We had a number of tech issues to be resolved at work this morning, and so posting is late today. We'll have more in the evening.
In today's Post Bulletin, Jeff Kiger writes in Grieving parents thank Operation Hometown Gratitude:
"Just like Christmas" is how Army Reserve Spc. Rachael Hugo told her parents that receiving care packages from Rochester made her feel.
After her death in Iraq in early October, her father, Kermit Hugo, wants all of the troops overseas to have that "Christmas" feeling, as well as giving the high school students across the country the experience of sending those packages.
They want to bring the two-year-old Operation Hometown Gratitude care-package program to Wisconsin and eventually across the nation. . . .
. . .
U.S. Rep. Tim Walz, himself a veteran, supports the idea. He hopes to help the cause by working through the Veterans Affairs Committee to create block grants for such projects and to do things like finding ways to discount postage for these packages. The Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1215 in Rochester has paid all of the postage for Operation Hometown Gratitude. More than 2,600 packages of cookies and other treats, as well as basic toiletry items have been collected by the students, boxed up and shipped to soldiers overseas.
"We need to do all we can," Walz told the group Saturday. "This nation has a debt to pay that can never be repaid, but we can try."
Hugo's father agrees.
"It is like a circle," Hugo said.
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