- [Narrator] Funding for this edition of One-On-One with Steve Adubato has been provided by Bergen New Bridge Medical Center.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

PSEG Foundation.

IBEW Local 102.

Celebrating it’s 125th Anniversary.

Operating Engineers, Local 825.

Stockton University.

New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities.

Providing New Jersey residents tools to save money on energy costs.

And by The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Moving the region through air, land, rail, and sea.

Promotional support provided by ROI-NJ.

Informing and connecting businesses in New Jersey.

And by NJBIA.

We put business at the center.

- This is One-On-One.

- I'm an equal American just like you are.

- The way we change Presidents in this country is by voting.

- A quartet is already a jawn, it’s just The New Jawn.

- January 6th was not some sort of violent, crazy outlier.

- I don't care how good you are or how good you think you are, there is always something to learn.

- I mean what other country sends comedians over to embedded military to make them feel better.

- People call me 'cause they feel nobody's paying attention.

_ It’s not all about memorizing and getting information, it’s what you do with that information.

- (slowly) Start talking right now.

- That's a good question, high five.

(upbeat music) - Hi, everyone.

Steve Adubato.

We kick off the program with Joe Mindak, who is founder and executive director of the Foundation for Sustainable Veteran Housing.

Joe, good to see you.

- Good to see you too, Steve.

Thanks for having me on today.

Appreciate it.

- We appreciate you and your service.

We'll put up the website right now and tell us what the foundation is.

- The foundation's mission is to provide housing for homeless veterans across the state of New Jersey.

We started out in Hoboken years ago, and now we have seven locations across the state.

So we tear down old American Legion Halls, VFW Halls, we're provided land and we build brand new halls with housing for homeless veterans.

So we'll provide the housing, we'll provide all the wraparound services they need.

So 575 homeless vets in New Jersey.

Our job is to provide housing for all of them.

- How do you know how many veterans are homeless?

- So we usually get it through the VA and services like that, that kind of count how many homeless people are out there that day.

They have a day of count, so right now it's about 575.

That changes every year.

They do it every year, kind of like a census.

So they provide all that information to us through some of our partners.

- Hey, Joe, with cuts in the VA, the Veterans Administration, the federal level, and who knows where they're gonna go, we're taping this late in March, 2025, what concerns do you have about cuts in the VA and its impact on the work you and your colleagues are doing?

- Well, it's obviously a big concern because again, like I said, we not only provide the housing, we provide all the wraparound services, PTSD therapy, rides to the doctor's office, child training, resume writing, all the different services the vets will need.

And obviously we rely on the VA for a lot of those services.

So we're waiting to see what kind of cuts they're gonna do and then how that's gonna trickle down to the federal grants that we actually get to help build a lot of these facilities.

So that could be a big issue for us moving forward.

A lot of the money we get to build is from federal funding.

- How'd you get into this, Joe?

- So, I owned a magazine in Hoboken and we would raise funds every month for a different charity.

The American Legion came to one of those events.

We were raising money for them.

And they had got wiped out in Sandy and nobody stepped up to help them.

It was two years after Sandy and they were still not in their home.

So nobody came to help them.

And I was the president of Rotary.

We came to their aid and we rebuilt their home.

And then I found Monarch Housing, which is a partner of ours that helped provide some of the funding.

And next thing we know, we built a brand new legion with six units of housing for homeless veterans.

The first of its kind in the country to have an American legion hall with housing for veterans.

And now we're adding 18 more units on.

And this just kind of snowballed into, "Hey, this is something we could take and do it all across the state," and then all across the country eventually is what we wanna do.

- Joe, you keep mentioning the American Legion.

Help folks understand what the American Legion is and how the work you're doing is impacted the membership of the American Legions.

- Yeah, so the American Legion is a place for... When veterans come home, it's a place they call home, right?

Veterans like talk to other veterans, right?

They don't wanna talk to guys like me, I didn't serve.

They wanna talk to people that could understand what they went through.

So this is a home for them to be at.

They provide all sorts of services for each other.

They really look out for the other veterans and they've really been helpful on our mission here.

So it's really a place for them to come and call home.

So we want to keep providing that housing for them so they got a place to go.

And really, the impact has been great in Hoboken.

We didn't think, but after we built it, the membership has doubled in Hoboken.

- It's doubled.

- It's doubled since we built, because now we have a brand new hall.

Some of the younger veterans are like, "Hey, I'm not hanging out in this old dilapidated, garage anymore."

This is a brand new beautiful hall.

I had my 50th surprise party there, right?

It's a beautiful hall for people to come to.

So a lot of the younger veterans are saying, "Hey, this is a place I could come feel at home," and then help with a lot of stuff.

They're helping with social media, helping grow the legion, helping get the word out there.

