112/19/03
Bringing home to heroes for the holidays… Operation Interdependence™
By Mike Poor
Pulaski County Independent
One of the true virtues of the United States is the responsiveness of its citizens to underprivileged individuals at this time of year.
But while Americans are
good at recognizing the needs of others, there is one gift most of us have yet
often take for granted: being home for the holidays.
Thousands of men and women in the U.S. military are denied this gift every Christmas
season. Faced with the challenge of serving in difficult and sometimes dangerous
conditions, our soldiers are further burdened by separation from families and
friends at a time when being with them is most important.
Unfortunately, duty to country knows no holidays. It is through the sacrifice of those 1.5 million Americans overseas that the other 290 million of us are able to enjoy this season at home.
The mission of one domestic
non-profit organization is to ensure that U.S. military personnel in all parts
of the world are always remembered by a grateful nation.
Operation Interdependence™ (O.I.) is a civilian-to-military delivery system®
that works to provide soldiers with pieces of home all year long. It collects
donations of food, toiletries and correspondence from those who wish to show
their support of troops and sends them overseas as care packages, or in the
military parlance, c-ratsTM.
Until last month, O.I. coordinated its operations out of just two locations: Oceanside, California, and Tupelo, Mississippi. Now, following the petition of a Pulaski County woman interested in O.I.’s mission, a third location has just opened in Francesville.
Kathi Lange of Winamac first investigated organizations that support U.S. troops when a friend of hers was ordered to Kuwait and Iraq last year. She discovered Operation Interdependence™ and quickly started to assemble c-ratsTM for the organization on her own.
“Not only did I want to support my friend, but I also hoped to contribute to America’s military operations everywhere,” Kathi remembers. “O.I. proved to be the perfect way for me to get involved.”
Lange could not have predicted how involved she would eventually become. Word of her volunteer efforts spread locally, and she found herself inundated with donations from businesses and individuals.
After preparing boxes of c-rats for a couple months, Lange learned that O.I. was looking to expand its operations to another site. An admin manager at AdaptaSoft, Inc. in Francesville, she approached her employer about using part of the office as an O.I. hub.
“Tim (Troxel, president
of AdaptaSoft) was very supportive and generous,” Kathi says. “He
agreed to let us use the entire second floor to store the items we receive.”
Lange’s next step was to contact Albert Renteria, founder and president
of Operation Interdependence™, to see if he would be interested in establishing
a base in Indiana.
Renteria is a retired chief warrant officer with the Marine Corps who served
in the first Gulf War. During his tour, he had first-hand experience with civilian
donations to the war effort.
As a manpower officer, one
of Renteria’s responsibilities was to assign personnel to receive and
distribute c-ratsTM
that were sent from the U.S. He found that, though the donations were well intentioned,
sorting through them required valuable manpower that could be better used in
the military operation.
Upon his retirement, Renteria developed a plan that would keep military personnel
engaged in their mission objectives while allowing Americans back home to continue
supporting them. His idea was to consolidate civilian donations stateside, create
a volunteer organization which would organize them into evenly divided c-rats,
and use the U.S. Postal Service to deliver them to troops overseas.
Thus was Operation Interdependence™
born. “The mission of Operation Interdependence™ is to find a responsible
way for Americans to support our troops,” Renteria states. “Most
importantly, we do it in a way that does not impact our military resources.”
With O.I., Renteria established a far-reaching goal: to provide each man and
woman serving overseas in the U.S. military with one c-rat per month for every
month of their deployment.
The challenge of such a
goal, he soon found, was not in acquiring a force of volunteers domestically
to give their time, but rather in the expense of shipping the items. Some shipping
companies, namely USF Bestway, USF Holland, Dayton Freight and Southeastern
Freight, have donated part of the costs in domestic shipping to O.I..
But once the c-rats are assembled, O.I. volunteers must incur the costs of mailing
them. When Kathi Lange’s offer reached Renteria, the founder saw a good
opportunity to alleviate the financial burden of shipping.
