PDA

View Full Version : Overwhelming" Response



marinemom
01-28-05, 06:36 AM
Received this from my Family Readiness Office this AM - thought I'd share.........

From: Ortiz GySgt Raymond A <OrtizR@1MARDIV.USMC.MIL>
Subject: An "Overwhelming" Response
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005 01:03:56 +0000 [View Source]


Ladies and Gentlemen:

Another article showing that your packages and letters really do make a difference.

Semper Fidelis,
GySgt Ortiz, R.A.
3/1 RBE SNCOIC


An 'overwhelming' response
Campaign for troops in Iraq sparked by Herald story

By:JOSEPH KELLARD
January 27, 2005


"The response to the article was literally overwhelming," wrote Sgt. Matthew Ragan from the battalion's base in Camp Abu Gharyb, 10 miles east of Fallujah. "There were so many boxes and letters, I had to keep a steady line going from the mail room to my office, and then as fast as I could I was putting them on a truck out to the Marines in the city."

Many of the items shipped were snacks, from gum, licorice and candy bars to crackers and cookies. Other common donations included shaving cream, razors, toothpaste, toothbrushes and baby wipes. DVDs and CDs of popular movies and music were among the more uncommon items.

Some of what was sent stumped Ragan a bit, particularly a package full of baby food, and another with feminine products for his all-male unit. The sergeant correctly assumed that some things were meant for the Iraqi people. But since this was mainly a letter-writing campaign for the Marines, the battalion was flooded with envelopes stuffed with letters and printed e-mails, mostly from school kids.

"From what the kids write they support us, and most of them seem to support the war," Ragan continued. "... It's great to just sit down and read what someone else from the states is experiencing back there. And it's very interesting to see what they send us."

He noted that the correspondents' good words and goodies proved a "huge morale boost," especially since 35 men in his unit had been killed before and during the battle for Fallujah in November. Once most of the fighting ended and the battalion set up firm bases in the formerly insurgent-infested city, the unit allowed civilians back to their homes and helped them with repairs.

The letter campaign that helped Ragan and his men deal with such trying times was the brainchild of his wife, Hope, an Island Park native now living at Camp Pendleton in California. The idea for it came when Hope was talking to her husband on the phone as he opened one of her thrice-weekly care packages to him. Ragan's fellow Marines typically gathered around him whenever he ripped open the box, which was usually filled with such things as socks, cigars, olives and Godiva coffee - and some of them admitted that they'd never received even a letter from their relatives.

Disheartened to hear this and knowing how her packages generated childlike excitement in her husband, Hope decided to do something for the mail-starved Marines. She phoned the Oceanside/Island Park Herald to promote her campaign, and she described what ensued as "overwhelming."

"I was on the computer all the time - all the time," Ragan said when describing the many e-mails she'd received from Herald readers asking where to send their letters and packages. "The response was just absolutely amazing."

Word about her campaign soon went far beyond Long Island. Instrumental in spreading it was Bill Doyle of Staten Island, who said he came across the Herald article online. Doyle - whose son, Joey, was a Cantor Fitzgerald employee who died at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001 - sent out e-mails to 7,000 people nationwide who are involved with his organization, the W. Doyle 9/11 Support Group.

"I just sent out a few e-mails about what the Marines would like and needed, and also what the children over there could use," Doyle explained. "I said, no matter if you believe in the war or not, [the Marines] are our boys, they're Americans. And the 9/11 families came through once again."

Ragan attributed the campaign's success to people responding to her sincere motives. "It's so very important to show the troops that they're appreciated," she said, "and that they're thought of when they're so far from home, out of their natural element and in a terrible place."

Her husband has compiled a long list of addresses of fellow Americans whom he hopes to write and thank for their generous donations, and to tell them how much simple things like an e-mail or Milky Way bar have meant to his fellow Marines. After seven months on his latest tour and 22 total in Iraq, Ragan and the battalion are expected back in the U.S. by next week. His hope, however, is that Herald readers and others continue to send letters and materials to the unit that replaces his at their camp.

He provided this contact information:
Cpl. Earhart
3rd BN 4th Marines H&S Company S-2
UIC 41605
FPO AP 96426-1605

Ragan doesn't know the Marines in this new unit - not that it matters any more than it mattered who sent letters and packages to his battalion. As he wrote before his wife kicked off her campaign, "It's not who writes the letter nor what they talk about, it's the feeling like you're at home. For that five minutes you're not being shot at, you're not worried about a mortar killing you, you're not building something - you're a man back in the United States of America, and it's the feeling that you're appreciated."

jinelson
01-28-05, 07:53 AM
Thanks Mom, I was wondering what I could do for my young Marines on the line for us in Iraq and this is it. I remember the joy such letters and care packages from the world brought us in Vietnam.

Thank You
Jim