How to shop and donate
The United Veterans/All Armed Forces USA thrift stores are open seven days a week, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 330 Selma Road and from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 764 N. Belmont Ave.
Store volunteers are available to pick up items by calling (937) 717-9936.
After all that’s gone wrong with his body in the decades since being exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, Alfred Wilson believes he only has another 10 years to live.
The 62-year-old Springfield resident is spending that time running two new thrift stores that support veterans-related causes.
Co-founder of a small veterans organization called United Veterans/All Armed Forces USA, Wilson recently opened the two thrift stores in Springfield under the group’s name.
After building expenses are paid, proceeds from the group’s store at the corner of Belmont and Columbus avenues, which opened this month, will go to the Wounded Warrior Project to assist injured service members.
Proceeds from the organization’s store at the corner of Selma Road and Linden Avenue, which opened this spring, go to a local Junior AMVETS youth program.
So far, only a few hundred dollars have been given to charity, Wilson said, from the sale of merchandise such as electric organs, VHS tapes, board games and used T-shirts bearing sayings like, “Hugs Not Drugs.”
Wilson and several others, all on fixed incomes, volunteer their time to operate the stores.
“It’s a great feeling to help people out,” Wilson said. “Especially because I don’t need it. I got mine.”
Speaking about his own war experience, Wilson shrugs off the bullet wound and broken back that put him in a hospital for most of 1968, all of 1969 and part of 1970 as, “It could’ve been worse, but it wasn’t.”
Raised locally, Wilson joined the Marines in 1967 at 17.
“Me and the judges didn’t get along here in town,” he recalled.
Calling himself a “rowdy kid,” he chose the military over boys school. “I didn’t want to be locked down,” he said.
But, like generations of men before him, and generations sure to follow, he credits the Marines for turning him around.
“They showed me how bad I was,” he said. “It made a man out of me.”
Exposure in Vietnam to the infamous herbicide known as Agent Orange ensured that Wilson would have to keep fighting long after the war ended.
“The government said it wouldn’t hurt humans. It would only kill foliage,” he said. “We know that’s not true.”
He’s suffered two heart attacks. He has no hearing in one ear because of a tumor. Another tumor formed behind an eye.
“You probably can’t tell it,” he explained, “but five years ago, they took this eye out. This one’s glass.”
While living in Florida, he co-founded United Veterans in 2007. He started his own organization, he said, in part because he’s never forgiven a Clark County Veterans of Foreign Wars post for denying him membership when he came home from Vietnam.
“They claimed it wasn’t a war,” Wilson said.
“A lot of my friends say to forget and forgive,” he added. “I hope we treat these Iraq and Afghanistan guys better than we treated the Vietnam and Korean guys.”
While United Veterans has fewer than 100 members, it operates thrift stores in Orlando, Fla., Los Angeles and now Springfield, Wilson said.
“I hope it helps the veterans out a whole lot,” said Judy Christian, the wife of a Vietnam veteran and a volunteer at the new Belmont Avenue store. “As we know, veterans could use all the help they can get.”
Wilson believes that volunteering his time to help others will, in turn, help him.
“I don’t want to be bored at home,” he said. “If I keep my mind active, maybe I’ll stick around longer.”
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