What do 1,000 donated t-shirts look like?

We have been very fortunate to connect with the generous folks at the American Cancer Society of Illinois, who have donated over 7,000 of their extra "Relay For Life" t-shirts to us. Here's a picture of about 1,000 of those shirts I recently picked up.

So, what did we do with all those shirts? Lots of wounded soldiers arrive in the Combat Support Hospitals without any of their personal gear. They uniforms are often torn, burned and bloody and have to be cut off of them and discarded. In a situation like that, a clean, dry t-shirt is a pretty nice thing to have.

The ACS t-shirts have gone into our Transitional Backpacks, thousands have gone to the hospitals and to Landstuhl in Germany. Another special destination has been to those amazing ladies at Sew Much Comfort, who turn them into adapative clothing for wear by the wounded. Be sure to read about them at www.sewmuchcomfort.org.

Here's a picture of Barnard, a patient at Landstuhl hospital in Germany. He didn't have any civilian clothing to wear, and dropped in our supply room to ask if Mary Ann had an extra t-shirt. He is flanked here by Samantha and Sabrina. Their dad is a soldier who just deployed to Iraq for the second time, and they and their mom volunteer with Soldier’s Angels in Germany.

Don't forget to drop by www.cancer.org and visit the American Cancer Society. They are some real angels too.