By Laura Fitzgerald

The St. Clair Endowment Funds of the Community Foundation recently granted $8,000 to the Veteran Smiles Foundation, ensuring that local veterans continue to receive quality free dental care.

Owned by Navy veteran Dr. Matthew Bruzek and his wife, Laura Wilhelm-Bruzek, the Veteran Smiles Foundation provides routine and specialty dental care to low-or no-income veterans who lack private or state dental insurance and who also do not qualify for Veterans Administration dental benefits.

The grant will be used to provide dental care to veterans living in and near the St. Clair area.

“The Community Foundation grant will help defray some of the costs for veterans in St. Clair, St. Clair Township, East China, and China Township,” Dr. Bruzek said. “This will further allow the Veteran Smiles Foundation to utilize funding from other sources for veterans who reside outside of these four communities, allowing us to provide more services to more veterans.”

The St. Clair Endowment Funds oversee nine different endowments, all of which are used to support charitable programs, projects and organizations in and around the City of St. Clair, with funding for this grant coming from the Mary Moore Fund.

“The Veteran Smiles program is especially appealing for several reasons,” said St. Clair Endowment Funds Committee Chair Will Oldford. “First, it helps provide dental care to those who choose to protect our country. Second, Matthew Bruzek, along with his wife, Laura, founded the organization and Matt is a veteran himself, giving back to fellow veterans.”

More About Veteran Smiles Foundation

The couple met while Dr. Bruzek was serving as a dental officer in the United States Navy. They opened their dental practice in St. Clair in 2017 with a goal to help veterans in need.

They hosted their first Veterans Day event that same year, providing free dental care to 24 veterans. This became an annual event until 2023, when they founded the Veteran Smiles Foundation to help veterans throughout the year.

“Helping local veterans with their dental needs helps the community as a whole by aiding them in becoming stronger, healthier community members,” Dr. Bruzek said.

To date, the office and Veteran Smiles have provided nearly $200,000 in care to local veterans. Services provided include cleanings, extractions, root canals, fillings, crowns, dentures and visits to specialists.

“Currently, we have several veterans who have been waiting for fillings and crowns. We have a local veteran who has needed a root canal for several months but was unable to afford it at other dental offices until he heard about our program,” Dr. Bruzek said. “We also recently completed the first of several implants for a veteran who lost numerous teeth over the past ten years after falling on hard times and struggling with PTSD from his military service.”

More on the St. Clair Endowments

The St. Clair Endowment Funds administer grants to organizations in and around St. Clair and has granted $260,316 so far this year to numerous nonprofits.

In addition to their support for our local veterans, other funds within the Community Foundation have provided other grants in support of veterans, including;

• $1,000 in basic needs funding to the St. Clair County Veterans Council
• $1,000 in basic needs funding to the St. Clair County Department of Veterans Affairs
• $200 in general support to the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S.
• $1,000 for clothes and coats for veterans for Central Star Lodge #23 Free and Accepted Masons of Port Huron
• $5,800 to the Blue Water Fallen Heroes Community Banner Program

You can support any of the Foundation’s funds at our giving center.