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Parker Middle shows it cares
30 Mar 2006
Parker Middle shows it cares
By John Ciampa/ Staff Writer
Thursday, March 30, 2006 - Updated: 08:27 AM EST
For awhile, it looked like just another typical Wednesday outside the Parker Middle School.
By 3:30 p.m. the parking lot was mostly clear, leaving the last few students ambling along the edges of the drop-off circle when, suddenly, a black pickup pulled up to the school’s entrance and captured their attention.
A moment later, a student burst through the school doors pushing a large, wheeled pallet stacked high with U.S. Postal Service Priority Mail packages. Out of the truck to meet the student leapt Jim Sereigo-Wareing of NECFOM, taking the one-foot cubed boxes and transferring them onto the black flatbed beside him.
The beefy acronym stands for New England Caring for our Military Inc., a organization founded by Sereigo-Wareing in September 2004 that organizes troop drives to deliver supplies to military personnel stationed abroad.
This shipment will make a beeline to the Middle East region, with most ending up in Iraq.
As Sereigo-Wareing grabbed the last of the boxes, the student wheeled the cart back through the school doors and down the hall toward Daniel Wilczewski’s seventh-grade math class.
Shouts of "Mr. W" echoed through the corridor as the classroom neared. Inside, the room was hive of activity as student paraded around like elves carrying freshly packed presents.
Like Sereigo-Wareing, Wilczewski moved deftly from box to box, making sure each kept stable as a new stack began to tower atop the pallet.
In the middle of the room stood Samantha Mayotte and Lindsey Sargent, two seventh-graders who participated in the drive.
As a class adviser for the project, Mayotte explained how everything came together with equal parts pride and excitement.
"Each homeroom was assigned to a different soldier and was given a list of supplies that they asked for," she said. "Then it was up to each student to bring something in to fill the box."
She opened one up revealing a mixture of sweets, quick-fix food items such as canned tuna and ramen noodles, basic hygiene supplies and a pair of Sports Illustrated magazines.
Initially, students intended to prepare about 40 packages - roughly one per homeroom - to mail overseas, but Mayotte said that the school was flooded with enough request to fill three times that number.
So students tripled their efforts.
"It’s really more than I expected," said Sereigo-Wareing, who will finance shipping of the 10-pound boxes through his foundation. "It’s probably the largest amount I’ve gotten from this age group at one time."
Sereigo-Wareing said that the packages will take about two weeks to reach destinations spread throughout the Iraqi countryside. Inside each package will be a business card requesting that recipients pass it along to a fellow soldier who would like a similar package sent to them.
The cyclical nature of the project ensures its continuance.
Often, troops will send thank you letters back home, which Mayotte said was what got her excited about the idea.
"I thought some of the responses were amazing," she said. "My uncle served in Iraq and when he heard about what we were doing he said ’I would have loved to get something like this.’"
Parker student council officers Brandi House and Lexy Lattimore said that they were amazed at how well each grade coordinated its efforts. In the past, they said, the school participated in donor programs for community organizations such as the Chelmsford Food Pantry, but the global aspect of this project seemed to elicit a stronger response.
"I think this has been our best drive yet," said Lattimore. "They’ve all been important, but this gave us an opportunity to connect with the outside world in a different way."
John Ciampa can be reached a jciampa@cnc.com.
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Kathryn Anastopoulos, 10, puts letters into care packages for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan Tuesday afternoon. (Staff photo by Ellen Bullock) |
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