When Gig Harbor Mayor Chuck Hunter asked Lt. Col. Roy Robbings what the city could do for soldiers stationed in Iraq, he got a simple answer: Bake them some cookies.
And bake they did. More than 5,000 of them.
The request became a project for Diane Hunter, the mayor’s wife, who said she sent an e-mail to friends and asked if they could help.
“I thought I could do that without thinking too much about it,” she said, adding that she asked for 1,800 cookies.
“They could bake them and bring them to me,” she said. “If they couldn’t bring cookies, maybe they could help with postage.”
Hunter’s e-mail suggested recipients pass on the request to their friends, and the project ballooned.
“It went to church groups. It went to quilting groups and knitting groups,” she said. “We had overwhelming support. People would bring cookies and say, ‘If you need more, we’ll make more.’”
Each year, Fort Lewis donates enormous evergreen trees to the city to decorate the harbor for Christmas. At one of the weekly public affairs forums at Cottesmore of Life Care Center, the mayor asked Robbings, the 201st Battlefield Surveillance Brigade Rear Detachment commander, how the city could give back.
“He approached me and asked how they could show appreciation for the soldiers in Iraq,” Robbings said. “Iraq is well developed now as far as infrastructure. They don’t rely on people so much for things like playing cards and toiletries. Homemade cookies are appreciated by the troops.”
Robbings said soldiers also would appreciate small symbols of Gig Harbor, like notepads, pens or cards, and letters from school children.
Diane Hunter received plenty of help with that request, too. Students at Harbor Heights Elementary School and St. Nicholas Catholic School put their artistic talents to work on paper to create their own snippets of hometown memories.
“A lot of people put in little ornaments, so every box got Christmas ornaments and cards and posters from school children,” Hunter said. “A lot of parents brought in things that their children made. One mother had her daughter’s sixth-grade class from Goodman Middle School come over and spend a day on the weekend, baking cookies.”
The cache included oatmeal with raisins, peanut butter, molasses and Christmas-type cookies.
“The troops can buy Oreos in Iraq,” Robbings said. “But that’s not the same thing as home-baked cookies.”
Print
E-Mail