On Tuesday night at its monthly meeting, the Sumner Lions Club cut a check for Project New Hope, a charitable organization that offers counseling retreats to military families struggling with life after deployment.

“It might be the largest contribution we’ve received,” counselor Dan Comsia said.

In all, the business donations the Lions Club solicited will sponsor seven families for a weekend wilderness retreat to teach skills for coping with life after wartime, and repairing intra-family relationships.

“For children, it helps them understand why Mom or Dad doesn’t seem like the same person after coming back,” said Project New Hope Marketing Director Bill Evans.

“They’re not the same person,” Comsia replied. “They’re just not. If I had a dollar for every spouse who said, ‘This isn’t the person I married,’ I would be retired.”

In addition to high-profile post-war psychological traumas like post-traumatic stress—Comsia told the audience of club members and local business owners he had a client who lost three friends to suicide in the space of a year—soldiers can have difficulty returning to a home life that has dramatically changed in their absence. For example, if a soldier was the head of household before deployment, he will likely return home to find the head of household role necessarily shifted to the remaining spouse in his absence; a circumstance which can lead to a clash of expectation versus new reality.

Project New Hope uses a mix of counseling and physical activity to act as a catalyst in negotiating a new equilibrium.

The meeting was also, in part, a dinner thanking business donors for their contribution to Project New Hope. Louann Spencer and Jeannie Johnson—of Folk Art Gatherings and Columbia Bank’s Sumner branch, respectively—were on hand. More than 21 local and corporate businesses contributed to the Sumner Lions’ campaign.