Grateful American: A Journey from Self to Service(77)
Mary and Mike connected us to representatives of FedEx, who offered to support our initiative by donating the shipping to Kuwait. FedEx CEO Fred Smith approved it. Getting supplies from Kuwait into Iraq was tricky. It involved more steps and higher clearance levels, so at one point I went to the Pentagon to ask for help, but with the war in full swing, it was difficult to get a consistent commitment. We worked to find as many ways as possible to get the supplies where we wanted them to go. We eventually had a good system in place.
In April 2004, we held a press conference at the airport in Kansas City saying we were ramping up efforts yet again. We developed a volunteer base, and I did benefit concerts for OIC with the Lt. Dan Band. Supplies poured in. I started talking about the program more and more on radio and TV. Even more supplies poured in. We quickly learned to create two-pound school “kits” with big plastic Ziploc bags so each child would receive roughly the same amount of supplies. Our volunteers assembled the kits, complete with pencils, erasers, and other basic school supplies. A buddy of mine from high school, Mike Fisher, owned a container supply company in Chicago and offered to donate Ziploc bags. Over the years, Mike would donate thousands of these bags to OIC.
On April 20, 2004, we shipped six hundred school kits, along with two hundred stuffed animals, for distribution to schools in Balad and Baghdad. On June 8, 2004, we shipped another two hundred kits and three hundred stuffed animals for distribution at Iman Primary School in Ishan Hamzah, Iraq. Two weeks later we shipped another six hundred kits to Hillah, Iraq. We were off and running. In 2004 alone, we made nineteen shipments—and we were only getting started.
Blankets, jackets, shoes, socks, soccer balls, art supplies, soap, and backpacks—we added all these items the next year. Items donated, or purchased through funds raised from the American people, were distributed to the children by our troops. We received a massive donation of Crocs shoes and shipped those. Year after year we kept going. It proved a very successful program.
The success was largely due to the simplicity of our overall goal. OIC was a mission of encouragement, hope, and love. The program expanded over the years to include shipments to other countries, and the name of the program was eventually changed to Operation International Children. (That way we could still call it OIC.) Yet our mission always stayed the same—helping soldiers help children. Eventually we were able to help children in Afghanistan, the Philippines, Haiti, Djibouti, and the United States, where supplies were flown to kids adversely affected by Hurricane Katrina. I pictured our program as something in the spirit of our GIs walking through a bombed-out town in Germany after World War II. They’d hand out chocolate and candy to the kids, and while those actions certainly didn’t solve all the world’s ills, the GIs’ actions had let the citizens know that the soldiers were there to help, not hurt.
Over the next few years, we received sack loads of letters from schoolkids who thanked us for the supplies, along with many other letters from soldiers, telling us the program allowed them to extend the hands of friendship to people in these communities.
We were able to establish strong relationships with soldiers on the ground, including Lieutenant Colonel Donald Fallin, who for a period of time took a lead role in distributing our supplies. Another lieutenant colonel named Drew Ryan wrote to tell us about how his troops had visited the Iraqi town of Albu Hassan where villagers had suffered tremendously under Saddam Hussein. When Saddam had wanted to build a new airfield for himself, he simply confiscated farms without ever giving the Iraqi citizens any compensation or jobs. When Saddam was ousted, Lieutenant Colonel Ryan arrived. Many structures in Albu Hassan were dilapidated. The elementary school was a simple mud-walled building with a palm thatched roof that birds often nested in. No running water. No heating for cold winter mornings. No air-conditioning for the hot months—not even fans—and temperatures in the area reached 130 degrees. Lieutenant Colonel Ryan and his troops rebuilt the primary school and built a completely new secondary school with ceiling fans in each room, windows with glass and screens, lights, and a new roof. Through OIC, the troops delivered pens, pencils, notebooks, maps, and soccer balls—and held medical clinics for the students and community members at the school.
One of my favorite letters came from an Iraqi teen, who wrote to us in broken English.
My name is Hadeel and I am 18 years old girl from Iraq, Baghdad. i am very greatful to your help to iraqi children . . . its nice to know there still good people in this world . . . infact you made alot of kids happy because you gave them the hope of new life and the encouragement and the feeling they are important. Id like to thank Gary sinise . . . he is realy charitable and noble man . . . i wish i could see him to thank him in the place of all iraqi children . . . thank you Gary we love so much. infact thank you all and let God bless you!
Troops told us the deliveries from OIC helped in unexpected ways. For instance, an American soldier gave a stuffed animal to a little Iraqi girl, about five years old. The next day, a convoy of American soldiers drove down the road, about five vehicles in the convoy running at about forty-five miles per hour, and they saw this same little girl in the street, still holding her stuffed animal. She wore a worried look on her face, so they pulled over to make sure everything was okay. She shifted the stuffed animal in her arms and pointed to a little mound of dirt just up the road in the direction the convoy headed. The troops checked it out. An IED was hidden in the dirt. This little girl, after receiving a stuffed animal from a US soldier, very probably saved the soldiers in that convoy from being seriously injured or killed.