43
Valley helps send 1,200 dozen cookies to troops overseas
The project will respond to direct requests from soldiers serving abroad.
By Harold Gwin
Photo
COOKIES SHIPPED: Boxes of cookies sit in Zack Lord’s living room in Hubbard just before being shipped to U.S. military personnel serving overseas.
HUBBARD — Zack Lord set a goal of shipping 300 dozen cookies to U.S. military personnel serving overseas just before Christmas.
As it turns out, his plan was way too conservative.
“It went very well. We surpassed our goal by a lot. We ended up doing 14,000 cookies [nearly 1,200 dozen], and I want to thank the community for all their help and donations,” he said.
Things really took off after The Vindicator ran a story about the effort, dubbed Project: Serving Soldiers, on Nov. 30, he said.
“I got call after call after call,” Lord said, noting that a Youngstown company, which insisted on remaining anonymous, donated 300 dozen cookies to the cause. The Youngstown-area community came together to help, he said.
“We just kept having people volunteer to bake for us,” said Alisha Goldner, also of Hubbard, who has been involved in Project: Serving Soldiers since Lord launched the idea in November 2008. Churches, groups and individuals were lining up to help, she said.
“I had a house full of cookies,” Lord said. At one point, they were stacked in his living room, basically covering up the Christmas tree, he said. They ended up shipping between 70 and 80 boxes of cookies.
His brother supplied some initial names for package recipients, and other names were soon acquired from people who heard about the project and wanted something sent to a friend or relative, Lord said.
They also set up a Facebook page to chronicle what they were doing.
The publicity helped bring in $2,000 in donations to buy baking materials and for shipping costs, and some of that money wasn’t used, Lord said.
Project: Serving Soldiers will use it to meet requests coming directly from soldiers overseas, he said.
The project drew a lot of response from those who received cookies, Lord said, and, in some on-going e-mail correspondence, he asked them what they would like to receive.
More cookies, as well as sunflower seeds, coffee and beef jerky were the major responses, he said, and every effort will be made to grant those wishes.
“We’ve been shopping around trying to find the best prices,” Lord said, noting that the project will begin shipping out those items in the very near future.
“Basically, it’s their money. We need to get them some stuff,” he said.
It has definitely been a rewarding experience, Goldner said, adding that it was nice to hear the recipients appreciated the group’s efforts.
Now, the project is eager to respond to what the soldiers want, she said.
Project: Serving Soldiers keeps getting new addresses of people serving overseas, so the mission will be able to continue even as those now getting the packages come back home, Goldner said.
They’ll keep the effort going, “as long as we can,” she said.
Lord, now a student at Youngstown State University, said there may be an effort to get something started involving YSU students.
He initially launched the project after learning from his brother, Luke, who was serving with the Navy in Iraq, that a lot of people weren’t getting any packages from home.
“It killed me that there were men and women over there fighting for us, and they weren’t getting any packages,” he recalled.
He was working at KB Toys in Hermitage, Pa., at the time and spoke with his boss about organizing an effort to send hand-held games to military personnel overseas. Fellow employees signed on to the plan and began asking people to help by buying small, hand-held games. They sent out 2,000 of them in a short time and got word back that their shipments boosted the morale of those on the receiving end, Lord said, adding that the cookie shipments came next.
The effort will go on, he said, and anyone wishing to help can contact him by e-mail at pservingsoldiers@yahoo.com.
gwin@vindy.com