Team,
I hope that everyone had a wonderful Holiday Season and a Happy New Year! We’ve gotten a running start on the 2021 in that we’ve pushed out socks to a record number of units over a seven-day period and have heard from a number of the units that we support. So, all in all, for our first update of the New Year, we’ve got some great things to report!
While everyone continues to talk about the drawdown, there are still a whole bunch of Americans still facing down range. One of the things that we continue to do is to make sure that if there is a unit in harm’s way, we know who they are. For us the challenge is not identifying Marine units but finding Army units. Fortunately, we’ve made a number of friends over the years who are always happy to help us.
After we took our break, I reached out to one of them who is an Army Commander who we had the privilege of helping when he was deployed in Afghanistan. Within 24 hours, we were provided with names, mailing addresses and e-mail addresses for each unit forward.
But information isn’t useful if there isn’t action accompanying it.
Starting last Thursday, we began pushing socks out. Our first shipment was 5,200 pair. Our second was 3,800 pair. This ended our year at 751,000 pair since May of 2011.
But we weren’t done.
This week, we shipped 7,000 pair to make sure that everyone who wanted socks would have them. Socks For Heroes will be at every Military Base in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and East Africa where American troops stand in harm’s way.
We’ve also heard from a number of units forward:
“I am pleased to inform you that we received a shipment from Socks for Heroes today. I want to personally thank you and your family for the support and the sacrifices you have made over the years. Our unit greatly appreciate the shipment and your global contribution to forces deployed aboard. Even the simplest gift is a gesture that means a lot to the men and women deployed here, especially during the holiday season. We will put these socks to good use as we continue to take the fight to the enemy!”
“The socks arrived on Christmas Eve, so we got a great Christmas present. Thank you so much for the support and sending the socks for everyone here. Please pass on our thanks to everyone who donates to and supports the Socks for Heroes program.”
“Apologies for the late response. We have been busy getting people and equipment out of the country, especially prior to the holidays. So, here I am playing catch up on emails. We did receive the box of socks and they were distributed amongst the Marines within our detachment, as well as other Marines that are on our base. We all appreciate the socks, as many of the Marines' socks had holes in them, and many stated they were still wearing socks from boot camp or OCS. I am attempting to get some pictures of us with the socks, but we all live at various places around base, we work in a secured space, so cameras and phones are not allowed. Getting us together outside of work, while I have my phone, with the socks is proving more difficult than I anticipated. I will continue to work that angle, as it is the least, I can do for the awesome socks you sent to us. I hope you had a Merry Christmas and are looking forward to the New Year.”
“Once again thank you for the socks. We received them today and everyone raves about the quality. We, as service members, cannot thank you enough for your continued support for our deployed personnel. Have a great day.”
All told, we pushed 16,000 pair out, making our total 758,000 pair.
The socks are bringing smiles to the faces of Americans far from home.
It’s a great start for the New Year.
Thanks to all of you who enable us to continue our mission.
We can always use your help. We anticipate that the drawdowns aren’t going to continue, but instead, will begin to go in the other direction again. If this is the case, we’re going to have to step our game.
If you haven’t made a donation in a while, we hope that you will take a moment to go to http://socks4heroes.com today. If you can forward our message to anyone and everyone you know who supports our military to help us spread the word, we’d appreciate it.
Thanks for joining us in our position in this fight!
Jim Hogan
In memory of our son, LCPL Donald Hogan
Posthumously awarded the Navy Cross
KIA 8/26/2009 Nawa, Afghanistan
We honor his memory by caring for Americans wherever they serve in harm’s way