A phone call to Mom, director of a Canterbury School campus, snowballs into a team effort to help troops.
By MARY JANE PARK
Published May 26, 2004
ST. PETERSBURG - Operation Care Package, they called it.
With military precision Saturday morning, volunteers packed 100 boxes with supplies for troops in Baghdad under the command of U.S. Army Capt. Brian Herzik.
They raised more than $4,000 in roughly a month to purchase powdered Gatorade, trail mix, deodorant, sunscreen, beef jerky, insect repellent, lip balm and telephone cards to those in the Army's Charlie Battery, 1st Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery, 1st Cavalry Division.
Students from the prekindergarten through fifth-grade classes at the Hough campus of the Canterbury School of Florida wrote personalized letters to the soldiers.
The mission arose after Jan Herzik told friends how concerned she was for her son's safety.
Brian Herzik, 30, was deployed to Baghdad in early April. A few days later, he was involved in intense conflict in Sadr City.
The headline in the St. Petersburg Times on April 5 read: "8 U.S. soldiers killed in vast Shiite revolt."
At the word of "Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical young Shiite cleric," the newspaper reported, "thousands of disciples, wearing green headbands and carrying automatic rifles, stormed into the streets of several cities and set off the most widespread mayhem since the spasm of looting and arson immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein."
Two of the dead soldiers, Spc. Casey Sheehan of Vacaville, Calif., 24, and Cpl. Forest Jostes, 21, of Albion, Ill., were under Brian Herzik's command, "and he was trying to rescue the other soldiers," Jan Herzik said.
On Thursday of that week, Brian Herzik called his mother at the lower campus of Canterbury School, where she is director.
Over and over, Mrs. Herzik said, she told Brian's story. People wanted to do something for Capt. Herzik and his troops, but what?
"My men need phone cards," he had told her. And Gatorade and sunscreen in the punishing heat.
Enter Colleen Russo, who organized a field operation of her own.
Mrs. Russo and Mrs. Herzik are past presidents of the Junior League of St. Petersburg. Mrs. Russo went to the league first. Members gave her $700 in donations when she told Brian's story at the April meeting, and she wrote letters to other past presidents, who also contributed.
Members of the downtown St. Petersburg Rotary Club gave money, and Rotarian Bruce Watters, a jeweler, donated items for a fundraising sale. Friends told their families and more friends. Schoolchildren collected goods and wrote letters. Several Sunday school classes and other members of First Presbyterian Church joined in. Tony McCoy, who owns a UPS store in Seminole, donated large boxes and packing materials. St. Pete's Famous Italian Ice gave smaller boxes.
Mrs. Herzik's husband, Dave, printed individual letters to the soldiers. Their daughter Angie helped other volunteers assemble the parcels Saturday morning at St. Thomas' Episcopal Church.
Everywhere they turned, Mrs. Herzik said, people wanted to help.
As late as Friday night, she was in a Big Lots store purchasing every package of a particular brand of sunscreen. Another shopper asked her about the quantity. Mrs. Herzik told her about Operation Care Package, and the woman dug into her purse and gave her cash.
It went to buy a touch of home for the Charlie Battery, which should receive the packages in about 10 days.
