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thedrifter
11-25-07, 08:18 AM
Mom sends Christmas cheer to Marines

By ANNIE TASKER
Bucks County Courier Times

Patty Lewis, like many moms, has lots of presents to deal with in the weeks before Christmas.

“I have so many boxes in my house,” she said. “Everything's a mess.”

Understandable, considering there are about 2,500 people on her gift list.

The Willow Grove resident founded Moms 4R Marines, a Marine parent group that sends Christmas stockings to men and women stationed overseas for the holidays. This is the second year the group has sent gifts, cards and Christmas trees to Marines in Iraq, fueled by donations of both money and stocking-stuffers. Moms 4R Marines is a nonprofit networking group that gives Marine parents information and contacts while their children are overseas.

About 1,500 people in the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment and 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment will receive stockings this year filled with goodies, including Dr. Scholl's shoe insoles, harmonicas, socks, disposable cameras, holiday candy and a cigar with their battalion logo on it. About another 1,100 gift bags will go to a group in North Carolina that has organized a similar Christmastime effort.

Each stocking is stuffed with about $100 worth of treats, Lewis said.

“I don't make skimpy little stockings,” she said.

For Lewis, this holiday season will be different from last year now that her son, 22-year-old Cpl. Brian Lewis, is home from his third deployment overseas. Though he can't help out much on weekdays because of his criminal justice classes at Montgomery County Community College, “he's my box-lifter” when he's home, Lewis said.


This time last year, Brian was deployed in Iraq with the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment. Even with her son home from the war, Lewis said she still has a responsibility to lift the spirits of those still overseas.

The mother of a Marine who received one of the Moms 4R Marines stockings last year told Lewis that talking about the Christmas gift was the most enthusiastic she'd heard him in months.

“My motto is, anything I can do to put a smile on their face, that's my satisfaction,” she said.

Lt. Col. Todd Desgrosseilliers was commander of the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment last Christmas when the group's first stockings were delivered. When the packages arrived in Iraq, he dressed up in a Santa Claus suit — his bulletproof vest ample padding for a Santa-like belly — to deliver the gifts. His drivers wore reindeer antlers fashioned from pipe cleaners, and someone put a red Rudolph nose on a machine gun for the deliveries.

“It was really good for morale and for them to get something from their parents,” said Desgrosseilliers, who helped the parent group stuff stockings last weekend. “It would have been just another day in Iraq if parents hadn't really made an extraordinary effort to put this together.”

Annie Tasker can be reached at 215-957-8167 or atasker@phillyBurbs.com.

Ellie