Frank Replies

My name is Frank Muller from the Brookings-Harbor Red Shirts in Oregon. Our webmaster, Jack Carson sent me your website and I was very impressed and pleased to see another group of citizens supporting our troops overseas. Our webmaster has put a link to your webpage on our website: www.brookings-harbor-redshirts.org You can go there to see who we are, but in the meanwhile I would just like to say I am proud to be in the same field of helping our troops overseas, as you are.

We are fairly new to all of this, and we are still a work in progress. We have recently applied for our 501-C from the State of Oregon and when we receive their papers we will contact the IRS and get an EIN number. We have no attorneys helping us as none were available. We're kind of shooting in the dark and trying to become a tax-deductible organization for as long as we have our troops in harm's way.

We kind of jelled from a group of about 6 local citizens sitting around wondering how we could show our support for our troops. I had seen an email that we should all wear RED SHIRTS on Fridays to show our support for our troops so that's what we started our doing. I didn't feel that was enough and suggested to our six friends that maybe we could put in a couple of dollars each week and when we got enough money we could buy a phone card or cards and then send it to some of our troops overseas.

Well Diane, I'm sure you're aware of how something like this can snowball, and that's exactly what it did for us. We have probably in our almost 7 months of existence sent about 12,000 dollars of goods to our troops, and spent close to 5,000 dollars in just shipping. I guess there is no other way than to use flat rate boxes, and that's what we do. We have shipped 612 boxes of goods to our troops, mainly food and hygiene items, but we have people who knit scarves, we had a casino donate 850 decks of playing cards, and we constantly try to stay in the public's eye to get more donations. We have one main rule, and that is that 100% of all monies received goes directly to the purchase of items for our troops or for the shipping of those items. We have no facilities, I buy most of the supplies with my own money, and somehow we just get by.

Our main concern like yours is helping to support our troops. We go to anysoldier.com for many of our contacts, and we also get names and addresses of troops overseas from our local post office who has partnered with us in spreading the word about Red Shirts. In our web page, we offer to mentor any group that wants to start in any city, and the benefit is always more support for our troops. So we're on the same page, you're just a few books ahead of us. We would really appreciate any help and any suggestions, Diane. Like I said we are a work in progress and we're constantly learning how to do our job better each week. We average probably somewhere around your minimum, about 100 boxes a month, and our funds are constantly dwindling. But we have vowed to first, wear our red shirts every Friday until all our troops come home , and to continue to help support our troops as long as we can and we have the support. Our town is only about 6,000 people, so our draw is very small, yet our impact on our troops is measurable. We love getting letters and emails back from our soldiers too.

One other thing we do Diane since each package needs a customs form, we pass them out to different businesses and for example we have a real-estate company, we will ask all the members to fill our customs forms and then we have a BLUE PACIFIC REALTY week. We try to gain public interest, and hope that maybe these people will get a note or two back from a soldier and help keep them contributing to our cause. We also keep letters and things going to our local twice a week newspaper to try and keep us in the limelight. We are having an informational booth this summer, which I will pay for, during a four day festival in our town. We hope to raise people's awareness of our troops in need and maybe get a few donations.

We hope someday to run as smoothly as your group, Touch of Home does, and I am truly impressed and extend my congratulations to a group of wonderful people for helping to support our sons and daughters in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bless you and your family Diane, and we would appreciate if you would send us your daughter's address in Iraq. We would like to send her something from our group to show our solidarity and concern for our children.