Early in August my son, Braxton Chase, wrote to you requesting an advertisement of his Eagle Scout project to be held on August 22, 2009. He set up a donation drive at the JC Wal-Mart to accept items for The Crisis Center, a local battered women and children's center. Initially, he had met with one of the directors and received a list of requested items the center uses.

That day at Wal-Mart, he set up at both doors a large donation box along with a jar for monetary donations. He recruited scouts and friends to help hand out flyers with the listed items along with answering questions from customers. This occurred from 8:00-5:00 and many people volunteered their time in varied shifts to ensure there were always at least 4 people at each door. During the day, the volunteers were kept hydrated and fed with water, donuts and pizza.

Before the donation started, my son said that if both of the very large donation boxes were full at the end of the day, he would consider it a success. Imagine the thrill he felt when he made numerous trips to our van to empty the contents and me having to drive home three separate times to empty the van. He was even more overwhelmed when he counted up the donations and received over $700! (which he recruited several scouts to help him spend on more supplies for the Center at the JC Dollar Tree and Wal-Mart)

I tell you all this not to 'toot' my son's horn (although I am very proud of him) but I wanted to somehow (through a story, pictures (I have plenty), interviews, etc) show our gratitude for the amazing generosity of this community. Area residents need to know how generous people are and how willing they were that day to help someone in need. Some apologized because they could only give a few dollars or a small item from the list. Some mentioned that they were a 'survivor' and wanted to give back. ALL items/money donated contributed to a great success. Just to give you an idea of the magnitude of items we received: over 100 rolls of paper towels, 50 packages of diapers/pull ups, almost 2 dozen pillows, almost 200 various bottles of cleaning supplies, 150+ bottles of shampoos/ conditioners, and 6+ dozen boxes of garbage bags/ziplock bags. Sorting, organizing and counting the items into various containers alone took about 20 hours during the course of a few days.

This is our family's second time to be stationed at Fort Riley and we were thrilled that we actually got to come back. We love it here and seeing the kindness of those in this community just confirms those feelings. My husband is currently serving as the commander of the 97th MP Battalion and is in Afghanistan until July 2010. We have kept him up to date on the project and he too, is pleased to see so many willing to help.

Tomorrow afternoon my son, along with several adults and scouts will be delivering all the items (we "hope" it will all fit in our empty van and two large pickup trucks) and can't wait to share all this with Ms. Gaby Neal, who has been nothing but gracious and helpful as the representative of The Crisis Center.

I plan to take even more pictures tomorrow while the boys are loading and unloading and would be more than happy to share some of them with you (or any others that I have) if you deem this a worthwhile story. If not, I hope you would consider letting my son write a 'letter to the editor.' He feels it is important to thank this community for their help.

Sincerely,
Starla Chase