Christmas Gifting for Our Troops

I was honored to be at brother John Graf's special Winter White Wedding reception gathering this past Wednesday to give away one free WWW to a local Pittsburgh area veteran of the Iraqi/Afghanistan wars (see Winter White Wedding details here - http://www.thepriory.com/winterwhite.asp).

With about 60 people in attendance. The Priory had 11 contestant couples, 7 of whom were able to be present and one who was represented by family and friends.

The winners of the wedding drawing were Nicholas Lee Lowery and Jennifer Lynn Redman. Nicholas is a corporal in the Marine Corps who had been deployed to Al Anbar Province in Iraq in 2006. There he had provided protection to convoys as a .50 caliber machine gunner. He is still on active duty and plans to be a career Marine. Jennifer is a student at Robert Morris University and lives in the North Hills.

They could not attend the event because they were traveling to South Carolina to watch Jennifer’s brother graduate from Marine Basic Training on Parris Island.

It was a very emotional and proud event and we'll keep you posted.

Driving home, I thought I'd offer a small Christmas Gifting idea to all of you.

Since most of all of us have so much, I thought you might be interested to spread a little holiday cheer to a few charities that support our troops too.

Instead of the normal gifts you might give friends, consider a donation in the name of your friends to the following charities. Even though it's close to Christmas and several of these organizations are wrapping up their efforts for the holiday, they all can use donations anytime - some will take online donations.

Here are just a few:

Pittsburgh based - http://www.operationtroopappreciation.org/index.php

www.childrenoffallensoldiersrelieffund.org

www.hooah.com

www.operationsanta.info

www.woundedwarriorproject.org

www.uso.org