So it's really been an impact.

- Yeah.

Lemme ask you this.

The suicide rates among veterans is disproportionately higher than the rest of the population.

First of all, why is that?

Second of all, you talked about so-called wraparound services around housing.

Be more specific as it relates to the mental health issues being faced by our veterans.

- Well, the veterans come home and they just need help, right?

It might be PSD, and they're not getting the help they want, and not having a home is a big part of that, right?

So we've noticed that once we put veterans in homes, the suicide rate goes down, right?

If everyone has a place to call home, they're not sleeping on their cousin's couch, their parents' room.

They've just come home from war and they're crashing on different people's couches, moving place to place.

This gives them a place to live.

We give them all the wraparound services they need, whether they need that PTSD training, therapy, anything else they need, rides to the medical facilities, whatever they need.

They just need help and support, right?

And these guys aren't homeless, they're not living on the street.

They're usually at risk to be homeless.

And we're providing that to 'em.

So it really helps with the suicide rate and brings that down.

- So your website's up right now.

If people want to contribute, tell folks where those dollars go?

- So our organization is all volunteers.

So every dollar that you put in is going towards helping build those facilities.

So what we do is we find the location, we go to towns, like we're in Westfield now, we're in South Amboy, Montclair, Vineland, Cape May.

We go and take that money to help those people get started, right?

So we give them that soft money to get the lawyers going, the architects going, all that money they need to.

And then we actually help with the fundraising for each separate location.

So if you donate to our site, we take that money and we help with getting the word out and we also give money to the different locations that we're working on to get them going, - Doing important work.

Joe Mindak is founder and executive director of the Foundation for Sustainable Veteran Housing.

Their website has been up, check them out.

Doing important work every day.

Hey Joe, thank you for the work you're doing.

We appreciate it.

- This is our thanks to the veterans, so this is what we could do to help them.

So thank you, Steve.

- Yeah, saying thank you for your service is the beginning of the conversation.

Thank you, Joe.

- All right, thank you.

- You got it.

Stay with us folks, we'll be right back.

- [Narrator] To watch more One on One with Steve Adubato find us online and follow us on Social media.

- We are honored to be joined by William Crockett, who's Director of Youth Programs at Joint Base.

That's JB McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.

William, good to have you with us.

- Pleasure's all mine, Steve.

- Explain 'cause there's a lot going on in that title.

Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.

Explain all that.

Not Linhurst, Lakehurst.

- So pretty much that consists of, it starts out us being part of the 87th Force Support Squadron here at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.

And then what we have, it breaks down into a flight, which we call Child and Youth programs flight.

And then within that flight, we have youth programs for McGuire, Dix, and Lakehurst.

- That's Lakehurst, New Jersey.

- Yes.

Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey.

- So we're gonna put up the website right now.

The mission of your organization is?

- Our mission is to provide quality, affordable youth programs for the youth and the families of the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst community and ensuring that our military, DOD, and civilian contractors can have their youth in our care and have no worries of them being a part of a safe, fun environment while they try and complete their mission.

- William, talk about your military experience with the Air Force and also how it currently connects to your passion for the work you're doing right now, please.

- Yes.

I started out as serving in the United States Army and I did four years in the Army as an NCO.

And then after my military.

- NCO is non-commissioned officer.

- Non-commissioned officer.

Yes.

So after my time served as active duty member, I joined the Department of Defense as a government civilian employee, started working in child and youth programs.

- Speaking about youth.

In 1995, the Boys and Girls Club became a partner of your organization, a partner to do what?

- So pretty much it became a partnership where that we both had the same common goals and what the military was looking at was trying to bring some consistency and continuity and utilizing the various programs that the Boys and Girls Club had to offer.

So we pretty much married up to the programming aspects of things and it became very beneficial for us because we wanted, there was a couple things that came into play there.

We wanted our youth to be able to have a consistency when they traveled from one installation to the other installation when it came, programs that was available and being offered.

And that was the way for us to branch that model toward that.

If you was at Ramstein, Germany and you PCS to McGuire Youth.

- There's a lot of military jargon and acronyms.

If you what?

- Oh, so that's called a permanent change of a station.

So if you relocated from one military installation to another installation, we wanted to have a consistency of the type of programs that was available.

- You understand the mental health issues that young people face who are in military families.

Help us understand this.

So there are young people across the state and in the nation are facing a whole range of mental health challenges, but what do you think is particularly unique, different, or more challenging for a young person in a military family?

- A lot of things come into play there, Steve.

You know, after coming off of being part of this post pandemic, that affected a lot of our military youth in a certain way because everything was shut down and that was something that they had not gone through before.

On top of that, and coupled with that is also that a lot of our military youth go through the transition of having one parent or both parents go on deployments in the certain missions overseas to various nations and everything.

