2011 Newsletter Sf S Feb 2012

Stockings for Soldiers — Delaware, Inc
1911 Foulk Road Wilmington, DE 19810 302-475-2526
501.c.3. Tax ID # 27-0604668
Info@StockingsForSoldiers.org February 2012

Project Team Leaders
Judy Travis,
Project Coordinator &
Editor

Janet Armitage
Leonice Bartlett
Ingrid Berlien
Rosanne & Tom Brown Photo by Anita Sterling
Mary Alice Budd
Jennie Burke
Bonnie Costas
Dawn & Nick Dilenno
Over 10,000 members of our military received their own personalized stocking for
Lyn Gill— Christmas. THANK YOU, Everyone, for helping us to do that. We had a great
Managing Editor time, working for eight weeks to accomplish all that we did. We mailed over 1,550
Kathy Hankins
Derek Hart large boxes, containing over 45,000 pounds of goodies. We made and sent 2,500
Ann Hein fleece blankets and over 1,000 knitted hats. All at a cost of $29,000 in postage. All
Fannie Kessler the Elves were quite pleased. We had many, many friends and volunteers from all
Paul Kessler
Meg Kinsler over the USA; from Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, New York,
Denise Lazar Maine, California, Idaho, Michigan, Virginia, Florida, Colorado, and every state in
Annette Long
Bill McLachlan
between. Thanks go to Everyone who helped us … Our Volunteers sewed
Nancy & Dan Meier stockings, knitted hats, wrote greeting cards and sent us goodies to stuff in the stock-
Terry Meyers ings. Students from many, many school learned the great rewards of volunteering.
Cassie Millar
Lori Miller We all learned how easy it was to donate our time and that a small gesture like that
Cathy & Jim Morgan can really “make a difference” in the lives of our brave troops serving in Harm’s
Betsy & John Morocco Way.
Amy Mousley
Nick Paoletti
Sandy & Bob Pembleton Thank You to our friends at Louis Capano & Sons. We are very grateful
Will Petrilla to Louis Capano & Sons, the owners of Branmar Plaza Shopping Center for allowing
Mary Remmell
Barbara Schinchirimini us to work again in the “Stocking Store.” We have been so lucky to use this same
Kathy Schnepp storefront for the past five years. We truly appreciate their kindness and generosity.
Dianne Seidel We would also like to also thank the great folks at Patterson-Schwartz Real Estate for
Bruce Shumway
Karen Sieber their continued support and generosity. A special Thank You to Jeff Olmstead and
Kathie Simmons Dick Christopher for being so wonderful to us for the past five years. Thank You to
Anita & Jim Sterling these two wonderful members of our business community for allowing our Stocking
Peg & Jon Stewart
Maureen Stone Project to have such a great home for the past seven years.
Judy Tarlov
Arthur Travis Thank You to our new friends at RSVP. This year, we were intro-
Sharice Thayer
Betsy & Doug Wenny duced to the wonderful folks at RSVP. The Retired Senior Volunteer Pro-
Eleanor Wilson gram, run by Debbie Vandiver and Susan Fox, were instrumental in helping
Jean Woods us to partner with many other great organizations who collected items for our troops.
Carol Wootten
Pam Yarborough This great new friendship allowed us to receive so many extra donations. We were so
Sam Youse thrilled to work with them and we will look forward to partnering with them again
Diane Zutz-Cummings next year. Thank you RSVP for all your great assistance.

03/03/2012 www.StockingsForSoldiers.org 1

A volunteer-oriented community project like ours could
not be as successful without amazingly great people who
“step up” and donate their time and talents. We are very
grateful to all the many, many wonderful volunteers who
Made a Difference for our Troops. How do we begin to
thank you all?? Allow us to brag about a few of our many
volunteers.

We would like to thank the hundreds of students who par-
ticipated this year. They collected goodies, wrote cards,
made Snowman Soup, learned how to sew stockings and
came over to assist. Thank you, all, for taking the time to
stop by and join with us to send some hugs to our troops.
(Pictured here are the great students from the Sewing Club of Clearview Regional Senior High School in
Mullica Hill, New Jersey.)

The thoughtful and clever Neumann University’s Men’s Hockey Team created these special stockings

for our troops. Stocking #26 ended up with this
soldier in Afghanistan.

We have a new “How To Sew A Stocking” video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-
MdPg_F4Rlw

We are so excited to announce that a wonderful
volunteer from Idaho, Deb P. gave us such a great
gift when she created this fabulous video for us.
She created a “How-To Sew A Stocking” for our
project. We are so grateful for her kindness. It is
a fabulous gift for us to be able to use from now on to help others to sew stockings for our project.
Thank You so much, Deb.


