Suited to the task in Bradenton

After her father, Robert Mellon, died on July 4 at the age of 85, River Strand's Elaine Mellon watched as her mother, Arlene, went through his clothes at their home in Orlando.

Included were a few suits.

"I told my mom, 'That is so funny,'" Elaine Mellon said. "Those suits are brand new.'"

Over the years, Elaine Mellon, who is 59, became familiar with how much her father, an Army veteran, disliked wearing a suit. When her daughter, Jennifer, was married in 2016, Robert Mellon was thrilled it was an informal beach wedding in Clearwater. He wore a shirt and pants.

Those suits looked new because they hardly, if ever, had been worn.

When Elaine Mellon returned home, she started pondering an act of charity she could perform in her father's memory. "I felt I needed to do something," she said.

Her husband, Phil Lahm, is retired and is involved with SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives). But both of them had armed service veterans in their family and they wanted to go in that direction.

"We both were looking to do something with veterans, but we couldn't find anything," she said.

Then she started to think about a "Lunch and Learn" program she attended a year earlier at Goodwill. The program emphasized Goodwill's effort to help veterans.

"I didn't realize how bad the situation was here for a lot of veterans," she said.

She remembered Goodwill representatives talking about the veterans' need for suits, especially when it came to interviewing for jobs.

Then she started to think about her community, and how many of her neighbors probably were like her dad, and had suits they had never worn.

She reached out to her neighbors on the social network Nextdoor, asking anyone who wanted to donate a lightly worn suit to drop it off by her front door.

"We live in an incredible neighborhood," she said. "I got flooded (with suits). I left a box outside my door and people just started dropping things off. People also asked if I would take ties, coats, and not only men's, but women's clothing. How about dresses? I told them, 'Whatever you want to give me.'

"I must have had 70 suits and outfits in two weeks."

Mellon, who has been a personal trainer for 30 years and owns Fit by Elaine, took the suits to Goodwill's Veterans Services office at 8490 Lockwood Ridge Road.

"Some still had tags on them," she said. "Someone dropped off a leather coat that had to be several hundred dollars. Not one person dropped off something junky."

Todd Hughes, a veterans services administration manager for Goodwill, said the suits will go to good use.

"These are awesome and this is very important," he said of the suits. "We work with a lot of low income and homeless veterans. They have next to nothing or nothing. Whatever the case, they come to us when they are ready for help."

The suits are just one way to help.

"When you put on a suit, you're a whole new person," said Hughes, an Army veteran who suffered a brain injury when he was hit by an improvised explosive device in Iraq. "The main purpose is to give them a suit for an interview, but maybe it's just to go to church. Some of these veterans just don't have the money to buy a suit."

Hughes said the office's supply of suits was down to a few before Mellon dropped off her collection. He said the word will spread quickly a new supply has hit the rack.

"The veteran community is pretty tight here," Hughes said. "Definitely these will get used."

National Guard and Army veteran Chris Landis, a Goodwill veterans services community outreach manager, hopes more people in the community follow Mellon's example.

"What she has done is phenomenal," Landis said. "She stepped up to the plate"

Landis said suits are just one important donation. "We have identified a need for backpacks," he said. "Whenever we get a (veteran) client, we find out their needs."

Mellon, who in the past has collected hats and socks for the Blessing Bags project, said she won't be collecting suits again for a while.

"Sometimes it was overwhelming," she said of her collections, which make her think of her dad. "Emotions are still raw.

"But my dad would have been tickled pink about this."