• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • About Us
  • Videos
    • Featured Video
    • Foodie Friday
    • Monthly ReCap
  • Online E-Editions
    • This Week’s E-Editions
    • 2023
    • 2022
    • 2021
    • 2020
    • 2019
    • 2018
    • 2017
    • 2016
    • 2015
    • 2014
  • Social Media
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Instagram
  • Advertising
  • Local Jobs
  • Puzzles & Games
  • Circulation Request

The Laker/Lutz News

Serving Pasco since 1981/Serving Lutz since 1964

       

Click to join our weekly e-newsletter

  • Home
  • News
    • Land O’ Lakes
    • Lutz
    • Wesley Chapel/New Tampa
    • Zephyrhills/East Pasco
    • Business Digest
    • Senior Parks
    • Nature Notes
    • Featured Stories
    • Photos of the Week
    • Reasons To Smile
  • Sports
    • Land O’ Lakes
    • Lutz
    • Wesley Chapel/New Tampa
    • Zephyrhills and East Pasco
    • Check This Out
  • Education
  • Pets/Wildlife
  • Health
    • Health Events
    • Health News
  • What’s Happening
  • Sponsored Content
    • Closer Look
  • Homes
  • Obits
  • Public Notices
    • Browse Notices
    • Place Notices

Spreading holiday cheer doesn’t happen overnight

September 1, 2010 By Special to The Laker/Lutz News

Volunteers working to provide for military personnel overseas are already ramping up for the holidays

By B.C. Manion

While most people are thinking about whether they’ll barbecue chicken or ribs for Labor Day, efforts are already revving up to bring a bit of holiday cheer to the nation’s troops.
The goal is to collect 140,000 bags filled with snacks or toiletry items, said Bob Williams, of Support The Troops, Inc., a 501(c)3 charitable group based in Wesley Chapel.

BobWilliams holds a goody bag full of snacks. Tens of thousands of these bags will be sent to service men and women overseas. (Photos by B.C. Manion)

This year, organizers are even more ambitious than they were last year when the effort resulted in sending 135,000 individual goody bags to 19 bases and two ships in forward deployed areas, Williams said. The bags were delivered by chaplains to service men and women on Christmas Eve, Williams said.
Karin King, founder of Treats for Troops, put the holiday drive for goody bags this way: “We’ve made our list and checked it twice.”
“If there are 5,000 guys on their ship, we want them to have 5,000 bags. If there are 2,000 guys on the base, we want them to have 2,000,” Williams said. “It’s a big morale boost.”
Williams and King are united in their efforts to recruit help from Sunday school classes, civic organizations, businesses or any other group that can help them provide a bag of goodies or toiletries for each service man or woman.
The bags can contain just about anything, King said. “Anything you go to the store for, they don’t have it either,” she said.
The snack bags can have items such as candy, gum, pretzels, chips, cracker, popcorn and cookies.
The toiletry bags can have body lotions, deodorant, sunscreen, lip balm, eye wash, body wash, shampoo, toothpaste, toothbrushes, mouth wash, hand sanitizers, baby wipes, soaps and more.
The items should be packed in one-gallon Ziploc bags.
Tampons can be particularly useful to soldiers in combat, King said. If a soldier is wounded, the tampon can be inserted into a wound. Tampons come wrapped individually, in sanitary packaging. A tampon absorbs blood, expands and can be easily removed, she explained.
Either toiletry bags or snack bags are welcome, but toiletry items and snack items should not be mixed together in the same bag, King said.
The rush is on to collect the filled goody bags, she added. “We need to have these bags by Halloween,” she said, in order to have them reach the troops in time for the holidays.
While Williams and King focus on gearing up the goody bag effort, members of Lutz Patriots also are preparing to make two large shipments of care packages before the end of the year. One shipment will be sent later this month. The other will be sent in November.

Thank you notes and photographs cover a wall at the warehouse where volunteers for Support The Troops, Treats for Troops and the Lutz Patriots pack care packages for military service men and women.

