Students wish deployees ‘Happy Thanksgiving’
David A. Salazar
LOS ANGELES—Local students
of all grades from elementary through
high school, offered happy—and often
adorable—sentiments for the Thanksgiving holiday through handmade
cards fashioned for Corps employees
and troops supporting operations in
Afghanistan.
More than 1,400 cards were delivered to the District headquarters
by the goodwill program’s sponsoring
agency, the Veterans Advocacy Group
of America, on Nov. 1. The cards will
be forwarded to employees of the Los
Angeles District and others serving in
temporary assignments in Afghanistan.
One card read: “Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you for going out and
fighting for our freedom. We are very
grateful for you serving our country. It
has to be hard away from all your family.
I know how it feels. I felt that way in
kindergarten. So I hope you enjoy all
this yummy food. Love, Alex.”
The goal is that the cards arrive at
the Corps’ various offices in the Southwest Asian country in time for Thanksgiving. Sterling Barbour, VAGA’s vice
president and Army veteran, said the
initiative is meant to brighten troops’
and civilians’ days as they spend the
holiday away from loved ones.
“I’m a Vietnam veteran, and to
get cards and letters when you’re out
there—it means so much. I know it’s
going to make the troops happy and
put smiles on their faces. We try to do
A pile of roughly 1,400 holiday greeting cards
were delivered to the Los Angeles District
headquarters as part of a holiday card drive
initiated by the Veterans Advocacy Group of
America. (Photo by David Salazar)
10 NewsCastle
From left to right: Sterling Barbour, vice president of the Veterans Advocacy Group of America;
Jennie Ayala, the District’s outreach coordinator; Tova Barbour, VAGA’s president; and Lori Lieberman, a VAGA volunteer, sort through a pile of holiday greeting cards at the District headquarters
Nov. 1. The cards will be mailed to deployed troops and civilians in Afghanistan as part of a goodwill outreach program initiated by VAGA. (Photo by David Salazar)
The Los Angeles District was tasked with a seemingly impossible mission in the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces on Dec. 7,
1941: To camouflage acres upon acres of Los Angeles real estate where military aircraft were being built. At left, Lockheed Aircraft’s Burbank factory
before and after (right) the District was done with its groundbreaking camouflage project. (Photos courtesy of Lockheed via thinkorthwim.com)
anything possible to make their days
better,” he said.
Sterling’s wife, Tova, is the president of VAGA, a non-profit organization
headquartered in Encino, Calif., that
seeks to improve training, employment
and other post-military service benefit
opportunities for veterans and their
families.
“The card campaign is a way to
connect the local community with
veterans. The card campaign is a sense
of responsibility and respect for our
overseas troops,” Tova said. “By having
students and local organizations help
with the cards, it gives them a sense of
pride and heightened awareness. This
is a way to show patronage to our troops
for the outstanding job they are doing
in defending our country. Our overall
mission is to raise awareness for our
troops with commitment, compassion
and respect.”
Anne Hutton, chief of the District’s
emergency management office, manages the District’s family support and
civilian deployment efforts. Hutton’s
department periodically mails deployees copies of the District family newsletter, on which cards are sometimes
David A. Salazar
attached for coinciding holidays.
“Oftentimes, what you see is that
the recipient will send us an e-mail
because they’re so touched by the card,”
Hutton said. “It’s always the favorite
item in the packages we send.”
Although the Los Angeles District
maintains an average of 30 civilian employees deployed to Afghanistan at any
given period, the high volume of cards
received for the Thanksgiving holiday
will be put to good use and distributed
to many others in the region.
“Not every district is in a huge
metropolitan area with lots of schools,
so even though we have 40 people deployed from the District, we know that
these cards are being shared,” Hutton
said. “They’re always well received by
an entire office as opposed to just an
individual and we know that extra cards
are making their way to others around
the country.”
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
has maintained a presence in Afghanistan since 2002 overseeing Afghan
military, police, and civil works, operations and maintenance, and capacity
development projects on behalf of U.S.
Forces and the Afghan government.
In WWII LA, no task was too tough for District
LOS ANGELES—Many people understand the engineer’s role in society. Among the definitions of engineer, the
Oxford Dictionary lists one as “(verb) to skillfully or artfully
arrange for an event or situation to occur.” This is certainly
the definition most befitting of the myriad of challenging
missions the Los Angeles District undertook in the days after
Japanese forces bombed the Pearl Harbor Naval Air Base on
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