Fort Campbell SOS sends S.O.S. for military boots

• Fort Campbell Survivor Outreach Services needs about 7,000 boots to honor fallen service members
• The boots will be displayed at Fort Campbell during Gold Star Week Oct. 27-Nov. 1
• The boots will be displayed with pictures of the fallen in chronological order since 9/11
• The boots will then line the 5K route for the Hero and Remembrance Run, Walk and Roll on Nov. 1

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. – Survivor Outreach Services (SOS) at Fort Campbell is sending out an S.O.S. for your military boots “in any condition.”

Desert boots, jungle boots, cold-weather boots, jump boots, black or brown, from any military service and from any era, new or old – all of them are needed.

Each boot received will represent a fallen service member as part of a display that will be put together by volunteers, hopefully in time for “Gold Star Week,” Oct. 27 to Nov. 1, when Fort Campbell hosts surviving family members for a series of events culminating in the Hero and Remembrance Run, Walk or Roll event.

Formerly called “Run for the Fallen,” the yearly event is upping the ante from honoring Fort Campbell’s fallen soldiers to making a statement about the personal sacrifice of the nearly 7,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who have died in combating terrorism worldwide in the last 13 years.

And it is a natural mission for the people at the SOS program who deal directly, professionally and lovingly with the family members left behind to mourn the loss.

But they need a huge push between now and Oct.1 in order to make the vision a reality. The drive has been going since June, and they currently have about 1,000 boots. The staff and volunteers are hoping a media awareness blitz kicks the effort into high gear.

“And people need to know,” said SOS director Suzy Yates, “we’re not asking for new boots, though we’ll take them. But the way we see it, the dirtier and more worn the boot, the more we want it, because it means that a service member walked in those boots.”

Help wanted

Boots can be mailed into the Army Community Services SOS office located at 2703 Michigan Ave., Fort Campbell, KY 42223 (the old Bank of America location) at Fort Campbell via FedEx or UPS (the building doesn’t get regular mail service) or dropped off at several locations on post, including the USO, Army Community Services (ACS), the Family Readiness Center (FRC) and Backdoor Boutique.

However, while there are several drop-off locations for boots on post, so far there are only two in Clarksville, at Quantico Tactical Supply at 397 Tiny Town Road and Smith’s Tailor Shop at 2855 Fort Campbell Blvd. between Gates 2 and 3.

Gold Star Mother and SOS liaison Sheila Patton believes more businesses specializing in tactical, outdoor and Army surplus gear should be putting out boxes and advertising the effort, and she’s working to make that happen.

“These businesses do a lot of traffic with soldiers and would be a big help if we can get them to participate or donate,” she said.

Patton is also asking for local civic organizations, veterans organizations and Boy and Girl Scout Troops for help in the effort. And while she has a commitment from a company for donations of small flags, she says she needs more.

Paulla Conant of SOS is fielding calls for information from individuals and businesses wanting to volunteer time or services at 270-412-7251.

‘We will do this’

Patton believes wholeheartedly that the Fort Campbell/Clarksville/Hopkinsville/Oak Grove community can come through to make it happen.

“We can do this,” she said. “We will do this.”

Patton, who lost her son, Army Ranger Staff Sgt. James R. Patton, in Iraq in April 2010, has taken personal responsibility to make the mission a success. Since her son’s death, she has channeled her pain into helping other Gold Star families to recover and heal, and she feels a kinship with everyone – whether family member or friend of a fallen service member, who has shared her sense of loss.

And she feels that a visual representation of the sacrifice – more than 6,800 estimated U.S. casualties at present – will drive home for many the message of what this has cost the less than one percent of the nation that has answered the call and actively engaged in the fight.

As the clock ticks toward the deadline of Oct. 1, the SOS volunteers added a new wrinkle to take advantage of the natural competitive spirit of the various Fort Campbell units. The “Boot Wars” challenge has been issued to every brigade and tenant unit on post to gather up the thousands of boots normally thrown away post-deployment or after months of hard use in training.

The winning unit gets the use of Fort Campbell’s Joe Swing Recreation Area free for a day; but for most soldiers and units, bragging rights trump even that incentive.

And the call-out is going even beyond the local area, with boots being sent in from Missouri, Texas, California and elsewhere.

