This Veterans Day

This Veterans Day, if you're in the DC-area, join Amy Grant and the American Red Cross for a morning of service. If you're not in the DC-area, you can still help!

For the past few years, the American Red Cross -- along with partner, Pitney Bowes, has gathered, screened, sorted, and delivered millions of holiday cards to our men and women in the armed forces. Here's what the Red Cross press release has to say about this event:

In this season of hope and giving, the American Red Cross and Pitney Bowes Inc. have joined forces again to invite the public to “send a touch of home” to United States service members and veterans across the country and abroad through the Holiday Mail for Heroes campaign.

Now in its third year, the Holiday Mail for Heroes program provides Americans with the opportunity to extend holiday greetings and thanks to service members and veterans. Last year the program received more than 1.4 million cards for military men and women, their families and veterans.

The public can participate in the campaign by sending holiday cards with personal messages to a special post office box from Monday, November 2 through Monday, December 7. The Red Cross and Pitney Bowes will then screen cards for hazardous materials, sort and package the cards, and deliver them to military bases and hospitals, veteran’s hospitals and other locations in the U.S. and abroad during the holidays. [...]

Joining the campaign this year as spokesperson is contemporary music artist and American Red Cross celebrity cabinet member Amy Grant. [...]

Grant will celebrate the campaign’s official launch with the Red Cross and Pitney Bowes at a Veteran’s Day event in Washington where she will join military and public guests in signing holiday cards for the program.

Jill and I attended both efforts last year: we signed cards in the tent in front of the historic Red Cross, then we joined then-First Lady Mrs. Bush for an afternoon of sorting the holiday cards that had been received. [[I'm not sure where our photos are, but we were at the table kitty-corner to the First Lady's table. There's a pic on the ARC website that might have us barely in the corner, lol.]]

If you're not in the area, or can't make it down, you can still send cards now through December 7th. Holiday cards should be addressed and sent to:

Holiday Mail for Heroes
P.O. Box 5456
Capitol Heights, MD 20791-5456.

• Please be sure to affix adequate postage.
• Cards must be received no later than December 7. Cards received after this date will be returned to senders.
• For reasons of processing and safety, participants are asked to refrain from sending “care packages,” monetary gifts, using glitter or including any inserts with the cards.

For more information and card requirements, please visit www.redcross.org/holidaymail.