In his spare time, Dino Moran helps students help soldiers stationed overseas.
Moran, a physical education teacher and freshman baseball coach at Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, last semester spent more than 100 hours running a Stevenson club called Students Helping Soldiers.
The group meets Tuesdays at 7:30 a.m. Photos from recent events can be found at the club’s Web site, www4.district125.k12.il.us/Clubs/soldiers.
Included are shots of students baking cookies in one of the school’s home economics classrooms. Moran and about 20 kids used all eight ovens in the room to bake more than 500 cookies that were sent to U.S. troops in Iraq for the holidays.
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Another photo pictures Moran sewing a Christmas stocking to stuff with goodies and greeting cards.
There’s also an annual canned goods drive and a used CD and DVD collection that delivered more than 200 discs to one platoon’s library.
How do they decide who gets the goods?
“We send our stuff to former students and sons and daughters of teachers here,” said the former Marine.
Students also spend a lot of time e-mailing their pen pals in the military.
They e-mail because the Department of Defense suspended its popular “Any Servicemember” mail and package delivery service (where citizens could send packages without knowing a service member’s name). The program was stopped as a security precaution in response to the anthrax mailings during 2001.
But Moran said that individuals still can communicate with “Any Servicemember” through a variety of electronic means.
“There are Web sites all over the place,” he said. “People can make a difference that way.”
Indeed, the online version of the program can be found at www.anyservicemember.org, where visitors can make a post to any member of the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force or Coast Guard. Military personnel can read posts here as well.
At Operation Dear Abby (www.operationdearabby.net) individuals can send a message to a service member specified by state and military branch.
At Operation Uplink (www .operationuplink.org), you can make a donation in any amount toward a telephone card for deployed military personnel on active duty or for a hospitalized veteran.
Service members can request their free phone card at the Web site as well.
Physical mail or packages that are addressed to specific individuals are still being delivered. Visit U.S. Postal Service Web site (www.usps.gov) to look up the Armed Services ZIP code that will get your package into the right hands.
“We’re able to send packages because we know somebody personally,” said Moran. “People can also contact their congressman or alderman for information on where to send packages.”
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