The Banner Retirement Ceremony held twice a year at the Bullhead City Council Meeting in May and November honors the families of those service members separated from active duty who had a banner on the highway. The Tri-State Military Moms give them the banner and the mayor a certificate of appreciation from the city. Photo courtesy of Tri State Military Moms
BULLHEAD CITY – Showing respect and appreciation for the loved ones of those who represent the United States military is a primary motivation for the Tri-State Military Moms.
Tri-State Military Moms has operated as a non-profit since 2012 but was formed in 2001 following the events of 9/11.
“We had a few moms that got together and we called it a support group at that time,” co-founder and president emeritus Cindy Frizelle said. “(Members) came from Arizona, Nevada, and Needles and there were about eight of us because our kids were being deployed. We never expected to do anything with it except the wars kept coming and we kept getting our kids deployed.”
The group became a non-profit once the Colorado River chapter of the First Marine Division Association brought them under their umbrella, according to Frizelle.
“We decided maybe we should start getting a nonprofit so we could get more donations,” Frizelle said. “We have a passion and the mission of our organization continues as long as we have local military service members in our community and military veterans. We have about one-third of our members who have sons or daughters currently serving. Our current President, Janet Gagnon, has two sons in the Navy and one of our moms has three sons currently serving.
“Our goal is to continue to seek new members who have family on active duty, but we also encourage those women who have veterans in their families to join. We also have one member who is an Air Force Veteran herself.”
The organization also works with and encourages local youth to participate in its care packaging, especially the key club students from Mohave Accelerated Learning Center and local Girl Scouts who donate over 100 boxes of cookies each year to send.
“It just started growing and we started doing bake sales to raise money and little things like that,” Fizelle said. “Then the first Marine Division helped and we started getting a little bit more donations and could send more care packages, and we offered to the community at that point to have anybody else outside of our group who had someone deployed. We could send care packages to them. It just kept evolving and now it’s been 23 years.”
Becoming a non-profit has also helped considering the care packages can cost a pretty penny at anywhere from $25 to $30 per box. Currently, Frizelle said the cost is about $26 on average.
“We couldn’t really do that many of them at that time, but we would try our best depending on how much money we had,” she said. “Moms would come and go and we would get more and that’s what really probably gave us a lot of money.”
It helped that businesses began sponsoring the organization and gave various amounts of money over sustained periods – such as Southwest Gas giving approximately $10,000 a year for a handful of years. The Aquarius and Edgewater casinos would hold fundraisers and help sell merch like t-shirts. Those dollars add up.
Representatives for the casinos were not available for comment.
“We’ve got a pretty good reputation,” Frizelle said noting various donations made to the military moms over the years. “Now we send about 60 packages a month and that’s about $2,500 a month depending on how many are deployed. We have a few still in Kuwait and Iraq, but not as many. We have a lot now in Europe over near the border of Ukraine.”
The assistance has expanded to also help veterans and families who might need help with some of the day-to-day bills.
“I work with Arizona@Work and we just got a grant that’s going to be up this year for widows and widowers veterans who are kind of in between when they don’t have their survivor benefits yet or Social Security,” Frizelle said. “We had been paying rent or mortgage payments for them through this grant process.”
To get involved or learn more about Tri-State Military Moms one can visit their Facebook page and there is also its website at https://tristatemilitarymoms.com/.
“We have a fairly good crop of moms that their kids may not necessarily be deployed, but their stateside or we do have some that are deployed,” Frizelle said. “We do have probably more younger moms than we have had in the past in the past couple of years.”
Alan Dale
