Frank Dicola – US Care Packages

I am Frank D. and I am a Life Scout with Boy Scout Troop 11 in my home town of New Rochelle, New York.  Life is the rank before Eagle in Boy Scouting. 

To earn the rank of Eagle an important requirement is to lead a community service project.  I am a Junior in Iona Preparatory School in New Rochelle as well.

For my Eagle Scout Project I organized the sending of care packages to 60 American Soliders stationed together in Iraq. The source of this contact information was www.Mysoldier.com. I sent care packages to some individual soldiers whose names I have been given by the VFW in New Rochelle.

Here are the ways you can help:

Donate any of the items listed below: Even if you can only afford to donate one item or a small amount of money, it will help.  Once I have enough items I will be organizing a team of volunteers to pack up the items and ship them to the appropriate military addresses.

Be a donation collector: Help solicit for these donations.  Offer to go pick them up from people to make it easier for them to donate.

Be a packing volunteer: Send me your contact information and I will let you know what days we will be packing, labeling and shipping these packages to our troops.

Be a shipping donor: While the U.S. Postal Service will donate the shipping boxes for free, each box will cost money to ship.  Any money you can donate will help pay to get these to our troops.

Shipping donors will be acknowledged for the number of boxes they pay to ship.  Each box costs $11 to ship:

Bronze Donor – One box

Silver Donor- 3 boxes

Gold Donor-5 boxes

Platinum Donor- 10 boxes

Be a letter writer: Each box shipped to a soldier will have a letter in it from someone from home, telling them thank you for the enormous personal sacrifice they are  making.  Contact me to volunteer as a letter writer and I will arrange to have your letter shipped to a soldier with a care package.

The names of all volunteers and donors will be posted on this website.

Contact me to let me know how you would like to help and I will give you further instructions.  You can reach me at [email protected]

If you would like to help us with a monetary donation, please click the donations link below. Thank You

A Different Christmas Poem

The Embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,

I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.

My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,

My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.

Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,

Transforming the yard to a winter delight

The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.
My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.

The sound wasn’t loud, and it wasn’t too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.
Perhaps just a cough, I didn’t quite know, Then the
sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.
My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who was near.

Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.
A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked without fear,
‘Come in this moment, it’s freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!’
For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts.

To the window that danced with a warm fire’s light
Then he sighed and he said ‘Its really all right,
I’m out here by choice. I’m here every night.’
‘It’s my duty to stand at the front of the line,
That separates you from the darkest of times.

No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I’m proud to stand here like my fathers before me.
My Gramps died at ‘ Pearl on a day in December,’
Then he sighed, ‘That’s a Christmas ‘Gram always remembers.’
My dad stood his watch in the jungles of ‘ Nam ‘,
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.

I’ve not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he’s sure got her smile.
Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, white, and blue… an American flag.
I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home.

I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.
I can carry the weight of killing another,
Or lay down my life with my sister and brother..
Who stand at the front against any and all,
To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall.’

‘  So go back inside,’ he said, ‘harbor no fright,
Your family is waiting and I’ll be all right.’
‘But isn’t there something I can do, at the least,
‘Give you money,’ I asked, ‘or prepare you a feast?
It seems all too little for all that you’ve done,
For being away from your wife and your son.’

Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
‘Just tell us you love us, and never forget.
To fight for our rights back at home while we’re gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us.’
******************

PLEASE, would you do me the kind favor of sending this to as many
people as you can? Christmas will be coming soon and some credit is due to our
U.S service men and women for our being able to celebrate these
festivities. Let’s try in this small way to pay a tiny bit of what we owe. Make people
stop and think of our heroes, living and dead, who sacrificed themselves for us.

 LCDR Jeff Giles, SC, USN
30th Naval Construction Regiment
OIC, Logistics Cell One
Al Taqqadum, Iraq

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