By Barbara Ruiter, Data Entry
Family Alliance for Veterans of America (FAVA)/WestCare Iowa has had several volunteers and interns to help with various tasks throughout FAVA’s ten years. Linda Parmley is our glowing star that we want to acknowledge and show appreciation to for her consistent help throughout the years. She was a member of our Community Action Council (CAC) from 2018 until 2020. Before 2018, she attended the CAC meetings as a volunteer to take part in volunteer activities.
“Linda is a person who loves to work more than attending meetings.”
Linda has been actively helping FAVA for ten years. She has spent hours organizing our pantries and countless hours helping get food, quilts and other donations organized and displayed. She has helped to prepare care packages to give to homeless individuals while staff conducted the Federal Point-In-Time (PIT) Count of homeless people in Iowa. She has donated and coordinated the donations used to hand out to homeless individuals encountered hats, gloves, scarves, socks, handwarmers, food and hygiene items. Linda has volunteered to bake for bake sale fundraisers and has provided food for the Veterans in the Continuum of Care (CoC) house. She has also helped with our annual Chili Cook Off several years in a row.
Linda is a Veteran’s widow. Her late husband, Jerry, was in the US. Navy on a PBR (Patrol Boat Riverine) in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War (1963 to 1967). He then served in the Army National Guard from 1967 to 1969 for a total of six years of service. The Parmley’s met in 1990 while working at the Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, Colorado and married in 1993. They took early retirement and moved to the rural city of Emmons, Minnesota right on the border of Iowa and Minnesota.
Jerry joined the Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA), where he served as their director for eight years before passing away of cancer in 2011. Linda has stayed active as a member of the VVA for the last twenty years. She has worked with gathering memberships, assisting with fundraising and takes their trailer with merchandise to area events to sell items and raise funds.
She is also a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Auxiliary of Britt, Iowa. Heritage Park of Forest City is creating a new Veteran’s Memorial Museum in the park where Linda has been doing volunteer jobs as well.
We are lucky to have her. Thank you for 10 years of service, Linda!
