Letter to Editor: Sharpee: Community kindness brightens Christmas for veterans

I want to thank all the members of VFW Post 4726 and Auxiliary and all the members of the community that made this year’s Angel Tree for Veterans a huge success. The Auxiliary contacted Helping Hand and Palisade Manor in Garretson to get lists of items the Veterans wanted. The items requested were placed on tags on the Angel Tree at the VFW Post. Within two days, all the tags had been taken from the tree. We had 30 Veterans from Helping Hand, and seven from Palisade Manor.

All the presents were wrapped and returned to the Post, and the Auxiliary sorted out all the gifts and put them into large bags to be taken to the Veterans. Some of the presents included watches, shoes, deodorant, shampoo, soap, cans of nuts, a gift card to Sunshine, and many, many other gifts the Veterans asked for. The gifts were delivered to the Vets Sunday, Dec 17.

For many of the Veterans, these will be the only gifts they will get for Christmas. One gentleman said he was going to wait till Christmas to open his presents. Another Vet got shoes and asked Sandy, event coordinator at Helping Hand, if she had something to do with that. I told him there is a Santa that knows everything that people need. Several of the Veterans got tears in their eyes while opening their gifts.

The VFW and Auxiliary could not have done all of this without the support of our patrons and the Brandon community. A huge thank you. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all that helped.

Tom Sharpee

Brandon VFW Post 4725