12.01.06
Silver Star Families of America…

Dedicated to supporting wounded servicemembers and their families, are thinking outside the box this Christmas.

A member of America Supports You, a Defense Department program highlighting ways
Americans and the corporate sector support the nation's servicemembers, the
group has undertaken a program to send holiday cheer to military and veterans
hospitals.

"We concentrate on sending Silver Star banners to the wounded," Steve Newton,
the organization's founder, said. "But the members wanted to do something
special for the wounded for Christmas."

Through "Project Christmas," Silver Star Families is sending at least one box of
goodies to a military hospital, a Veterans Affairs medical center or a combat
support hospital in every state in the U.S., and to Germany and Iraq, Newton
said.

The effort got under way a mere three weeks ago, and the organization has nearly
met its goal. All boxes for overseas locations have been shipped to ensure they
arrived in time for the holidays. As for the stateside venture, only a handful
of states remain to be checked off the list. "This has been a big project for
us," Newton said. "We usually don't tackle care packages on this scale. But
we've had a lot of support."

That support has come from within, with members donating items to stuff the
boxes, and from the celebrity realm, including best-selling author Dean Koontz.
The author shipped "cases and cases of autographed books," which meshed well
with the group's goal of sending "fun" items. Other items donated for the
packages include signed baseball, football and other sports memorabilia, as well
as items with musicians' signatures.

"We got pencils from the Chicago Cubs, just hundreds and hundreds of pencils,"
he said. "The Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team sent us, I bet it was 150 ...
T-shirts, beautiful T-shirts."

The Silver Star members also are taking it upon themselves to pick up any slack,
Newton said. One member from the Washington area stepped up to cover the postage
for all of the packages being sent from the national headquarters in Missouri.
Other members are sending packages on their own to ensure as many wounded
servicemembers as possible have a great Christmas.

"If you'd asked me a week or two ago, I'd have said, 'I don't ever, ever want to
see any kind of box again," Newton said with a laugh. "But I think we'll do this
every year."