A nation at war
Shoeboxes of Hope
When
Cidney DeFilippo of
DeFilippo thought, “I can do that.”
“I
asked if I could do a couple, but I didn’t realize what we had to do,” DeFilippo said. “I thought we could send a big package, but
as it is, everything has to fit in a shoe box.”
Walsh
had managed to collect hundreds of packages through St. James Church, so she
took DeFilippo’s offer.
“We
were well on our way when Cidney came along and
offered to help,” she said. “The soldiers could always use a little more.”
Young
Patrick is the son of Debbie and Patrick Walsh of
A
Boy Scout with Troop 19 of Mount Carmel Church, Patty enlisted in the Marines
while still in high school, and entered service ironically on
He
trained on
When
he returned home from his first deployment, he was told that he would be
deployed again for the next phase sometime in February, 2004, and eventually
was attached to the First Marine Expeditionary Force. That force is currently
operating in the hotly contested region of Fullujah,
where the unit conducts raids, house-to-house searches, and patrols.
Patrick’s
father, who works at the international postal facility on the Jersey
City/Secaucus border, called his son a good kid.
For Cidney DeFilippo, who is involved
in several local church and civic organizations, the idea of sending small but
extremely necessary items to 20-year-old Patrick and his buddies was not only
appealing and patriotic, but a way to show the troops there that people back
home cared.
Young
Patrick, who is frequently in contact with his father in Bayonne via instant
messaging on the Internet, said the Marines in his unit needed to make life
bearable in that foreign world of sand, sudden windstorms and blistering heat.
Small
items like hard candy or Irish Spring soap, laundry power, and even shampoo are
often hard to come by unless someone from home cares enough to spend the
massive postage needed to ship even a small package. A shoebox of items costs
$27.
Some
other items that young Patrick requested include things most Americans can
readily find at any local convenience: razors, Visine, hand lotion, Chapstick, throat lounges, batteries, pretzels, potato
chips, and magazines.
After
helping Ann in Basking Ridge put together a few boxes of requested items, DeFilippo decided to help put together a network here in
Bayonne as well as in Basking Ridge that would get enough of these packages to
help all the 600 or more Marines at the heart of the Iraqi conflict.
“We’ve
set a goal of 650 packages,” DeFilippo said,
referring to Walsh’s effort in Basking Ridge. DeFilippo
had about 40 in her own home and hoped to get more.
Bayonne effort
Patrick’s
father in Bayonne and others joined the effort – since e-mail, letters, and
packages were ways of keeping in touch with people at home. Some Marines don’t
get many packages because of the postage costs.
Coincidentally,
the elder Patrick works in the APO division of the Postal Facility, which deals
with military mail, but could not arrange to get the boxes shipped at a special
rate. The Bayonne Capodice family and their civic
organizations will be paying shipping costs for the boxes once they are
assembled.
“This
is a way to help support the troops while they are overseas,” DeFilippo said, noting that she is suggesting to other
organizations that she belongs to that they get involved.
To help out
There
are three ways people can help out.
“They
can give money to shopping for the items,” DeFilippo
said, “or they can prepare the boxes on their own. Or they can bring the things
to us so we put them together.”
As
of the end of April, DeFilippo said they had about
288 boxes done in both Basking Ridge and Bayonne, for eventual shipment through
the post office’s APO program.
Because
you are not normally allowed to include aerosol cans in these shipments, they
had to get special permission to include WD-40, a silicone lubricant that has a
remarkable number of uses from helping to keep weapons lubricated to drying
moist wires. Where they are, sand often gets into their devices.
DeFilippo also made several boxes specifically for women, who serve as drivers
and other positions off the front lines.
In
seeking out the materials young Patrick requested, DeFilippo
had the hardest time finding small packages of laundry detergent to fit into
the shoebox.
“I
thought about going to a coin-operated Laundromat to ask if I could purchase
some from the companies that supply the machines,” she said.
But
then she found small bags in one of the local dollar stores.
Young
Patrick had requested energy bars, but because of the heat, these boxes cannot
include any chocolate. “I could not find any energy bars without chocolate, so
I put in granola bars instead,” she said.
The
idea is to provide small, light items that soldiers can carry with them, along
with the 50 to 80 pounds of gear they have to carry, the elder Patrick said.
The
shoe boxes won’t just go to Patrick. The elder Patrick said he knows two others
in the unit and others from other platoons, and is seeking other people to help
with the chore of distributing the boxes once they get to Iraq.
The
Elder Patrick also a friendly rivalry with one of the other Marines from his
son’s unit, a Massachusetts native named Jason Wheeler who is an avid Boston
Red Sox baseball fan.
“I’m
writing ‘Go Yankees’ on his box,” Patrick said.
Along
with the list of requested items, the shoeboxes will also include letters from
school kids and local Scouts.
“We
want them to know we all care about them over there,” DeFilippo
said.
The
elder Patrick, of course, is concerned with the nearly daily news of soldiers
being slain in Iraq.
“I’m
more nervous than my son is,” he said. “My son keeps telling me not to worry.
By getting these boxes together, it is a way I can focus.”