{"id":272362,"date":"2024-09-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-05T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=272362"},"modified":"2024-09-05T21:00:55","modified_gmt":"2024-09-05T21:00:55","slug":"fort-cavazos-spouses-club-hosts-annual-super-sign-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=272362","title":{"rendered":"Fort Cavazos Spouses’ Club hosts annual Super Sign-Up"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n Members of the Fort Cavazos Spouses’ Club interact with spouses interested in joining their organization during the Super Sign-Up event Aug. 29, 2024, at Samuel Adams Brewhouse at Fort Cavazos, Texas. President Nikki Strong said the purpose of the event was to give interested attendees a feel for the organization.
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\n Aleida Flores, right, an Army spouse; Chris Robbins, chairperson of Operation Deploy Your Dress; and Cathy Kitson, another Army spouse, host the table for ODYD Aug. 29, 2024, at the Spouses\u2019 Club Super Sign-Up at Samuel Adams Brewhouse at Fort Cavazos, Texas. ODYD is one of the Spouses\u2019 Club\u2019s organizations.
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\n Members of the Fort Cavazos Spouses’ Club help interested attendees through the sign-up process during their Super Sign-Up event Aug. 29, 2024, at Samuel Adams Brewhouse at Fort Cavazos, Texas. Spouses of service members of any rank or branch, active or retired, can participate.
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Coming to a new duty station or joining the military community while leaving\u00a0a previous tribe of family and friends can be daunting for a spouse. Fortunately, the Fort Cavazos Spouses’ Club gives spouses an opportunity to make new friends while giving back to the community.<\/p>\n

The Spouses’ Club hosted their annual Super Sign-Up event Aug. 29 at Samuel Adams Brewhouse to kick off the start of their year. It is their huge push for membership in
the organization.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe kind of do a lot of things for the community and within the community,\u201d said Nikki Strong, president of the Spouses’ Club. \u201cThis is just to make sure that everybody in the community has a friend, has something to do and just can kind of continue to build support and camaraderie.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted (the Super Sign-Up event) to set the tone for the year,\u201d she continued. \u201cWe wanted it to be fun. We wanted to be informative. We want people to come in and kind of feel the vibe of the club and learn about all the things we do, so that you know how you want to be involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many spouses\u00a0in attendance were there to join the Fort Cavazos Spouses’ Club for the first time. Some said they had been a part of spouses’ clubs at other installations and loved joining for the camaraderie.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, I actually work out with a lot of the women that are on the board,\u201d said Shannon Younkin, an Army spouse. \u201cThey all talk very highly of the Spouses\u2019 Club, and they\u2019re very involved.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so that\u2019s kind of what I\u2019ve been wanting to do since we came back here, because this is our second time being stationed here,\u201d she continued. \u201cI really wanted to try to meet new people and get more involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many spouses also were wanting to be part of the organization to give back to the community. The club hosts three big fundraisers a year: the Holiday Bazaar in November, Wild West Night in March and the new holiday social in December. The group also does event rentals and organizes Operation Deploy Your Dress, which provides formal wear for women and men for military functions. All their proceeds go toward their grant programs, giving back to the community and scholarship program.<\/p>\n

The Spouses’ Club offers sub-clubs members can be part of, including the Bunco club, book club and the wine and spirits club. But the No. 1 detail the Spouses’ Club wants people to know is the club is open to any spouse, from active duty to Department of Defense civilians, international military, National Guard, reservists, retired and unmarried Gold Star Spouses with valid DOD ID cards working or living in the Fort Cavazos area.<\/p>\n

Angie Phillips, an Army spouse who is currently in-processing here, has been part of spouses’ clubs for nearly nine years. She never felt it mattered what her husband\u2019s rank was.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery club is very different wherever you go,\u201d she said. \u201cI was just at Fort Knox (Kentucky), and it is not an enlisted base. There\u2019s a lot of enlisted there, but there\u2019s a vast amount of officers there. So just by demographics of the base, you\u2019re going to have more officer spouses than enlisted spouses. So due to that, I was, I believe, the only enlisted spouse for sure on the executive board, and maybe the two or three in the governing board.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe entire time I was there it did not matter one bit my husband\u2019s rank or anything like that,\u201d she continued. \u201cWhat matters is us showing up to the organization, raising money so we can give it away to spouses, to dependents, to local community charities \u2014 that\u2019s all that matters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Phillips went on to express she never felt it mattered when they were at Fort Cavazos previously. The Fort Cavazos Spouses’ Club made every effort to be very inclusive to spouses of all ranks.<\/p>\n

Another great benefit of the organization was the option to choose the level of involvement, without the pressure to participate in all the activities, conveyed Amanda Bifulco, a new member of the Spouses’ Club.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith kids and working as well, and then trying to be involved as my husband\u2019s spouse and give back to that unit, it\u2019s really a capacity thing,\u201d Bifulco said. \u201cSo, if timing works out and I can be involved in book club, great. If timing works out and I can be involved with run club, great. It\u2019ll be more of where it fits into our already packed lifestyle.\u201d<\/p>\n

If all a spouse wants to do is join the book club or attend a luncheon once a month,\u00a0participate in all the planning of fundraisers or attend every volunteer activity, it is up to them. Spouses can be involved in the club as little or much as they want, Strong explained.<\/p>\n

This was the only event for in-person sign up, but Strong said filling out the membership application is easy.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can go on our website, fortcavazosspousesclub.org<\/em>, and you will see the
sign-up link right when you log in or right when you go on the website,\u201d she instructed. \u201cAnd that\u2019s it, just filling out the membership application. It\u2019s a $30 sign-up fee, and then you\u2019re in.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1 \/ 3 Show Caption + Hide Caption \u2013 Members of the Fort Cavazos Spouses’ Club interact with spouses interested in joining their organization during the Super Sign-Up event Aug. 29, 2024, at Samuel Adams Brewhouse at Fort Cavazos, Texas. President Nikki Strong said the purpose of the event was to give interested attendees a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272364,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-272362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=272362"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":272368,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272362\/revisions\/272368"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/272364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=272362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=272362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=272362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}