Operation: Letters To A Peace Keeping Hero (Great Project for Groups)
What follows is portions of a letter and a news story documenting a campaign to support our troops. Please let me know if you are interested, and I'll be glad to send you the info. You'll need to be pre-approved in order to participate.
My dad, as well as many other brave men and women from all over the United States, will soon be deployed on military assignment overseas to Kosovo. My dad is also the Deputy Director of the Veterans Commission, and so to support these troops, one of his co-workers has put together an organization called Letters to a Peacekeeping Hero. This organization encourages the community to write letters expressing our support for all the time and hard work our troops put in for our safety.
If you would like to show these soldiers how much we appreciate them, and hopefully brighten up their day a little, then would you please forward this e-mail to all your staff to see how many people we can get to participate? For information on
what to do for the letters, read the text below. Thank you very much for your help.
Sincerely,
J. K., ******* High School sophomore
Subject: Letters To A Peacekeeping Hero!
********************
Area residents promote letter-writing campaign for troops
By Michelle Brooks
Nearly 20 women attended a letter-writing event at a west side Jefferson City home Tuesday evening. They'll be composing pages that will be sent to troops in Kosovo later on this year.
When her son Andrew Gaffke served two tours in Iraq with the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne, Rita Turley was grateful for letters sent from the community. "It's one thing to get a letter from your mom," Turley said. "But it's more meaningful when you know others do, too. It was validation that he was part of a community and people do care about you, so you're not forgotten."
More than 1,000 Missouri citizen-soldiers will begin training for the largest Missouri National Guard deployment since World War I. Turley and her friends in PEO will be part of a letter-writing effort for those service members while on their peacekeeping mission in Kosovo.
Operation: Letters to a Peacekeeping Hero intends to collect **** undated letters of thanks for service and sacrifice before April 1. Schools, service organizations, youth groups, churches, families or individuals are encouraged to participate. Donations also will be needed to send the packaged letters prior to
the holidays.
"This is something more meaningful than just giving money," Turley said. "It's a personal opportunity to let our service people know we care about them, ... that they're not being forgotten."
This is a project anyone can do, especially young people, she said. "Everybody can write a letter and make some contact with someone over there," PEO charter member Nancy Shull said. "I hope they realize, even if it's (a stranger), that there are people thinking of them."
Operation: Letters to a Peacekeeping Hero will be coordinated through the Missouri Veterans Commission. "We're not worried about getting (enough) letters once the word gets out," said organizer Pat Kerr, state veterans ombudsman and director
of Operation Outreach for the commission. Writing these letters as a group will serve as motivation for those who may have good intentions but tend to procrastinate, noted PEO member Lib Shull. "You get the camaraderie and (you) get something done that's worthwhile," she added.
She knows military life, herself serving a tour and her husband a career. So when her two sons deployed for active duty a few years ago, she was quite appreciative of the attention shown by her PEO sisters. "As a military family, it's more on our minds than those who may not be directly connected," Lib Shull said. "So we appreciated their concern."
The MQ chapter of PEO, an international philanthropic women's organization, has sent care packages, phone cards and other pick-me-ups to service members connected with club members, she said. So she expected the club will be interested to take on this letter-writing project as the first of many support-the-troops projects in
the upcoming year, Lib Shull said. "I hope we're going to make a little bit of a difference to some service person's life," she said.
How to participate "Operation: Letters to a Peacekeeping Hero" will collect more than 5,100 undated letters of thanks for service and sacrifice to be sent to Missouri National Guard and other citizen-soldiers deployed to the peacekeeping mission in Kosovo.
Schools, service organizations, youth groups, churches, families or individuals are encouraged to participate. Send letters to (name and telephone number ommitted for privacy purposes, please contact me if interested).
My dad, as well as many other brave men and women from all over the United States, will soon be deployed on military assignment overseas to Kosovo. My dad is also the Deputy Director of the Veterans Commission, and so to support these troops, one of his co-workers has put together an organization called Letters to a Peacekeeping Hero. This organization encourages the community to write letters expressing our support for all the time and hard work our troops put in for our safety.
If you would like to show these soldiers how much we appreciate them, and hopefully brighten up their day a little, then would you please forward this e-mail to all your staff to see how many people we can get to participate? For information on
what to do for the letters, read the text below. Thank you very much for your help.
Sincerely,
J. K., ******* High School sophomore
Subject: Letters To A Peacekeeping Hero!
********************
Area residents promote letter-writing campaign for troops
By Michelle Brooks
Nearly 20 women attended a letter-writing event at a west side Jefferson City home Tuesday evening. They'll be composing pages that will be sent to troops in Kosovo later on this year.
When her son Andrew Gaffke served two tours in Iraq with the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne, Rita Turley was grateful for letters sent from the community. "It's one thing to get a letter from your mom," Turley said. "But it's more meaningful when you know others do, too. It was validation that he was part of a community and people do care about you, so you're not forgotten."
More than 1,000 Missouri citizen-soldiers will begin training for the largest Missouri National Guard deployment since World War I. Turley and her friends in PEO will be part of a letter-writing effort for those service members while on their peacekeeping mission in Kosovo.
Operation: Letters to a Peacekeeping Hero intends to collect **** undated letters of thanks for service and sacrifice before April 1. Schools, service organizations, youth groups, churches, families or individuals are encouraged to participate. Donations also will be needed to send the packaged letters prior to
the holidays.
"This is something more meaningful than just giving money," Turley said. "It's a personal opportunity to let our service people know we care about them, ... that they're not being forgotten."
This is a project anyone can do, especially young people, she said. "Everybody can write a letter and make some contact with someone over there," PEO charter member Nancy Shull said. "I hope they realize, even if it's (a stranger), that there are people thinking of them."
Operation: Letters to a Peacekeeping Hero will be coordinated through the Missouri Veterans Commission. "We're not worried about getting (enough) letters once the word gets out," said organizer Pat Kerr, state veterans ombudsman and director
of Operation Outreach for the commission. Writing these letters as a group will serve as motivation for those who may have good intentions but tend to procrastinate, noted PEO member Lib Shull. "You get the camaraderie and (you) get something done that's worthwhile," she added.
She knows military life, herself serving a tour and her husband a career. So when her two sons deployed for active duty a few years ago, she was quite appreciative of the attention shown by her PEO sisters. "As a military family, it's more on our minds than those who may not be directly connected," Lib Shull said. "So we appreciated their concern."
The MQ chapter of PEO, an international philanthropic women's organization, has sent care packages, phone cards and other pick-me-ups to service members connected with club members, she said. So she expected the club will be interested to take on this letter-writing project as the first of many support-the-troops projects in
the upcoming year, Lib Shull said. "I hope we're going to make a little bit of a difference to some service person's life," she said.
How to participate "Operation: Letters to a Peacekeeping Hero" will collect more than 5,100 undated letters of thanks for service and sacrifice to be sent to Missouri National Guard and other citizen-soldiers deployed to the peacekeeping mission in Kosovo.
Schools, service organizations, youth groups, churches, families or individuals are encouraged to participate. Send letters to (name and telephone number ommitted for privacy purposes, please contact me if interested).