Chapter #63 (Clermont County of the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) will be conducting their annual Forget-Me-Not Poppy Drive on Saturday, May 20, 2017, at the Kroger Marketplace Store, 262 West Main Street, in Amelia. They will be distributing poppies from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm on that Saturday.

The Chapter passed a motion at their regularly scheduled March meeting that a portion of the Forget-Me-Not Poppy donations will be used to purchase a laptop computer for the residents at the Southern Ohio Veterans Home, located in Georgetown. Chapter #63 has been serving veterans since 1938 and encompasses both Clermont and Brown Counties.

Representatives of Chapter #63 met with the administration of the Veterans Home in January to determine how they could assist the 164 disabled veterans residing at the Home. Currently, the Ohio Veterans Home has only one computer to serve all the residents.

The Information Technology (IT) Section, of the Ohio Department of Veterans Services (ODVS), prescribed the specifications and type of desktop computers and laptop computer to be purchased and will be responsible for maintaining them.

“The Ohio Veterans Home had initially requested ten (10) desktop computers and one (1) laptop computer for the disabled veterans,” said Chapter Adjutant Doug Fike, “and our DAV Chapter decided to acquire the laptop computer at our meeting.”

All the donations collected in the Poppy Drive at the Amelia Kroger Marketplace Store will be utilized for veterans’ services within the State of Ohio.

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“Last year, our Chapter gave an accounting of where every single penny that was collected was allocated in our 2016 State of the Chapter Annual Report,” explained Chapter Commander John Plahovinsak. “This year we will provide the same breakdown of where the donations were utilized for our disabled veterans.”

This will be the third consecutive year that Chapter #63 had distributed Forget-Me-Not Poppies at the Amelia Kroger Marketplace Store.

“This was one of our most successful stores, in terms of amount of donations received,” concluded Commander Plahovinsak, “and we certainly appreciate the efforts of Ms. Patty Leesemann, of the corporate Kroger Dayton/Cincinnati staff, in allowing our Chapter to continue distributing poppies there to aid our disabled veterans.”

For further information on this news release, please contact John Plahovinsak at plahovinsak@msn.com or (513) 374-9954.