A MARINE WIFE WHO TAKES CARE OF HER OWN; VOLUNTEER GROUP ON BASE REACHES OUT TO YOUNG SPOUSES IN NEED

CHRISTINA A. SAMUELS
WASHINGTON POST STAFF WRITER
Sunday, January 17, 1999 ; Page V01

Lucinda Dean, 17, is a sophomore at Quantico High School.

She is also the wife of a Marine Corps lance corporal, married for one year and three months. Dean's youth is unusual but not shocking in the nation's youngest military force, where more than half of the troops are 21 or younger. But adapting to military life, which includes moving from base to base, is hard enough on established families, much less families barely out of their teens. Prompted by Gen. Colin Powell's call for community volunteers, Lisa Joles, 34, created a group to reach out to those young military families at Quantico, who often earn less than $14,000 a year. Called HELP, for Helping Enlisted Lives Prosper, Joles, the wife of a staff sergeant at Quantico, started out taking furniture donations from higher-ranking officers at the base and giving away pieces to young families. To how many people has she given lamps and tables and beds? Too many to count -- perhaps hundreds, Joles said.

How does she screen them? It's the honor system, mostly. "If someone comes to us and lies to us for a bed -- then they need a bed," Joles said. Who needs HELP? Joles, plain-spoken, has an answer. "You have young boys married to young girls. Common sense tells you, why would they have what we have as adults? What 18-year-old with a 16-year-old wife is able to maintain a house and keep it like a home?" She added: "These are young men who have taken on the responsibility of family and are doing the right thing. There has to be something like this out there to help them." From furniture giveaways, HELP has now expanded to become a social outlet for young civilian wives who look up to Joles like a big sister. Dean got a washer and dryer, bedroom furniture, end tables and a coffee table. "[Joles] pretty much furnished our house," Dean said. At the same time, Joles took Dean and other wives on a grocery shopping trip to acquaint them with the commissary and grocery store at Quantico. For those who have young children, she arranges baby-sitting so they can get out of the house.

"She gets to know them, gets to know their families," Dean said. "She's wonderful." Kelly Services, the temporary employment agency, was so impressed with the group that local employees organized a clothing drive to benefit the women. Kelly Services also has hired groups of the wives for short-term work projects. "They really want to work," said Kelly Services branch manager Victoria A. Rizzo. "All it needs is a little bit of working with them." Tiffany Dominick, 20, lives in the District, and her husband works at Henderson Hall in Arlington. Nevertheless, someone heard she was looking for business clothes and directed her to HELP. Thanks to the Kelly Services clothes drive, Dominick said she has about a week's worth of business clothes. "It helps out a lot," Dominick said. "It's hard to get settled and find a decent job. On my husband's salary, we didn't have enough to even get to Sears to buy anything." Because HELP is not an official Marine Corps organization, the base commander, Gen. Frances C. Wilson, declined to comment on the group.

Joles and her contributors haven't slowed down, even without a stamp of approval from the Marines. She and other volunteers have gone through heavy-duty trash containers, looking for salvageable bits of furniture. Other soldiers clear space in their sheds to store furniture until the next giveaway. Officers, from three-star generals down, have donated items. "We do stick together and we do take care of our own, when we know what our own need," Joles said. In fact, donations haven't been the problem. In the beginning, the problem was the young women, who had a tendency to stay inside, bound to the base and their children. Joles sometimes had to lead them out, rarely taking no for an answer. "I'm much more hands-on. I reach them on a totally different level," she said. "She is a very good saleswoman," said Jeanette Durre, 25, a corporal's wife who started out as a HELP recipient and now assists the group. "It's made me, I think, a lot stronger," Durre said. "When I was in California [at the Marine Corps Base in Twentynine Palms], I didn't really do very much. This helps me be more independent."

Joles said her next step is to get tax-exempt status for her group, and she is working with Marine lawyers to that end. Her dream is to see similar groups at other bases. "It really only takes one person to initiate it," Joles said. "I don't feel like it needs me to do this." For more information or to donate to HELP, call Joles at 630-0042.

Cutline: Lisa Joles, from left, and Victoria A. Rizzo help Tiffany Dominick pick out some business attire from donated clothing.