WASHINGTON, D.C. — Jayla Lane hunched over the nearly blank sheet of paper in the D.C. Armory, pondering how she should begin.
“Just make them feel good about themselves, you know?” the IU junior told her friend, senior LaTonja Anderson. “Make them happy, you know?”
Their letters would be stacked on top of toiletries, hand-knit scarves, protein bars and other items in Operation Gratitude packages for Armed Services personnel deployed overseas, first responders and returning veterans.
Lane put pen to paper.
“To: My Hero,” she began.
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National Day of Service was meant to mark coinciding celebrations of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Inauguration Day by encouraging community service.
In Washington, D.C., this celebration took several forms. On the National Mall, organizations encouraged community service pledges and distributed information. And at the Armory, Points of Light and Target sponsored Unite America in Service.
“This is kind of a taste of service, so to speak,” Points of Light President of Programs Delores Morton said.
Volunteers entered the Armory in shifts and moved through lines in the large multipurpose room. Each time they passed through a line, they were given a box with several clear makeup cases. Each case was filled with donated items — hand sanitizer, cleansing cloths, toothpaste — and handed to more volunteers at the end of the line. The bags were added to letters and other items placed in the Operation Gratitude packages.
The day’s goal was 100,000 kits, Morton said. Volunteers were lined up around the block over an hour before the event’s 9 a.m. start time, and she was confident they’d meet their ultimate goal.
“Dr. King said everybody can be great because everybody can serve,” Morton said. “So we want people to feel like no matter who you are, what walk of life you are from, if you are in the one percent or if you are in the 99 percent, you have something to do, and all you have to do is show up and volunteer.”
Lane and Anderson are members of the IU Multicultural Pre-law Society and traveled to Washington with members of the Black Law Students’ Association’s Maurer School of Law Chapter for the inauguration.
Volunteering just felt good, Lane said. The joint holidays encouraged the group to get involved.
“African Americans have a sense of self-worth, self-pride with Obama being reelected,” junior Leighton Johnson said. “It gives you a little more faith in America.”
As Johnson, Lane and Anderson moved through the line, they listened to testimonies from soldiers who’d received care packages like theirs from strangers.
“That kit will become one stationed on our assembly line,” Operation Gratitude Founder Carolyn Blashek said. “So instead of having to put in seven separate items, somebody can put in that
one kit.”
The packages are Blashek’s brainchild and a means for volunteers to remind troops that someone is thinking of them. She hopes to have sent one million of them by December. Letters are particularly important.
“Letters, at the end of the day — that’s what they keep,” Blashek said. “That sends the real message. So it really is a critical part of the package. When we assemble those, the letters go on the very top.”
***
On the floor, Lane was finishing her letter. She’d fretted over spelling and filled the bottom half of the page with a picture of the American Flag.
“I believe in you and thank you every day,” she wrote.
She encouraged her anonymous hero to keep going.
“I feel good,” Lane said. “I feel like I’m helping make a difference. Maybe it obviously doesn’t look significant, but the letter that I wrote is gonna make somebody feel really good about themselves, and that makes me feel good about myself.”
