Contact MPU

Marine Parents United

  Joyce Gilmour

PO Box 218

Brooklyn, WI 53521-0218

(608) 513-1966

Fax # 608-455-2039

Mariann Jordan

137 Babcock Ave.

Weymouth, MA 02191

(781) 985 6176

The MPU Board members and conference organizers are from all over the United States.

Please feel free to contact the board member nearest you.

The Marine Parents United Mission

MPU shall host an annual conference to offer guidance to USMC families and friends through all of their military experiences and beyond. The MPU conference will provide educational and social opportunities to encourage attendees to both understand and support their Marine and the commitment he/she has made to the USMC.

Marine Parents United: A bit of history....

     Conference 2008 is year number five for Marine Parents United. We currently have seven board members, and three serving on the advisory board, including Lt. Colonel Craig Stephens, USMC, retired. Two members have sons now in the Army, deployed, and the rest are all Marine parents.

  Marine Parents United is a 501(c)3 charitable organization that was formed originally to educate, uplift, inspire, and support Marine parents. This year's conference will be a celebration of five years of conferences. MPU began as a grassroots organization by Marine moms across the United States. It sprang from an online yahoo chat group called Marine Moms and Dads Online: marinemomsanddads@yahoogroups.com. When our children signed up for the Marines, we were looking for any and all information about the Marines. To many, it was a surprise and a shock that our kids joined. We were hungry for information and support. We discovered that there was a network of support for spouses but nothing had been developed for parents of recruits or Marines. Parents were basically on their own. We found a connection with one another through this chat group and a few of us met in the Las Vegas area for a "convention of twenty." The Indiana group was the largest there. We had not met one another except for two of us, but we all roomed together. During the night, we brainstormed about how we could host a national conference for Marine parents and attempt to help them become better supported on their "rollercoaster ride" of Marine family life. MPU was born in the hearts of these four Marine Moms. We prayed and sought out four more moms to begin our first MPU board.

    Our first conference was in Indianapolis IN, then Kansas City, KS, Raleigh, NC, Anaheim, CA, and this year Chantilly, VA. We will announce the location of Conference 2009 at the closing ceremony in Chantilly.

  Our mission is to help Marines and their families. We have broadened to include family members and members from families of all branches of service. We have Marine charities that we support and we are all volunteers that work on the board and receive no compensation for our time and work.

  The conference is forever changing as we grow. We have Wounded Warriors come through sponsorships, so they can be surrounded by love, receive counseling, and share their stories with us. We have a reception Friday night, workshops on Saturday, a banquet/program Saturday night, worship service Sunday morning, and a closing after that. You can see the multitude of events on other pages on the site. We design a Marine Experience where people go to an all day event on a Marine base and actually go through maneuvers and are treated like Marines in order to give them a taste of training. It is not for the faint of heart.

  We have a "Marine Mall" for nonprofit organizations and commercial vendors all day Saturday and an auction for fund-raising. We seek donations from corporations, organizations, and individuals to help us keep costs down for attendees so that many military families can take advantage of this conference.

  We are military parents who see a need and we are trying to meet the challenge. We would treasure your participation, ask for your help in spreading the word, and any support that you could share, in whatever form you are able to serve.

----Written by Marcia Gould, Founding Member, Past President and Co-

  President, Advisory Board, and Current Board Member.