“Opening in Francesville was a strategic move for us because we have a lot of our civilian shipping go from New York to California for our inspection process,” Renteria tells the Independent. “Francesville’s O.I. base was key because it reduces the cost of postage by 75%.”
Renteria visited Francesville
in November to open the new site officially. He was impressed with the enthusiasm
of Lange and the community in contributing to O.I.’s mission.
Now Lange, who had been shipping about one box of c-rats per month as an O.I.
coordinator, is charged with sending 20 boxes per week as the Francesville Area
Manager. For that, she needs the help of a lot of volunteers. Last Tuesday evening,
she held her second “packing party,” in which local helpers assembled
packages of snacks, gum, toiletries, and most importantly, letters.
“The letters are very
important to the soldiers,” Kathi emphasizes. “They love to hear
from people back home, no matter whether it’s a friend or a stranger.
The Nazarene and Methodist churches of Winamac wrote dozens of Christmas cards
and letters for us that we’re putting in the c-ratsTM
right now.”
The other items come from individuals and businesses all over the U.S. The donated
goods are warehoused in California and eventually shipped to one of the O.I.
sites for c-rat assembly.
Most recently, a company
out of Natick, Mass., called Betafoods Corporation, donated 70,000 of its Power
Bites protein bars to O.I.. A shipment of eight palates of Power Bites arrived
to Francesville last Thursday. Lange and her volunteers will get to work on
them soon in another packing party.
Right now, Operation Interdependence™ is focusing on its holiday goal: to reach
50,000 servicemen and servicewomen by Christmas. They are close to accomplishing
that mission, having put c-ratsTM
in the hands of 30,000 soldiers by press time.
While America’s attention
is drawn toward the work of the military in the Iraq campaign, Lange clarifies
that those soldiers are not the only ones who benefit from O.I..
“We ship to anyone who is away from home right now, regardless of where
they are in the world,” Kathi says. “We’re all thinking about
Iraq, but our soldiers are engaged in operations everywhere. We want to reach
all of them.”
Furthermore, O.I. is not
just a holiday campaign. The organization operates and encourages contributions
throughout the year.
All of the boxes that local O.I. volunteers put together are mailed from the
Francesville Post Office to one of the two ports of departure: San Francisco
or New York. The average postage per box of 50 c-ratsTM
is $30. Covering these costs, says Lange, is one of O.I.’s greatest challenges.
“What we need most
right now is money for postage,” she confirms. “Goods for the c-rats
are always welcome, but it’s shipping that’s our biggest need.”
O.I. recently got a big boost from the Town and Country Women of Pulaski County,
who donated $300 to be used for postage.
Also greatly needed are letters for the troops—the most important part of a c-ratTM—and volunteers for packing parties. Lange was pleased with the turnout of a dozen packers at AdaptaSoft last week, but says she can always use more.
Anyone who would like to contribute time or resources to Operation Interdependence™ can contact Kathi at 574-946-4992 or 219-869-1831. She can also be reached by e-mail at klange@pwrtc.com. Monetary donations can be sent to O.I. at P.O. Box 637 in Francesville, 47946. The AdaptaSoft/Operation Interdependence™ office is located at 106 E. Montgomery St.
“People can still
donate goods to us at any time,” Kathi says. “Right now I have enough
supplies here for about a month, but we always welcome items for the c-ratsTM.”
The Francesville Area Manager has already experienced the payoff of getting
involved in Operation Interdependence™. She has heard back from some grateful
soldiers who have received O.I. c-ratsTM.
From that correspondence, Lange has gleaned the importance of O.I.’s mission.
“It’s not that they’re excited because we’re sending them stuff that they greatly need,” she says. “They’re excited because someone remembered them and cared enough to write a letter. There’s no better boost than to know someone is thinking about you.”
To enjoy this holiday season at home, Americans depend on the men and women who serve their country in foreign campaigns. And for those men and women to look forward to future Christmases in their homes, they depend on the support of their fellow Americans to get them there.
Such service to one another is Interdependence in the truest sense of the word.