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Reservist and former active-duty member of the United States Navy Shirley Benton is organizing a drive to collect soccer balls, footballs and other care package items for the armed forces overseas in Iraq.
Benton asked the University of Maine and area elementary schools for help collecting the items after a friend at the Pentagon told her he would be flying to Iraq with a USO show in December, hoping to bring six pallets of soccer balls and footballs with him on the plane. Benton exceeded her friend’s request for help and decided to collect care package items, such as water guns, cards, candy, magazines, books and music.
“A lot of things we take for granted over there, and anything like that we have, well, they don’t have,” Benton said. “Reading, for instance, is like gold over there.”
Having participated in Operation Desert Storm, Benton has firsthand experience about fighting overseas and being away from home. Her daughter is currently stationed as a helicopter mechanic in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown. Benton often sends care packages to her daughter, who has been in Iraq since last January. Her daughter reports back that many other soldiers do not receive care packages, which is why Benton decided to include care package items with the sports equipment.
Lyn Dexter, who is coordinating the drive at UMaine, expects the items raised from the collection to dramatically boost the morale of American servicemen and women overseas. She said she has heard reports that soldiers were unable until recently to take showers or use toilets. Providing them with soccer and footballs will give them something to do in their free time, she said.
Benton has even higher expectations for the donated equipment.
“There are a lot of kids over there, and it helps our relations with the Baghdad people,” she said. “If a soldier gives them a soccer ball and kicks it around with them, it looks better to the Iraqi people, and it helps boost [the soldiers' morale].”
Acceptable items include, but are not limited to, magazines, books, shirts, games, cards, balls, music, candy, water guns, toiletries, party supplies, and non-perishable food items.
Both Dexter and Benton ask potential donors not to donate anything that might be considered pornographic. A People magazine would be acceptable, Benton said, but not the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. They also ask that no donations of pork or alcohol are made.
Benton remembered that when she was in Iraq 12 years ago, the servicemen were permitted to wear T-shirts while the women had to remain in their navy blue cover-alls. Despite the heat, they still followed Iraqi customs.
Dexter said she has heard the average age of a service member right now is about 19 years old, the same age as many first year and sophomore university students.
“We all want to help somehow, but most of us don’t know how because they are so far away,” she said. “This is a small way that we can sort of extend our gratitude and the holiday spirit to the soldiers.”
Items can be taken to the Office of Student Employment and Volunteer Programs on the second floor of Memorial Union before Thanksgiving.
