Saying Thank-you to Service Members, Veterans
Americas Adopt A Soldier will hold their Third Annual Christmas Day of “Giving Back”, Thursday Dec. 25 1-5 p.m.at Kilroys, located in the Ravensworth Shopping Center 5236 Port Royal Road, Springfield, according to Mary Keeser, Founder.
We had received several request to hold the event again this this year. In the past Don McIlvaine, owner of Ravensworth Properties, gave back by allowing us to host these annual Care Packings in one of his unoccupied Ravensworth Shopping Center spaces. As the Shopping Center is going under renovation, this option was not available to us this year. We turned to the owner of Kilroys, Phillip (Pip) Thomas, a veteran and consummate supporter of our military family, who without hesitation asked, “when do you want the doors unlocked? Quickly followed by, I’ll make the coffee for everyone.” Keeser expressed her thanks and explained to Pip, in years past we didn’t even have heat at the events, our volunteers dressed warm and were always upbeat.
Pip has opened the doors to Kilroys early on Saturday mornings for years to enable volunteers to marshal up to registration and get a hot cup of coffee before beginning to load up the trucks and move a needy service member or previously homeless veteran into their household.
All of the Kilroy staff has volunteered to work on Dec. 25. The event this year has expanded to include packing Care Packages for deployed service members, accepting thank you letters and cards for veterans in veterans homes and hospitals and accepting, clean gently used or new winter coats for local homeless veterans. We would like to invite the public by to join us in saying, “Thank You” to our Veterans and Deployed Service Members for their Service and Sacrifices.