Thank You to John & Donna Bell and all the choral and band students and staff
at P.S. duPont Middle School, in Wilmington.

A very special heartfelt Thank You to John and Donna Bell, two wonderful teachers at P.S.
duPont Middle School here in Wilmington where John is the Choral Director and Donna is the
Band Director. Once again this year, they both, along with their fabulous students, created a
very special Christmas DVD full of beautiful music and beautiful voices for our troops. Thank You, John
and Donna and all the students at P.S. for sharing your musical gifts with our troops. Thank you also to the
great folks at DDVD for assisting them to reproduce the 1,200 DVD’s for our troops to share.

Thank You to Trump Taj Mahal Casino and to the Morgan Family.

One of the many items included in our stockings is a pack of playing cards. This has been
possible because of the generosity of the Trump Taj Mahal Hotel and Casino in Atlantic
City, NJ. Thank You to Jim and Cathy Morgan, who have made numerous trips to Atlantic
City bringing us case after case of playing cards. Last year, the Trump Casinos gave us over 10,000 packs
of cards for our troops.

Thank You to Hockessin Friends of Library & Avon Grove Lions Club
for thousands of paperback books donated for our troops.

We are so very grateful for the thousands and thousands of paperback books that they
have donated for our troops. Thanks also to our friends at Foxfield and Cokesbury Vil-
lage. All our friends have helped us to send a book with each of our 10,000 stockings.

Thank to our Fabulous Senior Elves at Maris Grove and Cokesbury Village.

Our deepest appreciation goes to Edna Hein (photo on left) and her wonderful
friends at Cokesbury Village and Fannie Kessler (photo on right) and her great
friends at Maris Grove. These lovely Senior Elves have organized their friends
to work with us by donating many hundreds of sewn stockings, knitted hats and
tons of Goodies for our troops.

Thank You to our friends in the Printing community.

Thank you to Mike Janis at RCI Printing and to Carla Vicario at Ben-Dom Printing for donating
thousands of printed letters, and cards that we send to our troops. These fine people are wonderful mem-
bers of our Wilmington business community.

Boxes & more boxes were needed and donated by Acme Co. & RockTenn Co.

Thank You to Jim Morgan and Acme Company for getting us thousands of col-
orful apple boxes for our Project. We are so very grateful for all his hard work and
we really love the already-decorated apple boxes. Thank You to Frank Schin-
chirimini and RockTenn (formerly Smurfit-Stone) for generously donating hun-
dreds of brand new, Hot-Off-The-Press boxes, both large and small. These boxes
have been invaluable for the Project.


Thank You to Our Great Friends at Castle Bag Company

Our great thanks go to Mr. Harry Russell and Ms. Chris Ditzler at Castle Bag Company for
supplying us with over 10,000 sturdy ziplock plastic bags. These plastic bags are so impor-
tant to our project for several reasons. First, they are used to hold and transport our filled
stockings and all the items next to the stockings. (see photo later) Second, they are used as an
air-tight, water-proof, bug-proof and sand-proof container for food or special items that need
to be kept dry, safe and clean. THANK YOU to such great friends as at Castle Bag for their
wonderful generosity.

A Wonderful Thank You to our Special Friends at Polartec LLC.

We are so very grateful to our most generous friends
from Polartec LLC in Lawrence, MA who have do-
nated many, many rolls of their beautiful polar fleece.
We then cut them into “small” blankets and our troops
get an extra bit of warmth. On Left: is a happy re-
cipient of a box of our special blankets. On Right:
is a happy volunteer cutting up a roll of the polar
fleece for our blankets.

Thank You to the Chesapeake Bay Girl Scout Council.

We have been so lucky to have the fabulous participation of hundreds of
members of the Girl Scout community. From the younger Brownies to
the older Cadets, the Scouts and their leaders have made tons of Snow-
man Soup, sewn and decorated stockings, collected items, helped us to
stuff the stockings and have written cards and letters to our troops. We
appreciate their participation and couldn’t have started the Project with-
out their great assistance. We also enjoy all the assistance from mem-
bers of the Boy Scout community. (Dr. Jill Biden & our Girl Scouts.)

Thank You to all the great Members of our area Rotary Clubs.
Thank You to the Brandywine Naamans Rotary Club for their very generous donation of $2,000 and for
all their tremendous support all these years. Thank You to the Elkton Rotary Club who have supported
our great project with their generous donation of $1,000.

Thank You to the Caesar Rodney Rotary Club who have made many donations for our troops and have
“loaned” us many of their great members who work closely with us.

Thank You to all the members Hockessin-Greenville Rotary Club, The Rotary Club of Wilmington,
Christiana Rotary Club, Wilmington West Rotary Club and all the Area 10 and Area 20 Rotarians who
have donated Goodies for our troops.


