100 Clubs help families of fallen: organizations provide support and financial gifts

Forensic Examiner, The, Spring, 2008 by John Lechliter

Police officers, fire fighters, and other public servants seldom receive salaries that recognize and fully reward the contributions they make. Their jobs often carry high risks, and too many make the ultimate sacrifice as they work to protect and serve others.

When a chaplain carries out the most dreaded duty and knocks on a front door to deliver terrible news, a family is left reeling. The line-of-duty death of a spouse, a father, or a mother, is a blow to the gut that few can comprehend.

The good news is that families of the fallen have a great resource for support in many communities across the country. Service organizations known as "100 Clubs" have been raising money and providing help to grieving families for more than 50 years. But the bad news is that many public safety servants work in communities that have no such resource. Beside their personal loss, they must deal with the loss of income from a family member killed in the line of duty. Bills can start to mount up, adding financial stress to the unfathomable emotional strain that grips families.

Forensic professionals who work closely with law enforcement officers and public safety workers are among those most affected by line-of-duty deaths, and many will want to know how to provide help to families in need. In areas served by 100 Clubs, helping is made easy by the organization. Anyone not residing in an area served by a 100 Club has the option of starting an organization, just as the original clubs were founded.

100 Clubs Arise From Family Needs

More than a half-century ago, the Saturday Evening Post reported on the formation of the first 100 Club. The Post article, "The Bluecoats' Best Friends" states that a Detroit businessman, Bill Packer, who owned the largest Plymouth dealership in the world, came up with the idea for the organization.

The Post reported that Packer's friend, a police sergeant, had been seriously wounded in a shooting. As his friend lingered between life and death, Packer came to realize that officers often faced danger. He knew that his friend's family would be financially devastated by the loss of his income. His friend recovered, but later Packer heard the story of a Detroit officer who was killed while making a routine arrest. The officer's wife had just sold her small beauty parlor business because she was expecting the couple's second child.

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Packer relied on what he knew best and took an entrepreneurial approach to forming an association of business leaders who would join together to provide financial assistance to the family. He wrote to 100 of Detroit's elite businessmen and enlisted the aid of a local newspaper columnist.

The idea was to raise enough funds to pay off all of the family's bills, and to provide enough financial support to get the family back on its feet. With the generous contributions, the family's house was more than paid for, with enough money left over to supplement the $170 a month pension the widow received.

A few years later, the 100 friends of Packer got together again to raise money for a college fund for the widow's youngest child.

Then another Detroit officer died in the line of duty, and the businessmen got together again to provide a helping hand.

Packer saw the need for a permanent and more formal organization, and he helped found the "100 Club" in 1952. Soon more business leaders began to flock to such a worthy cause, and the ranks surpassed 200, then 300.

Unfortunately, it didn't take long for the organization's services to be needed. A motorcycle patrolman died in an accident in a Detroit intersection. The 100 Club responded immediately, giving the officer's widow $7,500 to pay off the mortgage on the family home (adjusted for inflation, that's more than $56,000 today).

Soon the 100 Club gained notoriety through media reports such as the 1956 article in the Saturday Evening Post. Other communities began to copy the success, and the entrepreneurial associations sprang up in many larger cities.

100 Clubs Today

Today 100 Clubs number more than 100, and they extend from coast to coast. Some clubs, such as the Phoenix 100 Club, serve their entire state. Most serve specific communities.

The largest and second-oldest 100 Club is Houston's, which boasts more than 27,000 members.

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Rick Hartley has directed Houston's 100 Club for 14 years and has personally delivered checks and encouragement to many families. He said recently from his Houston office that in an average year three Houston-area public safety workers, including law enforcement officers, fire fighters, and paramedics, die in the line of duty. In 2007, the number was five.

Hartley explained how the process works. "First, there has to be a line-of-duty death," he said. "And there have to be dependents of the officer or fire fighter who was killed in the line of duty. The first thing we do, within 24 to 48 hours, is to get them a check for $10,000 to help with any of their immediate financial needs."

"Then when the time is better, and some of the trauma and tragedy has subsided, we will go and meet with the surviving spouse and make a complete needs assessment ... sadly, there are usually a few youngsters under the age of 12. We take all that under consideration with a goal of trying to eliminate their debt--pay off their mortgage, pay off their vehicle, notes, credit card debt, anything that's outstanding."