Operation Gratitude Continues

Kyle-Anne Shiver has a smart and perceptive article in today’s American Thinker that profiles Carolyn Blashek and Operation Gratitude (the article has a comment thread at Lucianne) and puts the phenomenon into an even broader social and political context.

Back in April 2003, Blashek started sending letters and packages to the troops in Iraq, working out of her living room. 

On July 18, 2003, she was profiled by the local media, quoted as she was heading to the post office to ship 27 more packages (bringing her total to a remarkable 295):

"To me, it’s worse right now than ever for those troops.  The soldiers are hanging around now, and the danger is just as high. But nobody’s thinking about them anymore because we won. They need us now more than ever."

By June 2005, Operation Gratitude had shipped an incredible 63,984 packages, as it grew and grew (the story of how it grew is the second of two inter-related “Two Tales of Tikkun Olam”). 

By December of 2006, the number exceeded 200,000, and thousands of volunteers were involved.  Currently, the figure is 314,786. 

The packing and shipping is continuing this Thursday-Sunday at the National Guard Amory in Encino.  You can volunteer by emailing CBlashek@aol.com.  Children 12 and older are welcome.

UPDATE:  From Dennis McCarthy’s column in yesterday’s Daily News:

When all the Christmas presents to thousands of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan were wrapped, labeled and mailed, the San Fernando Valley‘s No. 1 Santa Claus did what she always does when another month-long Operation Gratitude holiday drive ends.

She hit the wall.

“You’re so worn out, so physically and emotionally spent that you don’t think you can do it anymore,” Carolyn Blashek says.

“Then you open your mailbox or receive an e-mail, and there it is again — another little miracle.” . . .

I wrote about one of those little miracles Blashek is talking about for the USA Weekend Magazine edition Sunday, but because of space limitations I couldn’t tell the whole story.

Now I can.

“All the e-mails I get from soldiers are special, but this one was the most powerful,” Blashek said. “This one broke my heart.”

It was from a staff sergeant who asked that his name and unit and the soldier’s name not be used because he didn’t want the soldier "labeled" by his superiors. . . .

The soldier in his platoon never got mail, care packages or anything from home, the sergeant wrote. He was estranged from his family and the only packages he got were labeled "to any service person." . . .

“He was planning suicide on Christmas” . . . What changed his mind, his superiors wanted to know? The soldier told them he came back to his barracks alone on Christmas Eve (last year) and saw a package on his bunk.

He picked it up expecting to see the label "to any service person" on it. Instead, he saw his name staring back at him.

He opened the package and read the letters from kids addressed to him, and he began to cry. Over the next month, the soldier sought counseling and reached out to his family back home to reconcile their differences.

"Over my deployments I have lost a few soldiers in the platoons I have taken into combat," the sergeant wrote Blashek. "I have lost a few friends that I have known my entire Army career. . . . "I don’t know if I would have the strength, or even what to say to the family of a soldier who had taken his own life.

"But one package, one present from you containing some little things and a few letters from kids made a huge impact in a human’s life. . . . "You’ve let an old sergeant bring one more of his soldiers back home safely, and for that I am forever in your debt."

Little miracles on Christmas Day.

One of 314,786.  And counting.