A Tribute To Our Military

What patriotic potential November holds.

I just love all of the ways in which we can pay tribute to and honor our military, including this show that the Longhorn Marching Band (my daughter's college band family) performed during halftime at the 

UT v. Iowa State game. 

We cannot thank these brave men and women enough!

Our Supplies for Our Soldiers (SOS) campaign is in full swing this week; we'll take time on Friday morning in guidance to write letters of thanks to our deployed troops who will spend the holidays away from home. We're gathering all sorts of basic-need supplies as well as some fun things like the nerf football which we've been told will be a huge hit!

The coolest things happen when we do this project. A few times we've actually visited by skype with soldiers as they've opened their care packages from us. Often times we get notes of thanks back ..... imagine them, thanking us. This past year, we even got a visit from one of the troops, a sand sailor, as soon as he returned from the desert. 

His name is Lieutenant Grace. 

He came to our community gathering on the last day of school in late May to greet our students and tell them how much getting their letters and boxes meant to him during his deployment. 

Then he went into classrooms to talk with students about his life with the military and, when he told us he was retiring from the Navy, we made him promise to come back for our Veterans Day celebration. 

And sure enough, he did. In full uniform!

I showed him our cafeteria-turned-Santa's-workshop assembly line 

with the USPS boxes all lined up on the stage, waiting to become care packages for this year's soldiers. I explained that our students fill them with donations and that we anticipated sending between 50 and 130 boxes.

When he inquired about the cost of shipping, I told him that the Friendswood Rotary helps us ship the first 35 boxes or so, and that our families can Adopt-A-Box to help with with the rest. It was all that my heart could take when he asked if he could adopt a box. 

Mail from home, he said, is the best!

What goes around, comes around . . . 

now that's a tribute to the military.

As an interesting aside, we're still not sure how Lt. Grace ended up getting a care package from us. He asked us to please let him know who gave us his name so he could thank them, too, and when we checked our records, we didn't actually have his name in our paperwork. Anywhere. 

I'm not sure we'll ever know . . .