Local restaurants, wineries and breweries strutted their stuff at the sold-out “Rotary Uncorked!” event at Martha Clara Vineyards. Pictured: Veterans assistance nonprofit General Needs president and founder Lonnie Sherman, left, with board member Michael Parson, Riverhead Rotary Club members Patrick Wiles, Beth Hanlon, Angie Reese, General Needs VP Mitchell Schare, Rotarians Randy Morreale and Tom Lennon and General Needs secretary Susan Sherman. Photo: Denise Civiletti
 
Local restaurants, wineries and breweries strutted their stuff yesterday at the sold-out “Rotary Uncorked!” event at Martha Clara Vineyards.

The annual event benefits local charities and scholarships, with this year’s featured beneficiary a veterans group that serves homeless veterans across Long Island.
Four hundred tickets were sold to the annual “Uncorked!” event, where guests sampled foods served by dozens of fine East End restaurants and sip local wines, beers and hard cider.

A portion of the proceeds of yesterday’s event will be donated to General Needs, a nonprofit organization established in 2008 to assist homeless veterans with basic general needs — items such as underwear, socks, toiletries, towels, footware and clothing — said Riverhead Rotary president Tom Lennon.

Rotary clubs across Long Island have provided the group with crucial support, said General Needs founder and president Lonnie Sherman. “From this event alone, we will probably take care of 300 veterans,” he said.

The all-volunteer group is based in East Northport but operates all across the county.

“The thing you hear over and over again from the people we help is how the help we provided is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for them,” Sherman said. Many of the veterans — people of all ages — are alone and on their own. 

The trauma of combat service is long-lasting and makes assimilation back into civilian life very difficult at best, said General Needs vice-president Dr. Mitchell Schare.
Schare is a professor of clinical psychology at Hofstra University who runs the Armed Services Adjustment Program out of the university’s phobia and trauma clinic.
Working with veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder since about the time it was first recognized by the American Psychiatric Association with the publication of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders III in 1980, Schare quickly understood the scope of the problem. Veterans today, who have often been deployed on three or four tours of combat duty — more than the one or two tours typical of past generations of service professionals — suffer the effects of PTSD more acutely. “It’s a big, big problem, he said.

“I’ve made it my mission to train others to treat these veterans,” Schare said.

The work of Greater Needs, Schare said, is “like a thank you in return for what they’ve done for us.” 

Purple Heart recipient Jonathan Clay, a former Sgt. First Class in the Army who was injured in Afghanistan in 2006, said he attended yesterday’s event just to meet the folks from Greater Needs in person. He wore his Purple Heart medal on his suit jacket lapel.
 
Story and photos courtesy of RiverheadLOCAL.com