Old Gray Mare
TB Fanatic
I wrote this years ago and thought it should be posted here.
A Little Project….
That was all I was looking for. I needed something more to look forward to than my son, coming home from school calling his younger brother, a “Poopy head” and the younger one informing his brother he “smelled like a monkey butt”. Taking care of a home and two active boys is fulfilling. Something though… something was missing.
The Iraq war had started. The news was filled with images of smoke and explosions and of our soldiers over there and their families. I wanted to help and felt helpless. I “HATE” feeling helpless. Then my son’s school started a project of sending shoeboxes full of “goodies” to soldiers from the local area, serving in Iraq. We were finishing up construction on our home in the country and money was tight but asking the Kmart for empty shoe boxes didn’t cost anything more than the gas to get there. The manager at the Residence Inn we had stayed at while our home was being built was happy to donate a bunch of those skin lotions in the little hotel bottles. The small health food store donated four cases of snack foods! Our dentist gave almost a whole case of toothpaste samples and our pediatrician came through with a case of small soaps and six cases of skin lotion samples. All I did was ask if they’d mind helping with a little project?
Afterward my youngest son’s preschool teacher told me how relieved she was that her husband hadn’t been called up for active duty. Others they knew hadn’t been so fortunate. I told her about my son’s project and on impulse asked for the address of one of those soldiers. Several weeks passed. I thought she’d forgotten, then she hands me a scrap of paper with several names and addresses on it, with the command to: “Pick one!” That’s how it started. As one soldier came home to answered prayers another name and address would start the boxes again.
One of the soldiers we sent boxes to was a Lieutenant Colonel with a unique sense of humor. He didn’t keep the boxes for himself. He emailed my son’s preschool teacher that he passed the boxes along to other soldiers with lower rank who were willing to do extra guard duty and the like. He let the children know how much their gifts were appreciated. Can you imagine how excited the children were to get a message from “Their Soldier”?
What went into the box each week depended on the size of the box, the tightness of the budget and the time available to work on it. Little jelly and jam packets from a breakfast at a local dinner, a bag of Oreo cookies, boxes of snack cakes, used books off the $.25 rack at the library, packets of hot coco mix, bottles of hot sauce and hard candy all found their way into the boxes. Free small town newspapers made good packing material. A local book store donated a box of new books. I requested "No war stories!"
The children joined in the project praying at night for the soldier we sent our boxes to and their families. They would help me “find” things to put in the boxes. Once, my son insisted on including one of his favorite storybooks in the box. Over it went.
I suggested to my son’s Cub Scout Pack Committee they do a project like the school's. It took them maybe a New York second to agree to the project and suggest, “Oh by the way, you will run it won’t you?”
Our Lieutenant Colonel was home safe and sound by now and suggested our Cub Scout Pack adopt a military chaplain over in Iraq through the Adopt a Chaplain Organization. Their internet address is: http://www.adopt-a-chaplain.org. There are currently other chaplains still waiting to be “adopted”. We soon had another address and Chaplain Brian was added to our pray list.
The Adopt a Chaplain Organization did request we not include Victoria Secret Catalogues in the boxes. I think the young men serving our country have to be reminded what they are fighting for. God, Country, Duty are all fine and good but to an eighteen year old a picture of a pretty young lady may be more reasonable incentive! The Chaplains respectfully disagreed.
I typed up list of the things appropriate to be put in the boxes and things we couldn’t put in and why, a request for donations and a thank you letter. The head of the local Cub Scout Pack Committee approved the letters, thankful that she hadn’t had to type them. Armed with fifty copies of each and the group’s tax-exempt number I canvassed the local merchants for donations. I felt the touch of God’s hand when donations started coming out of almost nowhere. The YMCA donated a sack of gum samples they had stopped passing out because the wrappers were causing a litter problem. The bank in town gave a huge box of lollipops. A local library was having a book sale with a special on a bag of books. I told the librarian where they were going and she gave me the largest bag she could find. It was soon stuffed with CD’s, movies and books. She refused to let me pay for it, quietly declaring, “It was the least we could do.”
The project was well on the way of getting completely out of hand when I mentioned it to a friend. There are some people who think outside the box. I don’t think she has a clue there is a box. She looked at me across her kitchen table over a cup of herb tea and asked, “Do you want to go bigger?” Having no idea where she was coming from I naively ask, “What do you mean?” She told me how this project could be turned into an international one as calmly and casually as if she were discussing a chocolate chip cookie recipe.
