A year after his death, one family is honoring the memory of an Arizona veteran by collecting backpacks, jackets and toiletries for veterans experiencing homelessness this holiday season.
Lucas Conrad said that just over a year after his grandfather Charles "Charlie" Conrad’s death in November 2023, his family wanted to remember him by doing what Charlie often did — loving his neighbors.
“What sparked it was my grandma who said she wanted to collect some backpacks for homeless veterans to honor his memory,” said Lucas Conrad. “I got into my room and I realized how many jackets I had too, that I don't use. And I'm like, ‘Why do I need all this? There are people that need these jackets, people that are in need of something.’”
The idea snowballed from there, he said, with other family members pitching in until it became the Charlie Project. Lucas Conrad and his father, Steve, have collection boxes set up at participating YMCAs and other locations throughout the Valley that he’s posted online.
“So what we’re actually doing,” he explained, “is we've set up locations, we got these boxes from home. We got some wrapping paper and we made some flyers and we put together these boxes.”
From there, Conrad is coordinating with nonprofits that work directly with homeless veterans over the next month or so, like PHX350 and Justa Center.
According to his grandson, the late Marine and Navy Vietnam veteran, spent a lot of his time as a volunteer serving people experiencing homelessness, “a working man till the day he died,” despite some later struggles with getting enough sleep.
“But more importantly, he was just so – he was so romantic. He actually proposed to my grandma by riding a horse – and he was in a full suit of armor – and he came in, rode onto her street, and he proposed to her that way,” said Conrad. “It was less than a year and he wanted to get married. It was within a couple months, and then they just did it.”
The armor was rented but Conrad said the love his grandfather had for Joy, his wife, got them through the tough times that being a military family can often bring – lots of travel and being apart with young children to support. But they were determined to make it work, said Conrad, and ultimately were rewarded with 56 years of marriage and a tight-knit bond that extends to the whole family.
“He was friendly to everyone,” said Lucas Conrad. “This wasn’t just like, ‘I'm doing this job for somebody, so I'm going to be friendly to them.’ This was like, ‘OK, I'm going to check out if my neighbor needs something.’”
It’s a sentiment he said he hopes the Charlie Project will impart on more people as they roll it out for the first time.
“You can go years without knowing your neighbors, and I think so many of us are guilty of it. It’s easy to do,” Lucas Conrad said. “We're all just humans and I think we have an obligation to share the love and compassion within us with everyone, not just because we feel like we should, but because we want to, because we want to be there for our neighbor. And our neighbor is not just the person in the house next to you, but it's the person that doesn't have a house, the person struggling financially and trying to make ends meet.”
The 18-year-old said he often volunteers serving people experiencing homelessness in downtown Phoenix, where he strives to translate that sentiment into action. He reflected on how close his family is, recalling how his "Papa" Charlie would spend hours cleaning and repairing equipment for outings to ride four-wheeler bikes together.
“Every weekend,” said Lucas Conrad, “we would go out to the sand dunes over in Yuma and we would ride four-wheelers. And we've just done that since I was a kid, we've gone on countless trips. And I think the family time that we spent out there has just been so valuable.”
Charlie taught him to slow down, he said, and appreciate the opportunity to connect with others.
“So when I go to volunteer at Andre House, I try to set the intention of not just doing the job that they tell me to, but actually actively seeking out to be a friend to somebody,” Lucas Conrad said. “And sit down and talk with them, because that may be the only time that they get to talk to somebody the whole day, you know? Like, people, sometimes they just want to talk about something and when they don't have that, everything gets kind of built up. But if we can just be actively outreaching to people who may need our help — I think that's what’s so important, is the interaction and seeking out that.”
Lucas Conrad also emphasized how important that can be for veterans, especially.
“The brotherhood and … what you go through together really strengthens those bonds and I think you can’t really understand it unless you’re in it, really, but when you get out there aren’t those same level of relationships,” he said. “So it can seem like kind of everything was taken away, like you had these great, strong, tight relationships with your buddies and then all of a sudden, it’s just one day – it’s just gone.”
Which is why, Lucas Conrad said, he was excited to begin dropping off backpacks through Jan. 20.
“If we as a society can unite veterans and give them support to lean on each other to lean on people who are going to be supportive of them,” said Conrad, “I think that is a good start.”
