Tis’ the season for giving back to the Wounded Warriors
Around the holidays the school wants to give back, to show how much the students and faculty at WJPS care. One of the many things that the community takes part in is sending letters to injured service members. The letters are supposed to hold nice meaningful messages to raise the spirits of the soldiers. Photo by Samantha Aversano.
by Aja Landolfi, staff reporter
Every year around the holidays, the school likes to give back to the community from the annual food drive, to toys-for-tots, and many more. Along with these charitable donations, the school has entered its second year of writing letters to the Wounded Warriors.
According to the Wounded Warrior Project’s website, their mission is to raise awareness and to enlist the public’s aid to help the injured service members. They also provide unique and direct programs to aid the individual injuries of the servicemen and women.
“I think it’s the least we could do for them because they risked their lives to fight for us,” freshman Ivana Pitino said.
Pupil Accounting Secretary Ms. Arroyo brought the letter writing to school two years ago, when she met a local fire chief at Stewart Manor. This makes delivering the cards easier since the cards used to get returned because they weren’t individually addressed. Now instead of having to worry about the cards being returned they are all personally hand delivered by the firehouse to the veterans during the first week of December. This means that all of the cards reach a veteran that they were written for.
“They’re so nice. I put ‘if you were here I would hug you.’ They must be missing their families because it’s around the holiday time. I wish we could send them presents,” senior Daria Lee said.
This year 550 cards were written by the students. Even though students were only asked to write messages for Happy Holiday’s, many students went above and beyond this and wrote much more that came from the heart.
“This is just a small task for us but it brings a smile to the face of someone who is alone in a hospital bed. I am so proud of our students for a job well done,” Ms. Arroyo said.