Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
The U-Haul truck rolled up to the Sweet Home Post Office Wednesday, Nov. 22, and three people began unloading packages for U.S. Marines stationed in Iraq.
They kept unloading and unloading until some 67 boxes, many of them sizeable, were stacked on the floor and counters of the post office.
They were the result of the local Operation Santa Claus effort, spearheaded by Sidney Marks, mother of Burton Burnside III, 20, who got the idea to send Marines gifts after reading about another Operation Santa campaign in a newspaper shortly after her son left on Sept. 28 for Alasad, in northwestern Iraq.
When her son left, he gave his mom a list of names of his 10 buddies from Camp Pendleton, where they’d trained together.
“I just needed soemthing to keep busy, with him heading off to Iraq,” Marks said.
She initially planned to send them packages, then decided to up the number to 41 as she got more names from Connie Riecke, who is active in the Operation Santa effort in Salem.
Marks started her effort with a small news article in The New Era and an advertisement in another paper, she said. Things didn’t exactly take off in a hurry.
“It started off really slow,” she said. “I didn’t think there was any way we’d be able to do this for 41 guys. It’s amazing how much everybody kicked in. We ended up sending them out to 142 guys.”
Marks says she didn’t have a final figure on the weight of the packages, but Jay Mundt of the Post Office said the total cost was just under $1,200.
Marks said the donations started gaining momentum as people dropped off footballs, games, and “food of all kinds – pretty much everything.” Carla Claasen of the Elks Lodge provided T-shirts signed by local residents.
It turned out to be a much bigger job than Marks anticipated, she said. The Foster plant has been on shortened work weeks, with a nine-day work shutdown that lasted through the Thanksgiving holiday that helped her get the Operation Santa Claus effort completed, she said.
“I don’t know what I would have done (if she’d had to work),” she said.
She and seven others held a wrapping party at Crawfordsville School on Nov. 10, the anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Marine Corps.
She, her husband Brad and Bob Dalton, all employees at the Weyerhaeuser Foster Plant, mailed the goods on Nov. 22.
Marks said she paid $200 of the mailing cost and Weyerhaeuser covered the rest. OK Country Feed and Supply provided the U-haul.
Marks said she was particularly struck by the generosity of people who weren’t in particularly strong financial positions themselves, particularly employees at the Bauman’s and Coburg Weyerhaeuser plants that, she said, are “talking about shutting down.” She said some gave hundreds of dollars worth of items and cash to the effort.
Marks said contributors who contributed at least $100 in money, goods or services were the Weyerhaeuser Foster, Bauman’s and Springfield plants, the Sweet Home Elks Lodge and Elkettes, Figaro’s Pizza of Sweet Home and Lebanon, Advanced Mechanical, Wal-Mart, Rice Logging, OK Country Feed, The New Era, Tell & Sell, the U.S. Post Office, Little Promises, Allstar Auto, American War Mothers, the local chapter of the Red Hat Society, Linda Ames, Marty Mason, Collette Gipson, Stella Nyberg, Reesers and Carla Classen.
She said that the actual mealing took place two weeks later than planned because of the amount of donations organizers received.
Marks said she’s planning to keep the gift-giving going.
“My son will probably be over there three Christmases in a row,” she said. “There are kids over there with no family, no nothing. I want to continue this.”