VERIZON ANSWERS HOMES FOR HEROES VETERANS' CALL!

Long before John Murphy became a Rockland County Legislator and founded several charities that serve homeless Veterans and the developmentally disabled, most notably Homes For Heroes and Camp Venture, he worked for Verizon after serving in the Marines. Verizon provided great fortune to John, and not the kind you can put a price on. First and foremost, it is where he found his lovely wife, Eileen, who also retired from Verizon. Now that John is retiring this year, after serving 44 years in the Rockland County Legislature, he and his beloved Eileen can devote even more time to their charities, with the occasional foray into leisure activities. Throughout all these years, they have always counted on Verizon employees to be there for their charities and Verizon has always answered the call.

It is difficult to encapsulate over four decades of community service by New York Telephone/Verizon union employees and management, but it all started with building Camp Venture’s summer camp on Letchworth property declared surplus and given to Camp Venture for use as a summer camp to serve the developmentally disabled individuals living in the area. From its inception, some of the people dedicated to charting this course were Camp Venture Founder and President John Murphy, New York State Senator Tom Morahan, and Ivan Seidenburg, who was a Viet Nam Veteran and rose from a union employee to be CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors.

Special recognition goes to the late Richard Alan Hallett, known as Dick or Titch, who began working for NY Telephone Company in 1963 as a desk tester/switchman and later a steward in the union. He immediately joined Camp Venture as it was being formed in l968. From 1969-1970, Titch and other fathers of disabled children prepared grounds in Suffern and Sparkill for the first two summer camps for disabled children. In 1971, he joined a faithful group of parents who prepared property on Letchworth Village grounds for a permanent camp for their children. In subsequent years, Titch was part of the “maintenance crew” and even traveled to telephone company sites to speak to employees and convinced most of them to donate their weekly contribution to Camp Venture. Extraordinarily, for the remainder of his life, he took one or two trips per summer to make sure “his camp” was the way it should be.

This dedication to giving back often crosses generations in the Verizon family. William Carey worked for New York Telephone/NYNEX/Verizon for 34 years and supported John’s Camp Venture work. His son, Chris Carey, a Rockland County Legislator, presently serves on the Camp Venture Board of Directors. While John Murphy was an outside plant engineering manager for Verizon, Tony Caprara worked there from 1968 to 2010, and was the Communications Workers of America Union (CWA Local 1107) President from 1987. Tony always lent his support to Camp Venture. His son, Daniel Caprara, worked as a Verizon field technician in Nanuet for the past 21 years and has served on the CWA Local 1107 Executive Board for the past ten years. The giving tradition continued when Dan wanted to volunteer to help Homes For Heroes’ Veterans.

Homes For Heroes serves our homeless and disabled Veterans upon historic land in Tappan, New York, formerly known as Camp Shanks. Camp Shanks was the largest Embarkation Camp in the history of the world, otherwise known as, “Last Stop USA,” nicknamed after the over 1.3 million GI’s that shipped off from here to Europe to fight the Nazis on D-Day. Post war, the land was eventually declared surplus by the U.S. Army and could only be used to serve the homeless. With a shocking 1 in 5 homeless in our nation being Veterans, Homes For Heroes is grateful to people like Dan Caprara, who graciously volunteer their time to improve the lives of our brave Veterans.

Through the Verizon Employee Engagement Volunteer Program, Dan Caprara has joined Habitat For Humanity of Rockland’s volunteer Thursday Crew at Homes For Heroes. Habitat for Humanity volunteers have been tirelessly working every week to convert the former Camp Shanks PX bldg into a community room for our Veterans. Thanks to Dan’s generous commitment of volunteerism hours, Verizon has provided a large monetary grant to Homes For Heroes. With no funding sources beyond the initial construction phase, it has taken a cadre of businesses and individuals, like Verizon and Dan Caprara and Habitat’s Thursday Crew willing to donate untold man-hours, materials, and know-how to make the dream of building homes for homeless Veterans a reality.

Charities like Camp Venture and Homes For Heroes can’t succeed without community involvement. Verizon and their family of employees and union members have been an integral part of both charities’ missions: to serve those that society often forgets. The Verizon family has not forgotten those less fortunate and no one should forget their continual generosity.

For more information on these two charities:

· Homes for Heroes is a nonprofit organization focused on providing affordable housing for homeless and disabled veterans. To help support the men and women who bravely and honorably served our nation, monetary donations can be donated toHomes For Heroes, Inc., One Blue Hill Plaza, P.O. Box 1648, Pearl River, NY 10965.Online donations can be made via www.RocklandHomesForHeroes.Com or call 845-735-0515.

· Camp Venture is a nonprofit organization that provides total life care of children and adults with developmental disabilities. To learn more about Camp Venture or to contribute online, please visit www.venturefoundation.org. Please make checks out to: Venture Foundation, 25 Smith Street, Nanuet, NY 10954 or call (845) 624-5402.

photo: (l-r) Legislator John Murphy (Homes For Heroes President and retired Verizon engineer), Dan Caprara (Verizon employee and Homes For Heroes volunteer), Legislator Chris Carey (Verizon employee and Camp Venture Board Member). In background, Habitat for Humanity volunteers that have been converting the old Camp Shanks PX into a community center for the Veterans. Dan Caprara volunteers with this group.