America Supports You: Organization Flies High for Wounded

By Samantha L. Quigley
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Nov. 30, 2005 - Wounded servicemembers recuperating at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany, look to doctors and nurses for their medical care. For creature comforts, they look to the skies.

Terry Goforth is an American Airlines flight attendant who has been working troop transport flights - military chartered flights on commercial airlines into Kuwait since March 2003. Regular layovers in Frankfurt, Germany, allowed her to visit Landstuhl and learn of the needs of the wounded servicemembers there.

Goforth said she asked volunteers at Landstuhl what the patients might like her to bring from the United States during her weekly stopovers. "They started giving us lists of things, and we started (bringing) things on our trips," she said.

At first, Goforth said, she solicited items needed in small quantities from people she knew, but occasionally the hospital staff would request certain items in bulk. That's when she turned to corporations for help and learned she could do more if she incorporated her organization, which she did a year and a half ago as the U.S. Wounded Soldier Foundation.

The Dallas-based organization has donated about 12 tons of goods to the wounded patients at Landstuhl. The value of the donations so far - both goods and cash - is more than $500,000, she said.

The Landstuhl "wish list" changes based on how many patients are at the hospital, and also depends on the time of year, Goforth said. Winter items such as coats, gloves, hats and fleece throw blankets have made the list as winter approaches, but tennis shoes always have been in demand regardless of the season, she added. Along with the organization assistant directors Missy Bauer and Patti Pearson -- also American Airlines flight attendants - Goforth is planning an event with a local radio station to raise funds to purchase tennis shoes.

The donations mean a lot more than just warm fingers and toes to the servicemembers receiving them.

"They're just so grateful for anything that's given to them," Goforth, the foundation's executive director, said. "They want to know that we actually care about them, that we thank them and that we're supporting them. They just want the American public to support them."

The foundation is planning a "Someone Cares Benefit Concert" in conjunction with the United Service Organizations. The country music concert is scheduled for May in Dallas, and the profits raised will benefit the U.S. Wounded Soldier Foundation and the USO.

"It'll bring awareness to the needs of the wounded and thank them and welcome them home," Goforth said. "We should be behind every single soldier."

Related Sites:

America Supports You [http://www.americasupportsyou.mil/]

U.S. Wounded Soldier Foundation [http://www.uswoundedsoldiers.com/]

_______________________________________________________
NOTE: View the original version of this web page on DefenseLINK,
the official website of the U.S. Department of Defense, at
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Nov2005/20051130_3484.html.

====================================================

Visit the Defense Department's Web site "America Supports You" at http://www.americasupportsyou.mil, that spotlights what Americans are doing in support of U.S. military men and women serving at home and abroad.

====================================================
Visit the Defense Department's Web site for the latest news
and information about America's response to the war against terrorism: "Defend America" at http://www.DefendAmerica.mil.

====================================================

Unsubscribe from or Subscribe to this mailing list:
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/subscribe.html
====================================================