Operation Gratitude: How One Nonprofit Is Making This Holiday Season Special for Military Members

By Michael Karlis

Reporting Texas

 

SAN ANTONIO – Brennan Avants was completing his final tour in Iraq when a care package from nonprofit Operation Gratitude arrived at his base. 

The package, a medium-sized unassuming white box emblazoned with a red, white, and blue Operation Gratitude logo, contained essentials and goodies, including shampoo, spices to help make MRE’s bearable and card games to keep his mind occupied. 

“It just meant so much at the time,” Avants recalled. 

After 21 years in the U.S. Army as an artillery gunner, Avants wanted to give back to the community when he retired in 2017. He helped with disaster response in Kerrville and worked with a couple other nonprofits before deciding to team up with the group that had sent him that care package all those years ago. 

Last week, Avants was one of the hundreds of volunteers at Operation Gratitude’s annual “Recruit Grade Care Package” event at San Antonio’s Boeing Center at Tech Port. There, 5,000 care packages, similar to the one Avants received while on tour in Iraq, were assembled for recent graduates of Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, which trains recruits for service in the Air Force and Space Force. 

“They’re just the basic goodies and stuff so when they’re sitting on a bus, an airplane or an airport waiting to transition to their next assignment,” Avants said of the care packages. “It’s just something to occupy them while they’re in transit and a way to say thank you.”

The items in the care packages, which range from handwritten letters to Slim Jims and crackers, were donated by private citizens as well as large corporations including Boeing, CSX and Disney. 

Indeed, 85% of money donated to Operation Gratitude goes directly into program services, with the group receiving a “4-star rating” from Charity Navigator, the nation’s largest and most-utilized evaluator of nonprofits, according to Operation Gratidude’s website. 

Operation Gratitude was started in 2003 by Carolyn Blashek after she met a soldier about to deploy to Iraq while working as a USO officer in Los Angeles. The soldier had lost everything, including his wife, during his last tour, according to Avants. 

That interaction led Blashnek to establish Operation Gratitude so that every current and former U.S. service member knew that someone cared about them, regardless of their circumstances. 

Since then, Operation Gratitude has sent out nearly 4 million packages to U.S. service members across the globe, executive director Meg Barron said. 

“COVID kicked out butts and put us back a few steps, but we’re getting back into the swing of things and getting things back to where they were,” Barron said. 

During the pandemic, Operation Gratitude had to wind down its donation drives, and volunteers were harder to come by, Barron said. Now, the nonprofit is on track to send out its 5 millionth care package within the next few months, she said. 

The volunteers who come out and volunteer their time during Operation Gratitude’s care package drive coe from all walks of life. 

During the “Recruit Grad Care Package event” in San Antonio this week, about 30 of the workers on the  care package assembly line were workers from Kohl’s Alamo City stores. 

They were working alongside 2024 Miss San Antonio Tirzah Polk, a medical student at the University of the Incarnate Word School of Osteopathic Medicine, and retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Leslie Desander. 

“(Barron) and I are childhood friends and went to the same elementary school here in San Antonio,” Desander said. “We’ve known each other since we were seven. So, when she became executive director of Operation Gratitude, she told me to come on over here, and now I volunteer about every three months when they have events.”

Like Avants, Desander remembers getting packages from the nonprofit during her tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“It was just wonderful knowing that people think about us,” Desander said of receiving her first care package. “When you’re deployed, you get what you get. But when I got my box, it’s just special.”

Those interested in volunteering with Operation Gratitude can find more information by visiting operationgratitude.com.