The Maria Parham Medical Center has been supporting our troops as Special Friends for several years. In 2010, they chose to support our Paladins in AFG for their "Operation Soldier's Christmas." Here is a report we received on 12/13, 2010:
"This year we took on the task of providing the
Paladin group stationed at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan, a new
mini mart for the soldiers to use. Also, this year, Maria Parham Medical Center allowed us to open our
project up to the community of Henderson, North Carolina, where we are
located. And what a response! We had 12 drop off sites for
donations throughout the community, the 4th and 5th graders at a local
elementary school made ornaments for the 200 members of the Paladins, a
charter school assigned each grade level (pre-K thru 12) an item on the
list, then took the items they had collected to the hospital and dropped
off a total of 15 cases of much needed items. Donations of more than 100
calling cards came in, we received over $1000.00 for the cost of
postage (always a concern for us), the radio station and newspaper put
out the word, and we were able to participate with a group of 6th and 7th
graders at the Henderson Middle School as they took on the Operation
Soldier's Christmas as a project of theirs.
I am including a picture of a few of the students as they presented
their boxes to the local post office on the 17th of November. Now the most exciting part ... we sent a total of 102 boxes of items for
the mini-mart. They have already arrived and are being unpacked to fill a
room now designated as the "Paladin Store". We sent 5 cases of socks (donated from a local manufacturer), 5 cases of
microwave food, 10 cases of assorted hard candies, 3 cases of
toiletries, several footballs and baseball bats and mits, dart boards,
books, magazines, and so many other things. We had a great time and the
Paladins are enjoying it all, which is what it all is about in the end.
The Henderson Middle School students adopted 16 soldiers as pen pals and
wrote them from September thru November, then accumulated items to fill
special Christmas boxes for their pen pals. Those were mailed too and
recieved by the soldiers. In all, this was an awesome year for our project and we made many friends in the community to turn to next year for assistance. We are already thinking about next year as it will be our 5th anniversary of the project."
Dec 13, 2010, by Marianne M, Team Leader
|
