Operation Help Our Heroes has made several advancements since the writing of the last article. We now have an item drop off box in the cafeteria for letters and items to place in care packages. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself, “What would I want if I were 7000 miles from home?” With that said, we cannot accept liquids, meat products, or chocolates due to shipping and customs.

Also, we are striving for the fairly hefty goal of sending fifty care packages by the time that ChardonHigh School gets out of school for Christmas Break. We recently had all fifty boxes shipped to us, and they each measure twelve inches by twelve inches by five and a half inches.

We are now up to seven contacts, and we are always looking for more. These can be found in Mr. Herner, Mr. Fronk, Mr. Ricci, and Mr. Mizen’s rooms. Two of these contacts are currently stationed at Kandahar Air Field in Afghanistan, and each one has access to many other troops. We also have contacts onboard the USS Carter Hall, a guided missile cruiser, and the USS Lake Erie, which is another guided missile cruiser.

We now also have a bulletin board dedicated to the cause (thanks to Ms. Grantham), which is located right by the gym. Here you can find information about the program as well as updates as to how we are doing.

While we are very happy how well the student body is taking this idea, Operation Help Our Heroes truly feels as though we can do better. We must inform more students about our cause and exactly why we are striving for our goal. We all know that the student body is very giving in nature and that they will take this idea very well.

Sophomore Lauren Weisenbach, who has been involved with the program since the beginning, said this, “I feel we are striving for the best and we are on our way to having the community involved. I also believe that if the school gets involved then we will be getting more donations and making the troops excited to open up our care packages.

Thank you all very much for your willingness to take on this idea and we all look forward to making the daily lives of active-duty troops better!