Bruce Hockensmith of the Lutz Patriots, said his group is always looking for donations for the 50-pound to 60-pound care packages they send to troops about four times a year.
The group is planning a packing party at the Support The Troops warehouse on Sept. 18, he said. The other shipment will be sent in time for the holidays, Hockensmith said.
The Lutz Patriots seeks to specifically send care packages to service men and women with ties to the Land O’ Lakes and Lutz areas, Hockensmith said. He encourages people in the local community to let his group know about their friends and family in the military overseas by e-mailing the group at
Like Williams and King, his group can use assistance.
“We’re always looking for donations,” Hockensmith said, noting his grassroots group has no outside source of funding. “Our soldiers really look forward to that mail call.”
In addition to the holiday goody bags, Williams and King also are involved in year-round efforts to send care packages to troops overseas.
Williams operates a warehouse, where he collects donations from companies, organizations and individuals used to fill 69-pound boxes that are routinely sent to U.S. military units in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Qatar and Kyrgyzstan. Hundreds of volunteers pack the boxes.
Donations pay for the $40.25 postage charge for each box, but getting those donations is the biggest challenge, Williams said. Shelves in the warehouse are full of items that could be sent immediately to help the troops, but the organization doesn’t have enough money to cover the shipping costs, he said.
King, who started out by herself just baking a few dozen cookies, now has about a dozen women helping with the cause. The cookies they make are packed into Williams’ care packages.
King’s husband, Jim King, also is involved. He runs Operation Pocket Change, an organization that collects spare change from patrons at sporting events to help cover the cost of postage for shipping the military care packages.
All of the various efforts are important, King said, but the push is on now to get those goody bags filled and packed, to ensure delivery in time for Christmas.
“It just lets them know that people care,” Williams said.

Reach B.C. Manion at .

How To Help

For more information on how you can help, please contact:

Support The Troops, Inc. at (800) 367-3591 or (813) 991-9400
Treats for Troops and Operation Pocket Change at 813-746-1517
Lutz Patriots at ">

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Email
  • Print

Like this:

Like Loading...

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Primary Sidebar

Search

Sponsored Content

6 Reasons to Consider Remodeling your Bathroom with CMK Construction

March 21, 2023 By Kelli Carmack

Have you wanted to remodel your bathroom for a while now, but need that little extra push to make your decision? Check … [Read More...] about 6 Reasons to Consider Remodeling your Bathroom with CMK Construction

Avalon Applauds African American Club of Pasco

March 7, 2023 By Kelli Carmack

One of Avalon Park Wesley Chapel’s main missions is being a champion for culture. “Celebrating culture is a vital … [Read More...] about Avalon Applauds African American Club of Pasco

More Posts from this Category

What’s Happening

03/27/2023 – Humpty Dumpty

The Starkey Ranch Theatre Library Cultural Center, 12118 Lake Blanche Drive in Odessa, will present “Once Upon a STEM: Humpty Dumpty” on  March 27 at 4 p.m., for kindergarten through third grade. Participants can learn to build contraptions that will save their ‘eggs’ (environmentally safe, no real eggs) from their fall. Registration is required online at PascoLibraries.org. … [Read More...] about 03/27/2023 – Humpty Dumpty

03/29/2023 – Adult Tabletop Games

The Starkey Ranch Theatre Library Cultural Center, 12118 Lake Blanche Drive in Odessa, will host an Adult Tabletop Game Night on March 29 from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m., for ages 18 and older. Games will include: big Jenga, life-sized connect four, dominoes, playing cards, assorted board games, and more. For information, call 727-815-7126. … [Read More...] about 03/29/2023 – Adult Tabletop Games

03/30/2023 – Watercolor painting

The Starkey Ranch Theatre Library Cultural Center, 12118 Lake Blanche Drive in Odessa, will host “Tween Hangout: Watercolor Painting” on March 30 from 3:30 p.m. to 4:15 p.m., for free after-school painting in the courtyard. For information, call 727-815-7126. … [Read More...] about 03/30/2023 – Watercolor painting

04/01/2023 – Bunny Hop Eggstravaganza

The Land O’ Lakes Recreation Complex, 3032 Collier Parkway, will host a Bunny Hop Eggstravaganza on April 1 from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. There will be bounce houses, games, music, food trucks, and scheduled egg scrambles. The event will be at the outside football fields and basketball court. Registration is required to participate in the egg scrambles. The cost is $3 per child. Children ages 2 to 10 can register with their age division and time frame at Secure.rec1.com/FL/pasco-county-fl/catalog. For questions, call 813-929-1220. … [Read More...] about 04/01/2023 – Bunny Hop Eggstravaganza

04/01/2023 – Cacti and Things

Kessler’s Cacti and Things will host its annual Spring Plant Sale on April 1 and April 2 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., rain or shine, at Bearss Grove, 14316 Lake Magdalene Blvd., in Tampa. The event features thousands of plant varieties, and an assortment of specimen and collector’s plants. For information, email . For questions and directions, call 813-264-5614. … [Read More...] about 04/01/2023 – Cacti and Things

04/01/2023 – Dade City Art Walk

The Downtown Dade City Art Walk will take place April 1 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. There will be more than 20 art locations for guests to meet the artists and shop local artwork, as well as a little Pre-Casso Exhibit for young aspiring artists. There will be an opening ceremony at 5 p.m., along with a map distribution, at Florida Cracker Lunch on Limoges. … [Read More...] about 04/01/2023 – Dade City Art Walk

More of What's Happening

Archives

 

 

Where to pick up The Laker and Lutz News

Copyright © 2023 Community News Publications Inc.

   
%d bloggers like this: