Montville volunteers get Christmas started in August for overseas troops
Montville — Christmas came early on Sunday for a small group of volunteers who plan to make, sign and send holiday cards to service members who will be stationed overseas this winter.
An early start will mean Sandy Truex plans to send hundreds of cards with messages of support and season's greetings to service members from Connecticut and Rhode Island — she just needs people to sign them.
Truex filled the tables of the Chesterfield Fire Department hall Sunday morning with stickers, construction paper and recycled greeting cards, all materials donated or collected over several years.
She said the project started as an activity for her daughter's three-member Girl Scout troop. Once the troop members aged out, Truex said she wanted to keep the cardmaking tradition alive, and opened it up to everyone in town, regardless of their creative abilities.
The wife of an Army and Navy veteran, Truex said she has received mail back from members of the military who received her cards, thanking her for the support.
"It's important for them to hear from people back home," she said.
Oakdale resident Andrea Shaner was worried that her handmade two-dimensional Christmas trees weren't quite well made, but Truex assured her that it's the message that counts, not the quality of the artwork.
"I've been told the gaudier the better," she said.
"It's just a good way to give back," Shaner said. As an employee as a card store that has already started to stock winter holiday-themed merchandise, she said it wasn't out of the ordinary to start thinking about Christmas in August.
Navy veteran Boyd Moats was at the fire department Sunday. He said for people serving in the military overseas, getting a card from a stranger is better than not getting a card at all.
"Some of the guys don't get a card (from home), so ... it's something worth getting," he said.
Truex plans to mail the cards at the end of the October to Any Soldier, an organization that connects those who want to send messages of support to service members and the members of units they'd like to send them to.
She said she'll be handing the cards out to the bingo players who come to the Chesterfield department on Route 85 every Saturday, and will continue to recruit friends and neighbors to sign the cards and make more until October.
"I try to make it as easy as possible for people to have a good time while they're doing it," she said. "Otherwise I'll be signing them all."
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