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Soldiers Angels Press and Pictures of Events
DefendAmerica News - Article
Mother's Concern Leads
To Charitable Organization
By Kathleen T. Rhem / American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, March 23, 2004 – Patti Patton-Bader likes to call herself "the ordinary mother of an ordinary hero."
When her son, Army Spc. Brandon Varn, was deployed to Iraq last year, Patton-Bader began a letter-writing campaign that has since blossomed into a nonprofit foundation supporting deployed U.S. troops.
Within a few months, Soldiers' Angels went from a mother writing a few extra letters to an Internet community of some 1,500 members, according to the group's Web site.
The group merged with another nonprofit organization, Keystone Soldiers, in February. Today, Soldiers' Angels reaches out to more than 1,700 soldiers deployed "wherever our military raises the Stars and Stripes," the Web site states.
The group sends cards, letters and care packages to deployed troops and to wounded soldiers in three military hospitals. They also support allied troops from the United Kingdom, Poland and Australia who are serving in Iraq.
Staffed entirely by volunteers, the foundation's members use all donations to buy supplies for the service members, according to Kim Scofi, president of "soldier adoptions" for Soldiers' Angels Foundation. The group's motto is: "May no soldier go unloved."
"No soldier deserves to go month after month without a letter from home," Scofi wrote in an e-mail. "No soldier deserves to feel forgotten when he or she has committed to serving our country and defending our liberties."
