In recognition of the July 4th holiday, we at decided to dedicate the month of July to our troops and participate in the "Adopt a Soldier" program from www.anysoldier.com. This program (in a nutshell) allows soldiers to post a list of needed personal items, toiletries, snacks, etc. online, hoping that someone will adopt them and send those requested items.
We decided we would ambitiously choose three platoons stationed in Afghanistan, hoping we could collect enough items to satisfy all three platoons' lists. We posted signs and information in our waiting room, handed out lists of items to patients as they left and created an "Adopt a Soldier" event hosted by Gregory Chiropractic on Facebook.
Before we knew it we had folks from as north as Orange County to South Jersey flooding through our door with boxes, upon boxes of goods for our troops. Dr.'s Rauer, Papo, Hindin and DiBella donated dental items, Dr. Greenberg and Dr. Flynn donated eye products. Dr. Levine donated foot supplies. Shop Rite located in Rochelle Park and Pearl River, Stop and Shop located in Nanuet, and Barnes and Noble all donated gift cards. Even some staff members from CVS jumped in with some items to donate and the list goes on. Sr. Marie Murphy worked tirelessly pounding the pavement; knocking on doors to many of the folks mentioned asking for help. You can find a complete list of thank you posts on our "Adopt a Soldier" event page. (http://www.facebook.com/#!/events/180160828780474/ )
Something that initially started as a small effort to support three platoons grew into much more. On Sunday, August 5th Dr. Marc and Karin Leffler, Jeanne Schultz and the Gregory Chiropractic staff converged at the Gregory Chiropractic office armed with empty boxes, packing tape and packing labels. Karin Leffler led us through the day being that she had done this many times before. It took us two full days to sort through all of the items and match them up to the lists supplied by the platoons. We were able to satisfy all three platoons and more. We had enough to "Adopt" 18 more soldiers. When we were done we had 40 boxes that we believe will touch more than 500 soldiers. It's amazing what can happen when we all work together.
On behalf of Gregory Chiropractic and our "Adopted Soldiers" we would like to express our gratitude to each and every person that helped us make this an absolute success. So many folks pulled together, took time, brought donations and each of these efforts collectively made a positive impact and difference in our troops' lives and our own. Thanks.
