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MarineParents.com™ Newsletter
In This Issue
Great Gear for Marines and Families
Learning Center: Homecoming
Newsletter Signup
Marine Week is Here!
Dollar Campaign Needs Your Help
Operation Tyler Update
Use MotoMail
Deraps Walk a Huge Success
Send Us Your Pictures!
Meet the Writer
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June 13, 2012
Greetings!

If this is the first edition of the Marine Parents newsletter you have received, WELCOME! If you are a returning reader we are glad you have joined us and thankful for your support.

In This Issue

It's Marine Week 2012 in Cleveland, Ohio, a celebration of community, country and the Corps! MarineParents.com™ staff members will be there this coming weekend, so stop by and see us at our booth. And if we spot you wearing a shirt from our EGA Shop, we might take your picture with Semper Gumby!

Also in this issue: Our 2012 Dollar Campaign is in full swing. We're trying to raise $20,000 to send 1,800 care packages on July 28 to our Marines in Afghanistan combat zones -- one dollar at a time. Read how you can help.

Additionally, we tell you about MotoMail, a safe, fast method to get letters and photos to your Marines overseas. We also have an update on the "smart" home groundbreaking in Jefferson City, Missouri, for paralyzed Marine Cpl Tyler Huffman. And we'll give you a recap on the Leon B. Deraps Memorial Scholarship Walk.

God bless and Semper Fi!
Web Signature

 

 

 

Tracy Della Vecchia

Founder and Executive Director
MarineParents.com™, Inc.
Marine Week Kicks Off in Cleveland
Look for Marine Parents on the weekend

Marine Week is upon us, taking place now through June 17 in Cleveland, Ohio. The full schedule can be found here, so check it out and make plans to attend a celebration of community, country and Corps. All events are free and open to the public.

 

If you're interested in the military in general and the Marine Corps in particular (and if you're reading this, it's a good bet that you are interested), there's a little something for everyone during Marine Week.

 

And if you're around during the weekend, look us up. MarineParents.com™ staff members will be in Cleveland on Friday and Saturday, June 14-16, in the Public Square. We hope to see you there! 

Click here to read more ...

Click here for a Marine Week pocket guide ...

Click here to read the Cleveland Plain Dealer ... 

Two bits, four bits, six bits ...

Dollar Campaign A dollar campaign needs your help

One dollar, coin style: 100 Lincolns, 20 Jeffersons, 10 FDRs, four Washingtons, two Kennedys, one Sacagawea or one Susan B. Anthony.

 

One dollar, greenback style: One Washington.

 

One dollar, MarineParents.com™ style: One more contribution that gets us closer to reaching our goal of $20,000 needed to send 1,800 care packages on July 28 to Marines in Afghanistan.

Operation Tyler House is Growing
MarineParents.com™ photo illustration
Tyler Huffman speaks May 18, 2012, during the groundbreaking for his new home in Jefferson City, Missouri. Tyler, a Marine Corporal, was paralyzed by a sniper's bullet in 2010 in Afghanistan.
Ideas turned into action in Jefferson City

When put into action, it's amazing what the power of an idea can do. Operation Tyler began with just such an idea, and now that idea is tangible -- concrete, even, you might say.

 

Operation Tyler is an effort that is building and outfitting a "smart" home for Marine Cpl. Tyler Huffman and his family in Jefferson City, Missouri. Tyler, a native of central Missouri, was paralyzed from the waist down by a sniper's bullet while on patrol in December 2010 in Afghanistan. The campaign for Tyler is bringing together forces from all over the nation, from Jefferson City-based Signature Homes to the Stephen Siller Tunnels to Towers Foundation to the Gary Sinise Foundation.

 

The official groundbreaking was May 18, and it brought together people from all over.  