A Big Thank You to the all members of the West Chester Rotaract Club who again this year held a Fund
Raiser for our Project. They raised over $1,000 for our troops and donated lots of Goodies. We are so
grateful for their wonderful assistance.

Thank You Wonderful Team Leaders who worked for eight weeks to make this project so great.

Taping & reinforcing a Sewing and repairing the Personalizing the stockings We apply colorful glitter to
room full of boxes, getting stockings is the first job with our troops’ first names the glue when personaliz-
them ready for the filled we do before we can do is done by our Glue Experts ing the stockings so they
stockings is a huge job. anything else. We received and was done 10,000 times. look cheerful and beautiful.
We sent 1,550 boxes. over 10,000 stockings.

We brush off the extra We check the stockings & We check the donated items for We folded 10,000 pairs of
glitter, to be used again count them & check them quality control to make sure socks for each stocking.
and put the stockings in again for any errors & then that we are sending only the Our troops love a new clean
it’s own ziplock a bag. check them again. best items to our troops. pair of socks.

We sort all the Goodies We stuff all the stockings Each stocking is checked for We check each box for
into categories, getting at the same time and have quality control and sent on the proper number of
everything ready for the a great time with special for packing. stockings & check it
stuffing phase of the pro- guests. again. And pack them up.
ject.

When all the boxes are All the boxes are loaded onto
filled with stockings, they three post office trucks and
are weighed & get their off they go to Afghanistan. Some of our Wonderful, hard-working
own customs form with Some boxes have arrived in GREAT Team Leaders from 2009 and 2010.
postage. only five days.


Thank You to our wonderful webmaster, Jon Stewart, for his great work on our web-
site. We love you, Jon and appreciate all your time and talents.

Thank You to all our Sewing Elves around the Country.

For the past eight years, we have been so blessed to receive over 37,000 home
made stockings. We personalized them with the first names of our troops, filled
them with Goodies and then sent them on their way to Afghanistan and Iraq. We could never have accom-
plished so much without receiving these beautiful and wonderful gifts from our Sewing Volunteers. Thank
You all for your beautiful stockings. Just a little reminder: Please be sure to make them 15” high by 9”
wide, so they all will be uniform in size and easily fit inside a ziplock bag.

Here are a few special Letters of Gratitude from our Troops.
(For more letters, please go to Thank You from our Troops on our
website.)

Dear Judy and all the other Helper Elves :)
Thank you so much for my stocking and bag of goodies you have put together for me
and other Service Members while we are over here for the holidays. It means so
much to us over here and brings us a little bit of home to us along with some good
colors lol. Bare plywood walls are nice and rustic but having a stocking with my name
on it hung on the wall really brings out the true holiday beauty in it. lol. But I wanted to
tell you thank you very much and tell you how much this all means to us your support
is greatly, greatly appreciated thanks again and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!!
V/R SGT John McC. 2-18IN HHC AFSNCO
**********************************************************************************
Dear Judy and Jennifer-
I wanted to let you know that your Christmas "Care Package" arrived safely in Afghanistan and is very much appreci-
ated. We are part of the 7th Sustainment Brigade out of Ft. Eustis, VA. We are currently located at Kandahar Air Field
in southern Afghanistan. Specifically - we work in the Medical Operations section of the brigade. You were very kind
to go to the effort to remember us in such a generous way. Thank You VERY much. We were very orderly in pass-
ing out all the goodies. Then the trading commenced! Everyone left quite pleased. We have hung up all of the
stockings in our office. It really brightened the place up and helped get us in the Christmas spirit.
Here is wishing You and Yours a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy 2012.

John F., MD
COL, MC
Brigade Surgeon 7th Sustainment Brigade Kandahar Air Field, Afghanistan
**********************************************************
Season's Greetings from Afghanistan. Wanted you all to know
that we have received all of your stockings and have distributed
them out. Attached are some pictures of a few very happy Sol-
diers from Headquarters Platoon opening their boxes. It was
even made all the better by sending the Company Commander
a Romance Novel in his stocking. That has been a good source
of jokes for the last couple of days. Rest assured that no matter
where it "disappears" to we make sure it finds its way back onto
his desk! We really appreciate the gifts, especially the Reese's
Peanut Butter cups as they are a rarity out here, they were all
gone the first day. I am working on getting pic's from the other
platoons so expect more in the future. Thank you and I wish
you a Merry Christmas.

SFC Victor S.
Operations Sergeant
C CO 40th EN BN, Afghanistan

Distributing our stockings is a HUGE job.

