Georgia Military Divorce Attorney - Good Connections: Program helps former warriors get wheels

Georgia Military Divorce Attorney - Good Connections: Program helps former warriors get wheels

By DEBRA SKODACK - The Kansas City Star

The Overland Park wife of a soldier deployed to Iraq wants a safer car with better gas mileage to take her preschool daughters with respiratory issues to doctor appointments.

An Army veteran and mother of five living in an area domestic violence shelter wants a car that is less recognizable to her abuser.

A retired Vietnam War veteran in Riverside has trouble getting rides to the grocery store.
Three people with three different needs for a car. Three of the 20 people who will get wheels today through a nonprofit program called Cars 4 Heroes.

This is the first big giveaway for Cars 4 Heroes, which was developed last year by Terry Franz, a former auto dealer from Belton who started a holiday vehicle giveaway program in 1996 to publicize his business. Franz has given away more than 1,000 cars in the Midwest.

Chrissy Deane, 28, a former Air Force military police officer in Afghanistan, is one of today’s recipients. The Springfield resident said she was in the process of a divorce with her only income being her military pension. She lives in a homeless shelter with her two daughters, ages 5 and 6. But not for long, she said. On Wednesday, she began a new job as a security officer at her city’s utility department. She wouldn’t have been able to say yes to the job offer without knowing she was getting a car.

“You are not limited on what kind of jobs you have,” she said. “This is life-changing.”
Franz said he wanted to start a veterans’ program for a simple reason: “We do it because there is a need.”

His first veteran giveaway was a 1995 Corsica given to Mike Davis of Lee’s Summit in July 2007. A roadside bomb in Iraq blinded Davis, 39, in one eye and inflicted a traumatic brain injury in 2004. When he returned home, he and his wife struggled over sharing a car. She needed to look for a job; he needed to get to doctor appointments.

Eventually Davis’ benefits were approved and his wife got a job as an assistant veterinary technician. Then he did something that surprised Franz. Davis asked that since he could qualify for a car loan, could he give the Corsica to another veteran? He delivered it to a veteran in her 20s living outside of Joplin who needed a car to get to work.

“I decided I would give it away because it was given to me in hopes it would help me straighten my life out,” Davis said. “It seemed to be the only right thing to do that for someone else.”



Alexandra Gonzalez-Waddington is an Augusta GA divorce lawyer & Georgia Military Divorce Lawyer Augusta Georgia domestic mediator. She is an Augusta military divorce lawyer, GA child custody attorney , and Augusta Georgia child support attorney. She offers mediation for divorce, child custody, and child support.