MotoMail Reaches Troops in a Hurry
Photos can be sent, too 

Your Marine is deployed in Afghanistan, with all that deployment entails. That can mean your Marine goes days or weeks without Internet service, days or weeks without being able to connect with you, days or weeks without hearing your voice or seeing your face -- and vice versa.

 

The separation seems like forever.

 

You could wait for an infrequent -- and brief -- Internet connection, but you have no way of knowing when that might occur. You could write a letter and send it through U.S. mail, but from 10,000 miles away, it might take up to two weeks for your Marine to receive it; too long, too long from what you're feeling now.

 

Or you could use MotoMail.

Click here to read more ...
Leon Deraps Walk Raises $14,000
More than 450 participate

Biggest ever. Most money raised. A complete success.

 

Those words describe the fourth-annual Leon B. Deraps Memorial Schloarship Walk/Run/Ride held May 5 in Jamestown, Missouri. Sandy Deraps, Leon's mother, said more than 450 people participated in the event, which raised about $14,000 for college scholarships awarded to Jamestown High School students.

 

MarineParents.com™, as part of our Team Marine Parents™ outreach program, participated in the walk and raised $550 through our generous family of donors.

 

Marine LCpl Leon Deraps was killed May 6, 2006, in Al Anbar province, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his Humvee. He was 19. According to the California Democrat newspaper, three of the Marines who were riding with Leon in the Humvee attended this year's event: David Lang, Ed Walsh and Zane "Rowdy" Burney.

 

"I have never seen anything like this," Lang said, according to the Democrat. "To have the amount of support this event has had in such a small community is just unprecedented."

You Oughta Be in (Our) Pictures
Send us photos of you wearing our clothing 

MarineParents.com™ wants you -- to send photos of your family decked out in the apparel you buy from us.

 

It could be your family at graduation, all sporting red 1st Battalion T-shirts (or yellow 2nd Btn. or blue 3rd Btn.). Or maybe your whole family has relationship-specific T-shirts such as "The Few, The Proud the Father of a United States Marine." Or maybe, just maybe, you're wearing a Semper Gumby T-shirt because you're always flexible.

 

So get snapping, and send us photos of you and your family wearing clothing from our EGA Shop at our email address MP@MarineParents.com. You just might wind up in our slideshow!

Click here to see our slideshow ...

Hello, I'm Joe McCune, the writer
Boot Camp Challenge my first big test 

I started here at MarineParents.com™, Inc., on March 1. Like many people, I suspect, I had an appreciation for our military and supported the troops without knowing much about military life in general -- or the Marines

 

in particular. Sure, I had seen the Semper Fi bumper stickers (and "Full Metal Jacket" more times than I can count, especially the first 45 minutes, Pyle), and I knew what that meant, but I didn't know the depth to which it informs the Corps values of courage, honor and commitment.

 

The more I learned about the Corps, the more I wish I had joined the Marines when I was college age-eligible. But at that time I was a smart-aleck who had a problem with authority, definitely not a good mix for me and the Marines. Now at 43, I'm long past being eligible to serve.


However, as someone who works out at least four (read: sometimes three or two) days a week, I figured the next best thing to being a Marine was testing myself in the Boot Camp Challenge.

 
 

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.     

 

The banner photo was taken April 14, 2012. First Lt. Kevin J. Fitzsimmons, a platoon commander serving with Weapons Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, listens to Afghan villagers gathered at a shura. The shura was a public forum for village elders and members of the community to get a chance to talk to Marine and Afghan National Civil Order Police leaders. Photo by Marine LCpl. Tyler Reiriz.

 

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 have "a place to connect and share™" with one another during their Marine's career. Our free online services and connections have expanded to support and educate Marine moms and dads, spouses, families and friends. We've helped 400,000 Marine and recruit families during boot camp, training, active duty and deployments. We've shipped more than 33,000 care packages overseas to our Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan, sent 60,000 prayers and letters to injured Marines and served thousands of meals to wounded heroes and their families on the East and West coasts. You've found "a place to connect and share™."