So sometimes it might be just one parent available, other times it might be a grandma or grandpa who's coming in and filling in while the parents are away.

So again, it's about trying to keep their lives as stable as possible and being able to keep their minds off of what's going on and being able them for them to interact and engage in the various programs we have to offer to soothe that situation that they're going through.

- Talk about a couple of those programs, William.

Be specific about what service or services are offered to those young people as well as their family members.

Military family members, please.

- Well, we have a slew of different programs that we offer from everything, from on the youth, from the youth aspect of it.

And pretty much for some of the families when it comes to what we have what we call our school age program, which is a program that offers care to assist our youth from them being able to be dropped off in the morning, having a good lunch, or I'm sorry, breakfast prior to going to school.

Sometime the parents don't have time to do because they're trying to get to work themselves or they're not here to provide that for them.

And we have a program that gets them on the bus to get 'em to school and then when they come back to us after school, we're there with snacks and assistance with schoolwork and things of that nature to help them get through their days.

And also just offering them quality programming where there's not so much structure to just the education aspects of being, coming in, you know, second part of school.

But for them to be able to participate in programs, the arts, life skills, leadership, the service, helping them develop life skills as well.

- Hey, William, how much of this is personal for you?

- It is very personal because I'm very passionate about it.

I've been involved with this for almost over 30 years.

So it's something that, you know, we have situations where we have youth who started out in our program as pre-teens, what we call, which is 9 to 12 year olds.

And now they're on staff and getting, paying back and doing the same thing for youth.

That was done for them when they was going through the programs that we offer.

- Where's the funding come from?

- Funding come from various aspects.

We have, you know, we fall under the Department of Defense, so we have certain funding that comes straight from the Pentagon to our program to all the installations.

And then when it comes to the east installation, in our case, like we have 87th Force Support Squadron, we have programs that generate revenue, that help offset and pay our staff, and for us to provide programming as well.

And we also get grants from our partnership affiliation with Boys and Girls Club of America.

And sometime in getting assistance in funding.

- William Crockett, director of Youth Programs at Joint Base.

That's JB McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.

William, I was remiss, not in just thanking you for joining us, but thanking you for your service.

And let me add onto that.

The work that you've been doing for three decades plus helping military families, military youth deal with real challenging mental health challenges and issues that those of us who have never been connected to the military will never understand.

William, thank you so much.

We appreciate it.

- You're very welcome.

Thank you for having me.

- You got it, stay with us.

We'll be right back.

- [Narrator] To watch more One on One with Steve Adubato find us online and follow us on Social media.

- We're now joined by MaryEllen Picciuto, who's a retired president and advisor to Johnny Mac Soldiers Fund, we'll put up the website for Johnny Mac Soldiers Fund as we do the program.

MaryEllen, thank you for joining us.

- Thanks so much for having me, Steve.

- Let me disclose that my very close friend, Jim McHugh, who lost his brother John in 2010 in Afghanistan.

We talk about these issues all the time.

He introduced me to you.

I said, let's do this program.

Let's talk about who John McHugh was, and why his legacy still matters, and what the heck it has to do with this soldier's fund, which is so important.

- Absolutely.

So, John McHugh, otherwise known as Johnny Mac, was one of my West Point classmates.

And he was tragically killed in Afghanistan in 2010 by a suicide bomber attack.

And our West Point class is very tight-knit.

And, you know, we hadn't lost anyone in post-9/11 combat because we were senior in age.

John was a full bird colonel when he was killed in action, had five children and his spouse, of course.

And so we.

- And a grandchild.

And a grandchild.

- And a grandchild.

And we launched into action, first to just raise money for the five McHugh children to make sure that they were taken care of should they want to go to college.

And then later, about four years later, in 2014, we decided that there was enough impetus behind this, enough effort and energy behind this that we could form the Johnny Mac Soldiers Fund, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and help many, many more military children the same way that we helped John's family.

So in 2014, Johnny Mac Soldiers Fund began.

And we're commemorating already, I can't believe it, but our 10th year this year throughout 2024.

- MaryEllen, when we were talking together with Jim McHugh and we started talking offline, one of the things that struck me is, not just your relationship and connection to Johnny Mac and your commitment to military families, but also your passion for making sure that not just the fund itself does what it does, but that we, all of us, as a country, understand, recognize, and instead of just simply saying, and it's important to say, we thank you for your service, and P.S., thank you for your service, it's not nearly enough, is it?

- It's not enough, you know?

And now that everyone is out of Iraq and Afghanistan for a couple of years now, slowly fading from folks' memory, it's not in the news every day anymore, but the vast majority of the children who lost a parent in those combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are now college age.

