Press Release by Melanie Miera
Last year on Veterans Day, students and faculty of Emery County School District, headed by Melanie Miera and Brenda Jensen from Cleveland Elementary, kicked off the first annual Care Packages for Christmas Campaign.
We had the idea that it would be great to send Christmas packages to members from all branches of the military serving from our area. These packages included items such as candy, granola bars, chips, cookies, zip lock baggies, toiletry items, postal supplies and hand-written cards. All of the items were donated to this program by the students and their families.
This campaign would not have been possible without the additional help received from the Cub Scouts of Cleveland Utah Pack 302. The scouts assembled the items into individual packages and then put them into boxes. They did all the necessary preparations needed to enable us to ship the packages overseas to our local troops. We collected enough items that we were able to give gifts to 250 soldiers last Christmas. We hope to do that again this year as well.
On Thursday, May 1, the cub scouts from Pack 302 that were involved with the project were recognized by Sgt. Garth Johnson of the 624th Utah National Guard Engineer Company from Price. He arrived at their pack meeting dressed in full military uniform and awarded the scouts their 100th anniversary badge. He thanked them for their service and told them how important it is for the troops to receive support from home when they are stationed abroad. Johnson then discussed the connections between the scouting program and the military.
We are excited to continue this program again this Christmas. However, the one thing we did not anticipate last year was the difficulty in obtaining addresses of the members currently serving in the military from our area. Due to the strict privacy issues that are necessary to protect our soldiers, we were told that we need to acquire addresses directly from the families themselves.
So, we are asking at this time, if you have a family member who grew up in Emery or Carbon County and is currently serving and will be deployed during Christmas, please send their personal address to melaniem@emeryschools.org.
We appreciate the dedication and efforts of the members of the military who serve our country faithfully and diligently and would just like to say thank you!
