BY PATRICIA A. MILLER
Staff Writer
METUCHEN — When Joseph Yuzuik came home from Vietnam in 1968, the 21-year-old Marine was greeted not with parades and praise, but taunts of ‘Baby killer.’
Yuzuik, 58, is glad things have changed since then.
“Now, it’s OK to be a veteran,” he said. “When I first came back from Vietnam, it was like, ‘Don’t tell anybody.’ We did what we were told, as the guys are doing today.”
And he’s glad for programs like “Operation Shoebox: New Jersey 2005” a grassroots effort to provide military men and women with care packages of personal items.
Back during his Vietnam years, his sister would send him occasional goody boxes, but there was no organized effort to send veterans care packages, he said.
“Where were you people 30 years ago?” he joked.
Yuzuik was already involved with Operation Shoebox is Somerset County when he met Metuchen resident and fellow Marine David Gaier in an area pizzeria.
Yuzuik had dropped his daughter off at a youth leadership conference that day in North Brunswick.
“I had an hour and a half to kill, so I went to a pizza place,” he said.
He was wearing his black Vietnam Veterans of American, Chapter 452, jacket, the one with a Marine Corps patch on it. Gaier noticed the Marine patch and came over to talk to Yuzuik.
“We started talking about the Marines,” Yuzuik said. “He thanked me for being a vet.”
When Yuzuik told Gaier about the Operation Shoebox program in Somerset County, Gaier was intrigued.
“He was totally impressed,” Yuzuik said. “He said ‘I’ll get a check to you.’ He’s been unbelievably generous with his time. It’s a great relationship, the camaraderie between two Marines. He jumped right in with both feet.”
Gaier, and Metuchen resident and former fellow Marine Lewis Levy, are now the coordinators of a fledgling Operation Shoebox collection program in Metuchen.
“Metuchen is a small town with a lot of money,” Gaier said. “It tends to be very patriotic.”
But that patriotism should extend beyond a Memorial Day parade, he said.
“I want to get people involved,” said Gaier. “We do too many things in Metuchen to make us feel better. It doesn’t help the troops in Baghdad if we are having a parade back here. And I don’t say that to be unkind.”
“It’s the little things we can do for the people that are over there,” Levy said. “It makes their day. It’s the little stuff they need for comfort; things they can’t get. You enjoy getting something like that, because you know people appreciate what you are doing.”
Levy checks on the collection boxes twice a week.
“If they happen to get full before that, the owners of the establishments, they call me and say, ‘Lewis, we are overflowing.’ ” he said.
Once a month, he drives the truck up to a warehouse in Somerset, where the items are boxed and prepared for mailing.
“So far, it’s going well with no publicity,” Levy said. “We’ve done fliers in the windows, that’s about it.”
Both Gaier and Levy are quick to stress that support for Operation Shoebox doesn’t necessarily translate into support for the war in Iraq.
“Whether you agree with the war or not, we have guys and girls over there in harm’s way and we need to support them, whether we support the war or not,” Levy said.
“It’s not a political statement,” Gaier said. “Operation Shoebox is a support line for the troops that are fighting over there.”
The collection boxes in Metuchen are located at the following locations:
•Boro Ace Hardware, 655 Middlesex Ave.
•Metuchen Savings Bank, 429 Main St.
•Variety Village, 420 Main St.
•George’s Cleaners, 424 Main St.
•What’s the Scoop, 410 Main St.
For more information on the Metuchen Operation Shoebox effort, contact Gaier at [email protected] or call Levy at 732-259-0500. A list of suggested donation items can be found at www.nj.com/operation shoebox.