“Just write down what you have done, how you did it and how you got the community involved. I’ll put it out on my web site. The information will get to people who would like to help all over the world.” It sounded innocent enough so I started to type….
Shoebox list for our Troops in Iraq
Suggested items for boxes:
Cookies (no soft fudge or chocolate chip!)
Chocolate melts in 130 degree heat so send only it between January and February when it is cooler.
Dried snack foods, crackers, trail mix, peanuts
Hard candy, gum
Coffees/teas – Packages of ground Dunkin Donut coffee are a big hit.
In individual servings: powdered drinks (Kool-Aid, Hot Coco), Soup Mixes
Tabasco Sauce (pack with jar in box – ships better)
Resealable shake on dried spices (Lemon Pepper, Cajun, etc.)
Paperback books (Westerns, Sci-Fi, Mystery, etc.)
Sunscreen – Lip Balm – AA Batteries
Skin Lotion – toiletries (soap, toothpaste etc.) - Diaper Wipes, these help get the fine sand out of wherever it is not suppose to be.
Shoe inserts, foot powder
Resealable plastic containers (These are wanted because fine sand gets into everything. Also one soldier found a scorpion in her underwear!)
Feminine products – (nice soaps, lotions, shampoo, hair conditioner, dry or powdered make up, nail files etc. Nothing too fragrant. There are young ladies in the army too. Many of them are in their late teens and early twenties. They are in the Army but still ladies! No bath oil please. No one has a bathtub. They take showers.)
Phone cards - Many soldiers can use free military phones to make calls to a military base near their homes they can then be connected to there home numbers. The connection may not be free so the Phone cards help there.
Notes of support – I cannot begin to tell you how important it for our soldiers to know that the people back home really CARE about them!
Things NOT to put in boxes:
CHOCOLATE (It melts and turns white in 130 degree heat! Send only between January and February when it is cooler in Iraq.)
Aerosol spray cans (They could explode and catch fire in the plane)
Naughty pictures/magazines
Over the counter medicines or drugs
Homemade “goodies” – There is a fear of food poisonings
Anything with alcohol in it. (Hand-sanitizer, mouth wash, handy wipes, etc.) These boxes are going to a Muslim country where alcohol is prohibited.
The End.... or maybe a beginning for someone else?
A Little Project….
That was all I was looking for. I needed something more to look forward to than my son, coming home from school calling his younger brother, a “Poopy head” and the younger one informing his brother he “smelled like a monkey butt”. Taking care of a home and two active boys is fulfilling. Something though… something was missing.
The Iraq war had started. The news was filled with images of smoke and explosions and of our soldiers over there and their families. I wanted to help and felt helpless. I “HATE” feeling helpless. Then my son’s school started a project of sending shoeboxes full of “goodies” to soldiers from the local area, serving in Iraq. We were finishing up construction on our home in the country and money was tight but asking the Kmart for empty shoe boxes didn’t cost anything more than the gas to get there. The manager at the Residence Inn we had stayed at while our home was being built was happy to donate a bunch of those skin lotions in the little hotel bottles. The small health food store donated four cases of snack foods! Our dentist gave almost a whole case of toothpaste samples and our pediatrician came through with a case of small soaps and six cases of skin lotion samples. All I did was ask if they’d mind helping with a little project?
Afterward my youngest son’s preschool teacher told me how relieved she was that her husband hadn’t been called up for active duty. Others they knew hadn’t been so fortunate. I told her about my son’s project and on impulse asked for the address of one of those soldiers. Several weeks passed. I thought she’d forgotten, then she hands me a scrap of paper with several names and addresses on it, with the command to: “Pick one!” That’s how it started. As one soldier came home to answered prayers another name and address would start the boxes again.
One of the soldiers we sent boxes to was a Lieutenant Colonel with a unique sense of humor. He didn’t keep the boxes for himself. He emailed my son’s preschool teacher that he passed the boxes along to other soldiers with lower rank who were willing to do extra guard duty and the like. He let the children know how much their gifts were appreciated. Can you imagine how excited the children were to get a message from “Their Soldier”?
What went into the box each week depended on the size of the box, the tightness of the budget and the time available to work on it. Little jelly and jam packets from a breakfast at a local dinner, a bag of Oreo cookies, boxes of snack cakes, used books off the $.25 rack at the library, packets of hot coco mix, bottles of hot sauce and hard candy all found their way into the boxes. Free small town newspapers made good packing material. A local book store donated a box of new books. I requested "No war stories!"
