a.m. on a Sunday morning. A young marine, Sgt. Glendale StaMaria, had been critically injured in a car accident during training duties at a New Jersey base. Two Marines were killed; the other three, including StaMaria, were placed in an Intensive Care Unit. Family members were on their way from across the United States and the Philippines to be at the bedsides of their wounded sons. Could anything be done, their commanding officer wanted to know, to help ease the way for these stricken families?

Karen Guenther took that call. As a military wife and the co-founder and executive director of the Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund, she knew the commanding officer personally. And he knew exactly who to turn in a crisis such as this — no matter how early the hour.

For almost five years now, the Marine Semper Fi Fund has been providing direct financial assistance to help Marines and sailors and their families through crises just like this one. When the costs of travel, hospitalization, rehabilitation and recovery prove far beyond a family’s means — as it did in the case of the StaMarias — the Semper Fi Fund can step in quickly and effectively.

Within hours, Guenther and her volunteers had cut a check to pay for the flights for the sergeant’s mother and sister and had arranged for a Semper Fi representative to meet them at the hospital. “Families are under so much stress when they’re coming into this kind of situation, into the hospital for the first time, they have all kinds of forms and paperwork to fill out,” said Guenther. “We want to make things easier for them, to help reduce their level of stress.”

The young Marine had sustained a head injury and was in a medically induced coma. Doctors feared he would not fully recover, perhaps never walk or talk again. But a year later, Sgt. StaMaria has amazed his medical team with his progress. After intensive therapy, he is learning to walk and talk again. And he has been fortunate enough to have had his mother, Nena, by his side the entire time, thanks to continuing support from the Semper Fi Fund, which also helped his sister Giselle to remain in the states for as long as she was able. Without financial burdens weighing on them so heavily, they were able to put all their focus on supporting the recovery of the young soldier, which is precisely the intent of the Fund.

The StaMarias story is just one of thousands of examples of how the Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund is able to quickly respond to the varying needs of troops and their families. In addition to stepping in during times of stress and crisis, the Fund has expanded over the years to respond to the changing needs of the men and women they support.

A grant of $5 million from the Iraq Afghanistan Deployment Impact Fund provides for a significant expansion of Semper Fi’s already extensive efforts. These include assistance for modified transportation and iBot chairs, home modifications for disabled vets not covered by the VA, and for the purchase of specialized equipment needed by individuals with Traumatic Brain Injuries, burns, visual impairments and other injuries. Transition assistance can help cover the costs of education, training and other needs in the pursuit of a new career or education opportunities and therapeutic arts provides musical instruments, arts education and/or supplies for physical, emotional and mental therapeutic rehabilitation. There is even a sports program, Team Semper Fi, which offers encouragement, motivation and purpose beyond recovery.

In all, approximately 7,500 grants totaling $18 million have been disbursed to individuals throughout the country, an accomplishment made all the more impressive given the humble, and relatively recent, beginnings of the organization.

Just five years ago, Karen Guenther was a pediatric nurse who began helping out at Camp Pendleton Naval Hospital meeting MedEvac flights with care packages for the wounded Marines they carried. A military wife herself, she and fellow volunteers were touched by the increasingly serious needs of the returning vets. Guenther, co-founder Wendy Lethin and three other women all chipped in an initial $100 each to open a bank account for their new Injured Marines Semper Fi Fund. Their first substantial gift — a handicap-equipped van for a young quadriplegic vet and his wife who had no transportation — proved to be a pivotal moment.

“It was such an inspiration for us, knowing we had given this veteran his independence back,” Lethin recalls. “We knew he was not going to be the only one.”

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