Sylvia Rosenthal

Sylvia Rosenthal, after watching a neighbor's son head off to military service in Iraq, seeing his Dad send care packages to him frequently and finding out that some of the soldiers in her neighbor's son's unit didn't get anything from home, launched the Operation Soldier Santa Program.

Through this program, Sylvia was able to put together 130 (115 individual and 15 large community boxes) care packages to send to our troops. She created a flier, enlisted the help of friends, coworkers and the community, placed a bucket on her porch and the response was overwhelming. She received everything -- toiletries, candy and non-perishable food items, miscellaneous items, such as batteries, socks, chapstick, playing cards, etc. -- and, of course, Christmas cards and letters.

A single mom called Sylvia saying that she did not have any money to buy gifts, but could write cards. She and her 88-year old grandfather, a veteran of the Korean War and World II who now is nearly blind, wrote personalized letters to go along with every package. The grandfather used a magnifying glass and hand-held light in order to do his part. Area school children also wrote letters.

Sylvia also received about $1000 in monetary donations and was able to pay postage to ship about a 1/2 ton of Christmas cheer.

Sylvia says "It touched my heart to hear that some of the soldiers didn't receive anything from home and I wanted to do something special for them. This project became an exciting opportunity for me to pay forward and was as much a blessing for me as I hope it was for the guys."