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MarineParents.com Newsletter a Place to Connect & Share™ | |
Support for You:
a Place to
Connect & Share™ |
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Learning Center:
Operations Security |
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Learning Center:
About Deployment |
(from your Marine, with the USMC, and with other families)
(tips, tricks and money savers for mailing to YOUR Marine)
(bills, taxes, legal issues, injuries, notification from the Marine Corps)
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Learning Center:
Bootcamp |
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MarineParents.com
Annual National Conference
April 20-22, 2007
St. Louis, Missouri |
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Learning Center:
About Homecoming |
(Tip: While in our store, check in your Marine's unit store for more homecoming shirts!) |
Our Volunteers |
We'd like you to take a moment to meet the volunteers who work several hundred hours a week to make MarineParents.com possible!
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Marine Corps Spirit
T-shirts, Gifts & More |
Show your Marine Corps spirit and pride! Proceeds from sales support MarineParents.com, an IRS approved 501(c)(3) public charity.
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Newsletter Signup |
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Dear Tracy,
If this is the first edition of the MarineParents.com Newsletter you have received, WELCOME! If you are a returning reader we are glad you have joined us. We thank you for your support and hope that we can support you.
Spring brings an opportunity for cleaning out and reaching out! We've been busy at MarineParents.com. In addition to preparing for the April 20-22 Conference in St. Louis, we've been working at supporting our Marines and their families at home. On March 24, we served 100 lunches to families caring for their injured Marines at Bethesda Naval Hospital. On March 31, we shipped 630 care packages and cases of Girl Scout Cookies to Marines in Iraq.
We hope you'll find the articles and links in this week's newsletter helpful and informative. |
Girl Scout Cookies Iraq Bound |
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March 31: The Cookies are on their way to Marines in Iraq!
Thanks to your support and generosity, we've raised over $6000 to ship Girl Scout Cookies to the Marines! With over 50 volunteers on Saturday, March 31, 2007, the cookies along with 499 care packages were shipped to Marines in Iraq.
The Housatonic Girl Scout Council out of Bridgeport, Connecticut donated the 400 cases of cookies to ship to our Marines. This is the third year in a row for this project.
Visit The Care Package Project™ web site, and click the left link called "Slideshows, March 2007" to view a slide show of volunteers preparing the cookies and care packages to send to the Marines in Iraq.
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Beans, Bullets and Bandages |
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CLB2: Logistics battalion keeps beans, bullets, bandages flowing
AL ASAD, Iraq (March 31, 2007) -- Combat Logistics Battalion 2, 2nd Marine Logistics Group (Forward), has settled into their role of supporting Regimental Combat Team 2, 2nd Marine Division.
"Logistics is everything," said Lt. Col. Tyson B. Geisendorff, commanding officer of CLB-2. "We provide horizontal and vertical engineering, 3rd and 4th echelon repairs on all Marine Corps equipment, transportation capabilities and our own security for combat logistics patrols."
"We're giving Iraq back to the Iraqis," he said. "We've got to keep the beans, bullets and Band-Aids flowing so RCT-2 can accomplish the mission and not worry about where the support is coming from."
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New Book: Grace Under Fire |
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Andrew Carroll's New Book now available.
Andrew Carroll is the founder of the Legacy Project, a national, all-volunteer campaign that encourages Americans to seek out and preserve wartime correspondence before these letters are lost or thrown away. He is the editor of three New York Times best-sellers, including War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars (Scribner, 2001), which came out of the Legacy Project and was the basis for the critically acclaimed PBS documentary of the same name.
Andrew Carroll's most recent book Grace Under Fire: Letters of Faith in Times of War, is an inspiring and spiritual collection of wartime letters and e-mails written by U.S. troops and their families during every major conflict in American history.
Mr. Carroll will be a featured author at the 2nd Annual MarineParents.com National Conference, April 20-22. He will be available to autograph books for the public from 2:00 - 4:30 p.m. at the Adam's Mark Hotel on Saturday, April 21, 2007. We invite you to attend this free event open to the public. For more information, see www.MarineParentsConference.com. |
Conference April 20-22, 2007 |
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Time to Register! If you're planning to attend, please register today!