But getting another 6,000 boots – 3,000 pairs – is a tall order in a short time.

Boots and beyond

The reason for the Oct. 1 deadline, weeks in advance of Gold Star Week later in the month, is because of the additional labor that will go into the display.

Not that donations won’t be accepted past Oct. 1 – they will be, said Yates – but it will take time for volunteers to prep the boots for display, lacing them up and tying them as a soldier would wear them, with a water bottle inserted to hold the shape, and a small American flag inserted. Each boot will be then be personalized with a picture of the fallen service member, with their full name and rank, date of death and place of death annotated on every single boot, according to volunteer Jennifer Lawless.

Multiple boots donated on behalf of a single service member by family and friends will be tied together for display purposes.

Together with Patton, Lawless was busy on Wednesday working on the project in a room full of boxes of boots at the SOS office. This particular project will call for many more volunteers, especially on Gold Star Week when the boots will be displayed at a to-be-determined location, and then placed out later along a to-be-determined 5K route for the Run, Walk or Roll event.

The boots will be lined up in chronological order from 2001 to present to make individual memorials easier to find.

“During Gold Star Week,” said Lawless, “there will be opportunities for family, friends and fellow soldiers to personalize the boots with mementos like unit coins, pins, pictures or other items. At the end of the week, when the boots go into storage, anything that can fit into a zip-lock bag will be kept with the boot for next year’s event.”

“There will be a special day only for Gold Star family members to personalize their service member’s display.”

And the donation of the boots is a permanent donation, said Yates, and people should not expect to get them back.

“We will store these permanently in large plastic containers,” she said, “to be reused every year.”

‘Secondary loss’

The boot drive is the first time SOS has opened the program to volunteers because of Yates’s desire to maintain the privacy of surviving families, of whom she says she is often “over-protective.”

But the effort has opened up a renewed and enlarged awareness of the program and has had secondary effects Yates didn’t anticipate.

“Through this boot drive,” said Yates, “we have really given the Fort Campbell community a chance to give back, so it’s not just our surviving family members like Sheila helping us, but a lot of volunteers through the units coming in.

“For me, the most humbling part of the boot drive is the amount of people – active duty soldiers and veterans – coming in with boots and the stories of loss they’re bringing in with them.

“That sense of loss goes beyond our families, to the battle buddies and fellow soldiers. So we’re actually seeing what I call ‘secondary loss’ in that wider circle of friends who are sharing with us. What a great way for our community to come together and heal.”

Personal touch

The idea for the boot display did not originate with Fort Campbell, but rather two years ago with Tripler Army Medical Center Fisher House in Hawaii, which hosts its Run for the Fallen on Sept. 6.

To see what the effort looks like and how the boots will be decorated, visit the Tripler Fisher House Facebook page.

Fort Hood and Fort Campbell are each replicating the effort this year for their runs on Nov. 1.

While details are being worked out for the run route and for a registration site, those wanting to participate in the Run, Walk and Roll event are urged to watch the Fort Campbell MWR Facebook page for further details. There will be no cost for registration, but organizers need to have an idea of numbers for logistics purposes.

Both Yates and Patton stress that the effort is not meant to elicit sadness, but to be a celebration of the lives of those who willingly volunteered to serve – many of them doing so on multiple occasions knowing full well the risks – and a chance for families, friends and fellow service members of all branches of service to meet and share their stories in an atmosphere of healing and camaraderie.

But it also a chance for members of the public to put names and faces to the cost of war that no list of numbers can ever convey.

Philip Grey, 245-0719

Military affairs reporter

philipgrey@theleafchronicle.com

Twitter: @PhilipGrey_Leaf

Survivor’s Outreach Services Boot Drive

• For more information, email Fort CampbellSOSBootDrive@yahoo.com

• Boots can be dropped off on post at the Fort Campbell USO, Army Community Services (ACS), the Family Readiness Center (FRC) and Backdoor Boutique.

• Off-post, drop off boots at Quantico Tactical Supply, 397 Tiny Town Road, and Smith’s Tailor Shop, 2855 Fort Campbell Blvd.

• Mail boots by Fedex or UPS to: ACS SOS, 2703 Michigan Ave., Fort Campbell, KY 42223