Packages of Care

Individuals, groups donate time, money to let soldiers know they aren't forgotten

By: By Monte Mitchell | Journal Reporter
Published: December 18, 2006

BOONE - Sometime soon, it is hoped this week, soldiers in Iraq with the N.C. National Guard 1451st Transportation Co. based in Boone will get a DVD with Christmas messages from their families. The soldiers have already gotten the pair of 4-foot-tall Christmas trees that took $80 in postage to ship to Iraq.
The trees and the messages are part of an outpouring of support from families and communities from Boone to Winston-Salem to Concord and beyond. People have sent hundreds of Christmas cards, thousands of dollars worth of such items as international-phone cards, toiletries, Christmas stockings and fudge.
The support has come from Appalachian State University students, from Boone Lions Club members, from businesses, churches, schools and other groups.
Chris Blake-Jenkins and her husband, Wes Jenkins II, of Clemmons decided not to give Christmas presents to each other this year so they can give more to their son, David Blake. He was a member of the 1452nd Guard unit based in Winston-Salem, but is among several guardsmen from the unit serving in the 1451st.
"I've discovered this year that giving is a lot more fun than receiving ...," Blake-Jenkins said. "This woke me up."
Many people and groups have helped her raise $12,000 for international phone cards for soldiers who use them at pay phones. Her mission this past weekend was looking for as many packs of Icy Hot as she could find for sore soldiers who don't always have an electrical connection for a heating pad.
David Blake's sister, Anna Blake, a seventh-grader at Meadowlark Middle School, helped lead an effort that had students there send nearly 500 Christmas cards to soldiers.
In Kannapolis, Nickia Mayo and her mother made 170 Christmas stockings and filled them with candy for the troops. Mayo is a former member of the Guard's 1454th unit in Concord.
Mike and Deb Long, parents of Brian Long, a soldier from the Concord unit who volunteered to go with the 1451st, led a donation drive to fill 170 gift bags. Each contained a pound of fudge, a $10 international-phone card and other gifts.
The Longs drove up the mountain to attend a party given earlier this month by the unit's Family Readiness Group.
"I found that getting to know and being able to spend a weekend with other moms going through the same day-to-day stresses was so well worth it," Deb Long wrote in an e-mail. "I felt so comforted when I left."
Though polls show the war is unpopular with the public, Barbara Daye, who helped plan the Christmas party, said that people have learned a lesson from another unpopular war.
"I believe that, for so many people, they remember how soldiers were treated after Vietnam and they're bound and determined that's not going to happen again to our military personnel," she said.
When Christmas-tree grower Herbert Townsend, a member of the 1451st for 30 years, told Daye he wanted to donate some trees, they worked together to figure out how to get them to Iraq.
"We packed a tree and decorations and we sent live wreaths, and I stuck pine cones in there and ribbons and all sorts of things," Daye said.
Townsend and fellow Christmas-tree growers Harry Yates and Cline Church donated enough trees for every family at the party to take one home.
Each child at the party got a gift from Santa, donated by members of ASU's Gamma Beta Phi honor society.
Families carried home boxes with a frozen turkey and other food.
A DVD of the party was shipped last Wednesday, in hopes it will get to the troops before Christmas. Daye said that the only time she cried was when families held up signs with messages for their loved ones.
There's a long list of people and groups that have helped.
Dale Harrington, who is spending the first Christmas that she's ever been separated from her 22-year-old son, Josh Dockery, said that the support is appreciated by both the families and soldiers.
"I think it makes it bearable knowing they've not been forgotten and abandoned and that people do care about them," she said.