When Carolynn Taylor’s husband Rick was deployed to Iraq earlier this year, the work around their Sebago home was left to her. When Taylor was injured in a fall while painting in the house, the work then went to Operation Homefront-Maine.

The organization, operated mainly out of president Donna Chapman’s Windham home, sent over a landscaper to help with the yard, and a painter to finish the room. A local contractor, Butch Freeman, came to install a new mailbox, and to complete other bits of handywork around the house.

“He’s done the stuff around the house that Rick would do if he were here, or that I would do if I could,” said Perkins-Taylor.

It is the kind of fix ready-made for Operation Homefront-Maine the local chapter of a national organization that provides a helping hand and a warm shoulder to military personnel and their families.

The national chapter, established in late 2001 in response to the massive deployments to Afghanistan, has provided assistance to more than 45,000 military families across the United States. The Maine chapter recently celebrated its first anniversary, and is beginning its second year by launching Wounded Warriors, a program that will support military families coping with injury recovery.

The very structure of a military family is broken during deployment, said Chapman, a Windham Town Councilor who serves as president of the Maine chapter of Operation Homefront.

With one spouse away, the other has to find a way to fill the void. With their usual partner thousands of miles away in a life-and-death situation, the pressures on the spouse mount. Chores seem doubled, every decision seems more agonizing.

“It’s Murphy’s Law,” said Chapman. “Just as soon as that person is deployed something is going to break or something is going to happen.”

Also, when a soldier is hurt or a military family is in trouble, the generally slow machinations of the military system kept him from receiving the help they need right away.

This is where Operation Homefront steps in.

“The delay is primarily because you have a system that is overwhelmed,” said Pam Payeur, an Operation Homefront volunteer who will head up the Wounded Warriors program.

“Government programs for these soldiers are defined by budgets and policies. We have a lot more freedom. (In the military) there’s a lot of paperwork being shoved around. We have turned cases over in 24 hours.”

Whether helping military spouses with home and car repairs or providing families with a relaxing night out at a Portland Pirates game, Operation Homefront does what they can to make military life during deployment a little easier.

“If you don’t have a loved one or a family member over there, honest to God you are clueless,” Chapman said, describing the tough conditions faced by families with someone overseas. “I was one of those clueless people.”

A longtime 4-H volunteer, Chapman attended an event last year that paired kids from that organization with their counterparts from military families.

“When I went to see that it was an eye opener,” said Chapman. “I felt so bad that I’d been living in my own world. I felt I needed to do more.”

While a chapter of Operation Homefront had previously been started in Maine, it ultimately failed and was absorbed by the New Hampshire chapter. Chapman wanted to help restart an organization specifically for her own state.

“I want Maine people taking care of Maine military families,” she said.

Over the past year, the rebooted Maine chapter has installed a new heating furnace for a family and filled a few others with heating oil. It has provided food and clothing assistance, helped purchase a car, and donated a vehicle.

The organization gave care baskets to families at both Easter and Thanksgiving, and Chapman even gave a helping hand to a military spouse who was delivering her baby. The woman clutched her husband’s sweatshirt during the childbirth, wishing more than anything else that he was their by her side.

“We never know what we are going to do,” said Chapman.

Now, they are ready to launch the Wounded Warrior program, which takes on the more arduous task of establishing support groups and financial assistance for soldiers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“These are not quick fixes. They are lifelong commitments,” said Chapman. “We need the funding for those.”

In Maine, the Wounded Warrior program will connect military families who are living under similar circumstances, said Payeur, who understands firsthand the sacrifices made by U.S. military personnel serving overseas, and the challenges they face when they return home.

Her son Mike, a tanker with the U.S. Army 1st Cavalry Division, was sent home after sustaining serious injuries over the course of 11 attacks involving improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. The last attack flipped his tank.

Upon his return to his stateside base, Mike Payeur was denied the care he needed because of various paperwork problems and bureaucratic snafus, Payeur said. Only after months of heartache was his situation remedied.

Payeur holds nothing against the military for these issues, saying it is just a function of its size and priorities. But Wounded Warriors could help families in this situation when the military cannot, giving them fellowship and understanding that cannot otherwise be duplicated, Payeur said.

“Unless you go through what we go through as a military family, you have no idea,” she said. “(A military mother says) ‘I got on the Internet this morning to see if my son died yesterday.’ Who else lives like that?”

Each unit has a family assistance component, Payeur said, but the base is often too far away, and support is relegated to “e-mails and phone calls.” There is no doubt, she said, that help is needed closer to home.

Operation Homefront representatives met recently with Maine Veterans Administration officials, and saw just how large the demand is for their services.

“In a matter of a week, they had referred to us 12 cases. In a week.” she said.

Windham Town Councilor Donna Chapman knows she might be called on to do anything as president of the Maine chapter of Operation Homefront, an organization dedicated to helping families of servicement fightinig overseas. This child Chapman holds was born as she provided company and comfort to her mother.Operation Homefront reports for duty