The registration rate of $195 is good through April 12, 2007 and includes all meals and events for this three-day weekend. The rate will go up to $225 on April 13. Take advantage of the savings! Click to Register Now!
This year's conference will be held in St. Louis, Missouri in the beautiful Adam's Mark Hotel at the foot of the Gateway Arch. The conference will be held the weekend of April 20-22, 2007 and includes many guest speakers, breakout sessions, workshops and opportunities to connect and share with one another.
Comments from our 2006 Conference
"This year's conference was really well done. Meeting and talking with the authors and speakers were great. The events were very informative. However, the best part was being with other Marine parents -- people who understand what it's like to have a child in the Corps. My wife and I rarely encounter other military families so this was a great experience for us. Our thanks go to those who organized this year's event. We'll look forward to seeing you next year." --George |
Lunches at Bethesda |
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Supporting Our Families at their Marine's Bedside during combat recovery
BETHESDA, MD, March 24, 2007 - Purple Heart Hero Support™ announced the start of new program bringing support to families of injured Marines at the National Naval Medical Center (NNMC) in Bethesda, MD. Purple Heart Hero Support™, a subsidiary of the non-profit MarineParents.com, will bring a monthly free meal to families and patients at the hospital, providing a much needed service as the hospital cafeteria is closed on the weekends.
"While we can't make our Marines recover faster, knowing we can bring them and their families some comfort and support is incredibly powerful," said Tracy Della Vecchia, founder of MarineParents.com. "Before undertaking this project, we went to the hospital and talked with the Purple Heart families there and made sure we were providing a service that would be needed. I still can't get over the gratitude the families were showing us, when we were trying to thank them for their sacrifice."
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Deployment Communications |
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Communicating with your Marine, with the USMC, and other families during Combat Deployments
Communicating with your Marine and receiving communications from your Marine is a major concern for families of combat deployed Marines. We offer three topics to help you understand what you can expect for communication from your Marine and ways you can communicate with your Marine.
Phone calls, letters, calling cards, and Motomail.us are all methods of communication you'll want to learn about. We suggest two kinds of calling cards and encourage you to use Motomail as one source of "electronic letter writing" to get to your Marine in 24-48 hours.
We'll help you understand if/when you should communicate with the Marine Corps and define the KV Network and Family Readiness Officer (FRO).
Our hallmark service, a Place to Connect & Share™, encourages you to communicate with other families whose Marine is deployed with YOUR Marine.
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Homecoming and Deployments |
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Tools and Resources for Homecoming Planning
We have several battalions preparing for retrograde, or homecoming, from combat zones. This section of the web site offers several tools for you to help prepare for your Marine's homecoming. Many family members have worries and concerns about PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and COSR (Combat Operations Stress Reaction). This section of the web site offers information and resources to help understand these issues as well as a workbook to use in preparation for the emotions of homecoming.
Before Deployment: Locate Your Marine's Unit Information
Every Marine is assigned to a unit or battalion in the Marine Corps. Often, finding information about that particular unit can be challenging. Our database includes virtually every unit in the Marine Corps and includes base locations, current station, phone numbers, the unit FRO (Family Readiness Officer, a contact for family members), and links to the unit's message boards and chat night schedule.
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We hope this week's edition of our email newsletter has been useful for you and your family. If there are topics you would like us to address, or if you have other suggestions for the newsletter, please contact us.
MarineParents.com, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) public charity. MarineParents.com, Inc. was founded in January, 2003 in response to parents' needs to find information and to Connect & Share™ with one another during deployments. Our free online services and connections have expanded to support and educate Marine moms & dads, spouses, families and friends and we're now offering the Annual National Conference in St. Louis, 2007. We've helped over 30,000 Marine and recruit families during bootcamp, training, active duty and deployments. We've shipped thousands of care packages overseas to our Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan and sent thousands of prayers and letters to injured Marines. You've found a Place to Connect & Share™.
God Bless and Semper Fidelis,
Tracy Della Vecchia
Founder and Executive Director MarineParents.com, Inc. |
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