Fifth grader Christopher Cole made his way around Ms. Begg’s room at Park Forest Elementary, carefully filling a bright red stocking with snacks, candy and other treats.
Cole – along with many other students from Park Forest – was packing a stocking to send to members of the United States armed forces who will be stationed overseas during the holiday season. He says this small token of appreciation “is a way to give them a Christmas away from home.”
“They’re out there fighting for our country, and for our freedom,” Cole says. “This is just a small way for us to say thanks.”
Patti Begg, a music teacher at Park Forest Elementary, helped guide the parade of children through her room, which was filled with boxes stuffed to the brim with everything from granola bars to tooth brushes.
But for Begg, the most important thing the children would be sending overseas is their handwritten cards. At the bottom of each stocking was a “very heartfelt” note the children had written.
“Thank you for serving my country and saving lives,” one card reads. “You are brave.”
Begg says sometimes her class will receive a response from the soldiers – like one solider last year who wrote back to tell them how excited he was when a helicopter flew over their isolated location to airdrop a box filled with their stockings down to the ground.
“I think it’s good for these kids to have a chance to do a service for our troops,” Begg says. “It’s important they don’t just think of themselves. All they have to do is in look in our town, and they’ll find families missing their soldiers.”
Tracie Ciambotti , co-founder of the Military Family Ministry, helped start the stocking stuffing tradition at schools all over Centre County – and the rest of the country. As someone who went through a “life-altering experience” when her own son was deployed to Baghdad, she knows first hand how much simple acts of kindness like these stockings can mean to military members and their families.
Ciambotti says the school found out which students and staff members at Park Forest Elementary have family members deployed over the holidays. Then Ciambotti personally got in touch with each one to find out where they’re deployed, and how many fellow service members are in their unit.
Each one will receive a box with stockings for every member deployed in their unit.
“All of the soldiers we’re sending these stockings to can’t come home for Christmas or Hanukkah, or whatever they celebrate. We want to do something nice for them,” says fifth grader Nathaniel Sims. “Their family is missing them, and they’re probably lonely – but knowing that someone back home wants to give them something might make them happy.”
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