Serendipity.
That’s the word that comes to mind after Trish Shallenberger, mother of four and a Mary Kay consultant, tells the story of the night she met Mark Edhegard 11 years ago.
Shallenberger was attempting to catch a flight out of Dallas as storms hit the area. Flights were delayed, seats were rebooked and she eventually found herself seated beside a fair-skinned young man on a flight to Philadelphia.
“I think once you’re a mom, you’re always a mom, and I looked at him as if he could have been my son,” Shallenberger said. “I immediately noticed that his hands were a mess — the tops were sunburned and the bottoms had these massive welts on them. I offered him some hand cream, and he was so appreciative.”
The two started talking, and Shallenberger soon learned that Edhegard was in the Army ROTC program at Auburn University and had just been called up to serve in Iraq. His unit had been in Texas getting acclimated to the heat before their deployment. He confessed that he was more afraid of the harsh, painful effects of the climate on his fair skin than he was of dying in combat. Shallenberger immediately offered to send sunscreen and other skincare products to him in Iraq, but the young soldier politely declined, saying it wouldn’t be fair to the others in his unit.
This led Shallenberger to make the offer that would change her life: “I said, ‘Mark, I’ll send it to your whole unit.’”
Shallenberger reached out to everyone she knew for help, and on Thanksgiving day in 2007, all 177 members of Edhegard’s unit in Iraq received individually wrapped care packages filled with Mary Kay brand skincare products (purchased at cost using Shallenberger’s consultant discount), candy and handwritten notes. Edhegard contacted Shallenberger right away, saying, “You have to know this was the best day in Iraq. I felt like Santa Claus today. … There were grown men crying because they’ve been gone from their homes since March and no one has ever sent them anything.”
“What we really learned is that not everyone gets that mail call,” Shallenberger said. “We gave them hope; we let them feel like they were remembered and that every single one of them mattered.”
Moved and humbled by the profound effects of such a seemingly simple gesture, Shallenberger knew she wanted to continue to help.
“And so we did it again. … Then, someone from that troop reenlisted and he asked if we could support his group; then we were asked to support a paratrooper group,” she said. “It was really a domino effect. Now I feel like I’m just following God’s lead.”
Shallenberger received a civilian service award from the U.S. Army for her efforts, and was inspired to found the registered charity A Soldier’s Hands. The organization has distributed more than 6,000 care packages to deployed units since 2007.
Shallenberger and her family lived in State College from 1998 until 2006, when they moved to Yardley for her husband’s job. They returned to State College with their four children, ranging in age from 12 to 20, in 2016. Since their return, Shallenberger had been operating A Soldier’s Hands out of the family’s Park Forest garage until March 2018, when Legacy Realty and Property Management company donated office space on Greentech Drive to the charity.
That space is especially valuable right now, as the group is embarking on its largest project yet: providing 3,200 care packages for sailors on board the USS Ronald Reagan, an aircraft carrier in the seventh fleet of the U.S. Navy. They already have most of the handwritten notes they will need, and are currently working on raising funds for the project, which they hope to complete by mid-August.
“This is our total focus at the moment,” Shallenberger explained. “The shipping alone will cost between $11, 000 and $12,000, and that doesn’t even include the contents of the packages.”
While this is indeed a lofty goal for the small nonprofit, Shallenberger promised the commander of the USS Reagan a care package for every sailor, and she is determined to stick to her word, just like she did with Edhegard back in 2007.
“Mark said to me years later, ‘When I told my buddies that I met this lady on the plane, and she’s going to send us stuff and take care of us, they laughed at me. But that Thanksgiving day, they weren’t laughing anymore,’” Shallenberger said. “That’s the piece I really stress when I go in and speak at schools — that our word is all we have. When you tell someone you’re going to do something, you really have to do it. You don’t know who is hanging on to what we say we’re going to do.”
The group will be present at the People’s Choice Festival to hand out American flag stars to veterans and military families.
For more information, or to donate to A Soldier’s Hands, visit www.asoldiershands.org.
