Students Send Holiday Happiness to Heroes Abroad

Local students are doing their part to make sure soldiers abroad have a happy holiday season.

On Tuesday morning, students, accompanied by Union City Mayor Mark Green, packed a box filled with 700 colorful Christmas cards thanking troops for their service. The creative cards featured cutouts of snowflakes, drawings of Christmas trees and, in one case, dinosaurs, with messages such as “Thank you for making our world safe” and “U.S.A. rocks!”

“If I was in the military and I received these, I’d be really tickled,” Hillview Crest Principal John Hazatone said.

The cards will be delivered to active military service men and women via American Red Cross’ Holiday Mail for Heroes program. Now in its fifth year, the Red Cross program is designed to send a “touch of home” to soldiers across the globe, according to its website.

The Hillview Crest project was spearheaded by second grade teacher Norma Pederson who, with the help of parent volunteers, rounded up students throughout the school to participate.

“As economically disadvantaged as some of our students are, I want them to know that they can give something that isn’t monetary, that’s of the heart,” Pederson said.

The idea came to Pederson after she assigned her students to write thank you letters to soldiers for Veterans Day. Many of her students didn’t know what the holiday represented, she said.

“To them, war is a videogame. I wanted to make it more real and personal,” Pederson said. “Whether you agree with war or not, people are serving. People are sacrificing everyday for them. People are missing their children, they’re missing the holidays.”

The activity also served as an opportunity to unite all of the students, parents said.

“We’re trying to build community in the school and bring back warm, fuzzy feelings,” said parent volunteer Kathy Miedema. “A good way to do that is to make the students feel like they’re part of the same village.”

As students piled their holiday cards into a box, they were joined by Union City Mayor Mark Green, who read students’ cards and visited classrooms.

“This is a good example of students, teachers and administrators reaching out and providing not only a community service, but a national service for the service men and women who will be missing the holiday season and experiencing all the nostalgia that comes with it,” Green said.