Golf Event Honors Soldiers and Families

Golfers will play in honor of American heroes on Sunday in Eureka, per a report Friday morning from KSDK-TV.

The Missouri Friends of Injured Marines Gen. James T. Conway Charity Golf Outing will be played at course. The event raises more money for the Semper Fi Fund than any other such organization in the country, stated KSDK.

The Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund was established in May 2004 by a nurse who worked with injured Marines and sailors at the Camp Pendleton Hospital in California. Since its inception, the Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund has provided more than $44 million in assistance to more than 3,000 service members.

An enlisted man receives the Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund each year; this time on Arnold Patch, will be honored. Nicely is from Arnold, and is one of three surviving quadruple amputees from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The television story indicated the original intent of the fund was to assist with transportation costs of getting mothers and wives to injured soldiers.

"Now it's to the point where we do things like maybe we'll help with transitioning into a new home if they leave the Marine Corps, making it more accommodating to their particular problem they may have, whether it's a vehicle perhaps that will be especially made to accommodate their particular medical issue those are the kinds of things the money is going to," said co-founder of the golf outing, Allen Allred, in the KSDK interview.

Sunday's golfing event is sold out, but online donations still can be made. Free ball markers will be awarded for all donations of $25 or  more, according to the website established for the event.

Last year's outing reportedly raised $200,000. Event contact Reggie Thorpe told Patch this year the group will go over the collective $1 million mark in contributions to the Semper Fi Fund.