Our August 23, 2008 Care Package day was a record breaker! We had 104 volunteers on hand to help us get 975 boxes packed and shipped to our Marines in Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa. 57 of the volunteers were brand new and had never attended a packing day until then.

Volunteers included families from Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, and Illinois. Missouri families haled from St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, Sedalia, Jamestown and Columbia. We finished packing the boxes at 11:30 in the morning. We also had several Marines in attendance including some recent OIF/OEF veterans as well as military service personnel from the Viet Nam conflict.

We shipped items donated by Kellogg with the help of Dayton Freight to get the donated items shipped to our warehouse for packing day. The boxes included Sunite Solar flashlights, baby wipes, ravioli, toiletries, t-shirts, socks and of course letters from children around the United States.

The packing rooms were filled to the ceiling with items for our Marines and by 11:30 in the morning, the room was virtually empty and the boxes were on their way to the Columbia Regional Airport. We hope to get reports from Marines that the packages have arrived in country before the end of this week.

Click here to see a slide show of the August 2008 Care Package Drive

Pam Bird (a/k/a sedmomom on the MarineParents.com message boards) coordinated the Missouri Marine Parents picnic after the packing. She and her husband pulled up with a 40 foot trailer, a stock tank with 260 pounds of ice and over 300 drinks as well as assorted watermelons, a generator so we could have electricity for the crock pots! A Marine Grandpa did the grilling of 90 hamburgers and 70 hotdogs.

We would like to extend a huge thank you to all of those who helped to make this a successful day and get these packages to almost 1000 Marines serving overseas.

Start making plans now to join us on November 1 when the packing day lunch will be sponsored by Shakespeare's Pizza and we'll be packing 1000 boxes to include "Happy Birthday Marine" sentiments for the Marine Corps' 233rd birthday. For those of you who are local, remember we need your help the weeks before the packing day as well. The office is open every Thursday for open volunteer day.