Updated 01/03/2009 03:41 PM
You can be an "Angel"
ALBANY, N.Y. -- Jeremy Slaybaugh is teaching his friends and neighbors how to be angels. Because the need is great.
"Currently, when I checked yesterday there were close to 800 soldiers who had signed up with Soldier's Angels waiting to be adopted," said Slaybaugh. "The numbers are unbelievable of soldiers who simply feel they've been forgotten. There are a lot of soldiers who could do with just simply receiving a card, just a note saying 'hey, we remember you, we care about you.' Their reactions are humbling."
"Dear Angel, thank you for the hope that you provide," one soldier wrote.
"All I can say is it brought tears to my eyes that American people that I have never met stand behind me and support me even though they have never met me," another wrote.
"I do not mind going back to my unit knowing I am fighting for people like you," said another.
"They are amazed that you or whoever it was, that has done it, has gone out of their way to help when you it takes so little effort," said Slaybaugh. "But to them it's like you handed them gold because for that minute you link them back home. You link them to everything they know and everything they love."
To view our videos, you need to
enable JavaScript. Learn how.
install Adobe Flash 9 or above. Install now.
Then come back here and refresh the page.
It all starts, he says, with a link online.
"First thing you would do is go to their website," said Slaybaugh.
"Where everything from general questions to what you would need to do if you adopted a soldier is spelled out very clearly," said Slaybaugh. "Everything from sending cards to if you can make crafts or blankets."
Your artistic ability doesn't matter. Whether or not you support the war? That doesn't matter either.
"Their main focus is these men and women give you the right, give you the right, give you the ability to believe that way, which is great. Support them," said Slaybaugh. " You may never know that card may have given that soldier the strength to go on one more day, or to encourage one of his buddies and then that buddy encourages another, and encourages another. It's not a small thing by any stretch of the imagination. It's not a small thing."
If you'd like to be a Soldier's Angel go to soldiersangels.org or call (615) 676-0239.
To contact local volunteer Jeremy Slaybaugh, email him at: lslaybau@nycap.rr.com.