Utility helps veterans stay warm

Discounts on expensive heating bills help families stretch budget.

Annie and Tim Bellinger have four children. They range in age from 21 to 7, and each lives at home. That’s fine with mom and dad, but the reminder of all that closeness ar- rives every month during cold weather when the Bellingers’ get their home-heating bill.

Tim Bellinger, 43, is a citizen soldier, a staff sergeant with the Georgia Army National Guard’s 560th Battlefield Surveillance Brigade. It’s his affiliation with the guard that’s helped the Bellingers keep their house warm.

Bellinger, who’s been in the guard since 2001, enrolled in a program to get a reduced price on natural gas through United Military Care. A nonprofit organization, UMC has offices in Marietta and Hinesville. Its name, say officers, describes its purpose — aiding military families.

This year, it’s working with SCANA Energy to give veterans a reduced heating bill.

“It’s a great, great program,” said Annie Bellinger, a Cumming resident who met her husband while each was a student at Fulton’s Milton High School. “It’s really helped.”

Her husband has deployed overseas several times in the past decade; his latest, to Afghanistan, lasted from 20092010. In that deployment, he took over the gunnery duties in the turret of his armored vehicle after a rocket-propelled grenade killed his first sergeant.

Such heroics, said his wife, are worth a little something

extra — a discount in heating, for example.

She credits the UMC for helping her, and others, make the lives of military families a little easier. The organization specializes primarily in economic services to veterans. It also recognizes the value of good PR: It’s the force behind “Hometown Heroes,” ceremonies honoring Georgia veterans that take place at every Braves home game.

In November, the group teamed up with SCANA to help defray heating costs for families needing extra help staying warm. By mid-January, it had made 10 utility payments to military families.

The natural gas marketer started the heating assistance fund with $5,000. If UMC can equal that amount in donations, SCANA has promised to match UMC, dollar for dollar, until the organization has raised $10,000 in donations. The total raised would be $15,000. The total so far: nearly $10,000.

UMC also helps feed families. In December, it gave food to 23 families so they could set aside mon- ey to pay heating bills. As of Jan. 14, it had given food to 14 families.

These gestures appear to be more than symbolic. Feeding America, a leading charity in putting food on the nation’s tables, estimated that as many as 25 percent of military families visited food pantries some time in 2012. That’s more than 600,000 families.

SCANA Energy was happy to work with the UMC to create a heating fund for current military families and veterans, said Simone McKinney, the company’s media and community relations manager. The utility, which has 460,000 customers across the state, also has a separate program offering discounts to active, retired, reserve, disabled service members, veterans and their spouses or partners.

“Our military families are certainly a part of our community,” she said. “It’s rewarding to see that we can help them.”

TRIBUTED CON- Annie and Tim Bellinger turned to a program for veterans past and present to reduce their home heating bill.