The children joined in the project praying at night for the soldier we sent our boxes to and their families. They would help me “find” things to put in the boxes. Once, my son insisted on including one of his favorite storybooks in the box. Over it went.
I suggested to my son’s Cub Scout Pack Committee they do a project like the school's. It took them maybe a New York second to agree to the project and suggest, “Oh by the way, you will run it won’t you?”
Our Lieutenant Colonel was home safe and sound by now and suggested our Cub Scout Pack adopt a military chaplain over in Iraq through the Adopt a Chaplain Organization. Their internet address is: http://www.adopt-a-chaplain.org. There are currently other chaplains still waiting to be “adopted”. We soon had another address and Chaplain Brian was added to our pray list.
The Adopt a Chaplain Organization did request we not include Victoria Secret Catalogues in the boxes. I think the young men serving our country have to be reminded what they are fighting for. God, Country, Duty are all fine and good but to an eighteen year old a picture of a pretty young lady may be more reasonable incentive! The Chaplains respectfully disagreed.
I typed up list of the things appropriate to be put in the boxes and things we couldn’t put in and why, a request for donations and a thank you letter. The head of the local Cub Scout Pack Committee approved the letters, thankful that she hadn’t had to type them. Armed with fifty copies of each and the group’s tax-exempt number I canvassed the local merchants for donations. I felt the touch of God’s hand when donations started coming out of almost nowhere. The YMCA donated a sack of gum samples they had stopped passing out because the wrappers were causing a litter problem. The bank in town gave a huge box of lollipops. A local library was having a book sale with a special on a bag of books. I told the librarian where they were going and she gave me the largest bag she could find. It was soon stuffed with CD’s, movies and books. She refused to let me pay for it, quietly declaring, “It was the least we could do.”
The project was well on the way of getting completely out of hand when I mentioned it to a friend. There are some people who think outside the box. I don’t think she has a clue there is a box. She looked at me across her kitchen table over a cup of herb tea and asked, “Do you want to go bigger?” Having no idea where she was coming from I naively ask, “What do you mean?” She told me how this project could be turned into an international one as calmly and casually as if she were discussing a chocolate chip cookie recipe.
“Just write down what you have done, how you did it and how you got the community involved. I’ll put it out on my web site. The information will get to people who would like to help all over the world.” It sounded innocent enough so I started to type….
Shoebox list for our Troops in Iraq
Suggested items for boxes:
Cookies (no soft fudge or chocolate chip!)
Chocolate melts in 130 degree heat so send only it between January and February when it is cooler.
Dried snack foods, crackers, trail mix, peanuts
Hard candy, gum
Coffees/teas – Packages of ground Dunkin Donut coffee are a big hit.
In individual servings: powdered drinks (Kool-Aid, Hot Coco), Soup Mixes
Tabasco Sauce (pack with jar in box – ships better)
Resealable shake on dried spices (Lemon Pepper, Cajun, etc.)
Paperback books (Westerns, Sci-Fi, Mystery, etc.)
Sunscreen – Lip Balm – AA Batteries
Skin Lotion – toiletries (soap, toothpaste etc.) - Diaper Wipes, these help get the fine sand out of wherever it is not suppose to be.
Shoe inserts, foot powder
Resealable plastic containers (These are wanted because fine sand gets into everything. Also one soldier found a scorpion in her underwear!)
Feminine products – (nice soaps, lotions, shampoo, hair conditioner, dry or powdered make up, nail files etc. Nothing too fragrant. There are young ladies in the army too. Many of them are in their late teens and early twenties. They are in the Army but still ladies! No bath oil please. No one has a bathtub. They take showers.)
Phone cards - Many soldiers can use free military phones to make calls to a military base near their homes they can then be connected to there home numbers. The connection may not be free so the Phone cards help there.
Notes of support – I cannot begin to tell you how important it for our soldiers to know that the people back home really CARE about them!
Things NOT to put in boxes:
CHOCOLATE (It melts and turns white in 130 degree heat! Send only between January and February when it is cooler in Iraq.)
Aerosol spray cans (They could explode and catch fire in the plane)
Naughty pictures/magazines
Over the counter medicines or drugs
Homemade “goodies” – There is a fear of food poisonings
Anything with alcohol in it. (Hand-sanitizer, mouth wash, handy wipes, etc.) These boxes are going to a Muslim country where alcohol is prohibited.
The End.... or maybe a beginning for someone else?
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