Did you all ever wonder who had the gi-norm-us job of
sorting out all the personalized stockings?? We re-
ceived the greatest photo of the brave young man trying
to make heads or tails out of our boxes of stockings. He
should get a special award for tackling this job. For
some units, we have sent as many as 40 boxes filled
with 360 individually named stockings. Yikes. Some-
one has to organize them, and this young man is doing a
great job.

This is a typical smiling soldier
when receiving one of our
special Stockings.

All these GOODIES fit inside one
of our Stockings. Each Stocking is
mailed in one of the special ziplock
plastic bags that have been donated
by The Castle Bag Company.

Why are Nick and Lyn and Paul, all Fabulous members of our
Stockings For Soldiers Team Leader FAMILY, laughing???
Hmmmmmmmm….


How you can help:
Here are some of the ways you can contribute to the success of next year’s Stockings For Soldiers Project:

 Start sewing stockings now . . many of our volunteers have started sewing and stockpiling stockings
now. The stocking pattern is available at our website: www.StockingsForSoldiers.org . Be sure and use
colorful cotton fabric & plain white, red or green felt for the cuff. Our Goal is one more than last year.
 Start knitting wool caps. These are valued by our soldiers in the frigid mountainous regions of Afghani-
stan. The Knitting Instructions are available at our website.
 Purchase and donate fabric for stockings. Even if you do not sew, you can donate fabric to those who
do sew but don’t have the funds to buy extra material. You can also cut out the stockings with our patterns.
 Collect gently used music CD’s, paperback books (no romance novels, please) and gently used DVD
movies (no VHS video tapes please).
 Ask your dentist to contribute toothbrushes, toothpaste and floss. You can expedite this by volunteering
to bring the donated items to the Stocking Store anytime after October 15th, 2012.
 Please make packets of “Snowman Soup” for our troops. (Hot cocoa in a ziplock bag.) See our link for
the “Recipe.” This is a great project for young volunteers to do with their families.
 Arrange for your school, church, synagogue, scout troop, service club and workplace to sponsor a con-
test to see who can collect the MOST crew socks or lip balm or Ramen Soup, etc.
 Arrange for your school, church, synagogue, scout troop, service club and workplace to sponsor a col-
lection drive for items that we put into the stockings. All the details about the project and a list of supplies
is available by clicking on “Project Flyer” at our website.
 Arrange for your school, church, synagogue, scout troop, service club and workplace to write greeting
cards and letters of support to our troops.
 Finally, please join us (and ask your friends to join us) by coming to the Stocking Store (location to be
confirmed in September) any evening during working hours to help us to make the Holidays brighter for
our deployed troops.
 We will be working in the Stocking Store starting October 15th on Mondays through Thursdays, from
6:30 P.M. to 9:00 P.M. Stop by once, stop by twice or as often as you want . . . and stay as long as you
want, but be forewarned: the joy and satisfaction you’ll receive from being a Stockings for Soldiers “Elf”
is addictive . . . you’ll keep coming back for more!
 Please HOLD on delivery of any donations until we open on October 15th, 2012.

To see our 2011 Photos: Go to: http://pix.kg/p/985957576606%3A1730601710/scl

Go to http://www.facebook.com/groups/85682427727/#!/ StockingsForSoldiersDelaware

Go to www.Twitter.com and join Stockings For Soldiers.


Here is our Wish List for donated items to be sent to our troops:

Christmas candy, gum, fruit roll-ups & gushers, Cracker Jacks, Beef Slim Jims, pretzels,
lemonade & flavored drink mixes, individual flavored teas, hot drink mixes, large bags
of coffee, Ramen soup, small cans of tuna, lasagna, Beefaroni, commercially packaged
Trail Mix, nuts, granola bars, cookies, (Sorry, no home-baked items) chips, canned fruit,
any small size of anything to eat. Pocket games & puzzles, DVD movies, music CD's, current
magazines, Beanie Babies, AT&T phone cards, paperback books (no romance novels please),
dominoes, disposable cameras, lip balm, foot powder, small sizes of toiletries & lotions,
crew socks, hand & foot warmers, fly swatters & a Holiday Greeting Card with
your messages of Support & Friendship. If you include your return address, (email
or snail) you might hear back from the Soldier, Sailor, Airman/woman or Marine who re-
ceives your card. (No soap products, please.)

Financial donations are greatly appreciated and needed so we can mail all our boxes
to our troops. Last year, we sent 1,550 boxes, weighing 45,000 lbs. Check with your
employers to see if they participate with the Matching Grant program.
Our 501.c.3 Tax ID is # 27- 0604668.

Please send all items and donations to:

Stockings For Soldiers - Delaware, Inc.
1911 Foulk Road
Wilmington, DE 19810

All contributions are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.

Thank You, Everyone, for helping us to support our Troops.

See you all in October 2012


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