So that's where we're stepping in and we're trying to absolutely never forget the folks that fought for our freedoms.

- What are some of these children of military men and women who have been killed in war, what are some of them facing, many of them facing?

- Well, I think having raised two military kids of my own who absolutely did not have to face any kind of profound loss like some of these children have.

You know, military kids already have it a little bit tough with frequent moves, new schools, making new friends.

The fear of their parent going off on deployment, or to war, combat operations.

But now factor in a military child who loses a parent and, you know, obviously, this is something that stays with them for the rest of their lives.

And many of the kids that we're serving now were so young when they lost their parent that their memories are from the stories that other people are telling them and from photographs and so forth.

- Speaking of stories, I've heard a little bit from Jim McHugh about his brother over the years.

Tell us what Johnny Mac was like.

- So I'm gonna date myself a little bit, but do you remember the commercials from probably the late '70s or '80s, "Baseball, Hotdogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet"?

- Yeah.

- Not to give Chevrolet a beat there, but that's what Johnny Mac was.

He was the guy next door, the boy next door.

Had a smile on his face.

I'm a fellow New Jerseyan and I grew up in Freehold.

- From Freehold, right?

- Yes.

- So, it's you and Springsteen from Freehold, so go ahead.

- Indeed, indeed.

And, you know, I got to West Point and everybody asks you, "What exit are you from?"

Well, I had never heard that in my 18 years growing up in Freehold.

But when you get to West Point, everybody from everywhere else asks you what exit you're from.

So I met Johnny Mac at some point, fellow New Jerseyan, we connected.

- The McHugh's are from Caldwell.

- Exactly.

And just super nice guy.

Unassuming, humble, great guy.

Did not surprise me later on to learn that he went on to serve 24 years in the Army, career Army officer, aviation officer, flew Black Hawks.

And raised five amazing children that I've had the pleasure of meeting.

And, you know, clearly, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

They're all just wonderful human beings like their dad was.

- Let me ask you this.

How much of this, MaryEllen, from your perspective, beyond what people can do individually, and P.S., go on the website for Johnny Mac Soldiers Fund, please go on it.

I'm not gonna turn this into a fundraiser, but the dollars go to helping the children of military men and women who have been lost in service.

But I'm gonna ask you this, that's a private thing, that's a not-for-profit thing.

Are there any specific government policies that you believe, I'm not gonna make this political, but policy to me is different, are there any specific policies on the state and or national level that need to be changed different to show how much we really care about military families instead of the rhetoric?

- No, you know what, Steve?

The benefits for military children of the fallen are actually quite robust.

And Johnny Mac Soldiers Fund steps in where there may be gaps.

And so sometimes a student has a gap with a private school or some other special circumstances.

And so we're trying to plug those gaps with the scholarships that we give out at Johnny Mac Soldiers Fund.

There's also very few benefits for military children of the fallen when it comes to private K to 12 schooling.

And so we've stepped into that gap as well.

So some of those children maybe require a little bit of extra attention that's not available in their public school system wherever they might reside.

And so we're finding that that K to 12 need is also great.

And we've expanded to help children of our wounded warriors as well with their education.

And so far fewer benefits are out there through the VA or the government for children of wounded warriors.

So we're helping with their K to 12 and college scholarships as well.

- Before I let you go, you chose to serve in the military for a lot of reasons.

What was the most significant?

- That's a great question.

You know, growing up in Freehold, my dad worked in New York City, commuted in every single day.

It was, West Point was something very different.

None of my high school classmates were doing something like that.

And I think I was influenced by the join the military, see the world.

I wanted to do something more.

I hadn't really been out of the New York, New Jersey metro area in my youth.

And so I, you know, those commercials, join the Army, see the world, I was like, oh, this sounds really exciting.

I can't say that I had this call to serve in the military, but I certainly developed it.

And once I visited West Point, I knew that was the place where I belonged.

And I ended up going there and then serving for five years in the Army, including duty in Operation Desert Shield and Storm.

So I left after five years, but continued to serve as a military spouse.

My husband served 24 years.

And Johnny Mac Soldiers Fund is just another phase of my life of service, I guess you could say.

- MaryEllen, thank you for joining us, but way more importantly, thank you for your service, thank you for your husband's service.

And we'll continue to talk about Johnny Mac and the Johnny Mac Soldiers Fund.

And we'll do our part.

We'll continue to.

Thank you, MaryEllen.

- Thank you very much, Steve.

Great opportunity.

- You got it.

And thank you so much for watching.

I'm Steve Adubato.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by Bergen New Bridge Medical Center.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

PSEG Foundation.

IBEW Local 102.

Operating Engineers, Local 825.

Stockton University.

New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities.

And by The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Promotional support provided by ROI-NJ.

And by NJBIA.

- Energetic music