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MarineParents.com Newsletter
a Place to Connect & Share™ | |
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Operational Security |
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About Deployment | |
Communications From your Marine, with the USMC, and with other families
Care Packages Tips, tricks and money savers for mailing to YOUR Marine
Bills, taxes, legal issues, injuries, notification from the Marine Corps
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Learning Center:
About Homecoming | |
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Support Our Marines |
Show your support of our Marines and their families by participating in one of our outreach programs:
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New Logos
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With the start of a new year, and the celebration of our 9th anniversary, we are getting a new look!
We look forward to continuing the good works of supporting families and Marines through the many outreach programs of Marine Parents for years to come!
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Veterans Crisis Hotline
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1-800-272-8255
The Veterans Crisis Hotline is a great resource for veterans, active duty military, and their families, and is backed by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Qualified responders are available 24/7 to offer confidential help in times of need.
Learn more here...
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Greetings!
If this is the first edition of the Marine Parents newsletter you have received, WELCOME! If you are a returning reader we are glad you have joined us and thankful for your support.
In This Issue
This is a heartwarming newsletter sharing the many ways that we're supporting one another, and most importantly, our Marines overseas. If you haven't forwarded one of our newsletters recently, this will be the one you want to share with your friends and neighbors.
We're asking for your support to help us send Girl Scout Cookies to Marines deployed to combat zones in Afghanistan. It's a little slice of home.
You'll also read about a group of volunteer seamstresses who are making adapted clothing for our Marines injured overseas.
There also is the story of two Boy Scouts who raised money for MarineParents.com, Inc. as their Eagle Scout projects.
Have you signed the petition in support of Gold Star families through the Family Medical Leave Act? Check out our reminder. You'll also read about random alcohol tests for Marines and sailors; and the Marine Corps Marathon and 10k.
God bless and Semper Fi!  Tracy Della Vecchia Founder and Executive Director MarineParents.com, Inc. |
Cookie Shipping Drive Under Way
| |  We need your help!
For the eighth consecutive year, MarineParents.com is shipping Girl Scout Cookies® to Marines in combat zones!
We have 800 cases - or, 9,600 boxes - of Girl Scout Cookies® arriving in April. To ship the cookies to Marines in Afghanistan war zones, we need to raise $10,120 - and to reach our goal, we need your help. We need to raise the full amount by April 21. The Girl Scouts have kept up their end of the bargain, and now it is time to keep up ours! Click here to read more ... |
 SHOP WEDNESDAY MARCH 14:
GET A FREE CAR MAGNET! Show your support of the military on Friday, and remind others to do the same with this great car ribbon magnet! Red Friday ... It's a Military Thing! Get a FREE Red Friday Ribbon Car Magnet at the EGA Store on Wednesday, March 14, 2012 through midnight Central Standard Time. One free magnet with every order placed online. Limit one free magnet per household. Click here to shop now... |
Volunteers Adapt Clothes for Injured Marines
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 | | MarineParents.com photo Dee Bauer works on adapted shorts during the sewing event March 2. |
Tear-away shorts made
Giving back. Lending a helping hand. Doing their part. It goes by many names, but, at its core, the concept is the same.
On Friday, March 2, 2012, a group of volunteers assembled at Zede's Sewing Studio in Columbia, Missouri, to make adapted clothing - specifically, shorts with Velcro sides for ease of dressing and undressing - for the wounded heroes at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. For Marines injured in combat, the tear-away shorts help them become more self-sufficient on their road to recovery. Click here to read more ... |
A Brief History of Female Marines
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2/7/2012 Marine Corps Photo by LCpl. Chelsea Flowers. Capt. Vernice Armour became a Marine in 1998, America's first female African American combat pilot.
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17,640 at World War II's end
Nearly a year after the United States entered World War II, the United States Marine Corps authorized a Women's Reserve, becoming the last of the services to open its ranks to both genders.
When publically announced in February 1943, the Marines had a goal of 1,000 female officers and 18,000 enlisted volunteers, and by the end of the war in 1945, there were 820 officers and 17,640 enlisted female Marines. These women served in non-combat roles - most in clerical positions, although some were parachute riggers, mechanics, radio operators, welders and more - and none served farther west than Pearl Harbor. Click here to read more ...
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Scouts Support the Marines
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 | Photo courtesy Zachary Vaughn
Zachary Vaughn sits surrounded by the care package items he collected during his Eagle Scout drive. |
Funders earn Eagle rank
Among other Scout-specific laws he must follow, a Boy Scout is "helpful." And helping MarineParents.com, Inc., with its Care Package Project™ led teenagers Zachary Vaughn and Trevor Roskind to attain the Boy Scouts' highest rank, Eagle Scout.
In late summer and early fall of 2011, Zachary and a team of volunteers distributed bags and fliers throughout four Austin, Texas, neighborhoods asking for care package items and monetary donations. A week later, Zachary collected a windfall for MarineParents.com: 1,470 total items weighing 426.7 pounds - and $1,172.57 in monetary donations (which has since increased to $1,207.57). Click here to read more ...
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eMarine Keeps Online Info Secure
| | OpSEC standards apply
 Body armor, night-vision goggles and a clean, well-oiled weapon. Computer, Skype account and a high-speed Internet connection. Just as technological advances on the battlefield can help a Marine stay safe, technological advances in communications can erode that safety.
Keeping Marines safe as they communicate with friends and family half a world away falls to the Corps' World Wide Web warriors - the family readiness officers. Websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube allow a Marine easy access to the world outside the unit, a social networking world that is neither safe nor secure. What you say on those sites is easily and readily available to friends and family - and also to those who would do a Marine harm. Click here to read more ... |
Marine Corps Marathon Sold Out
| |  But you can run the 10k
If you didn't secure your spot in the October 28 Marine Corps Marathon in Arlington, Virginia and Washington D.C., you're not alone - but fear not. You still can enter the 10-kilometer race held the same day, which winds through the nation's capital and ends at the Marine Corps War Memorial in Rosslyn, Virginia.
Registration for the 10k begins April 4 at http://www.marinemarathon.com/Register.htm, so consider getting a group together and running with Team Marine Parents™ to benefit MarineParents.com, Inc., "a place to connect and share"®. Choose a Marine Parents Outreach Program to support, and set your fundraising goal. We suggest a minimum of $300 for individuals or $250 per team participant. Click here to read more ... |
Military Starts Testing Blood Alcohol
| | On-duty personnel affected
 NORFOLK, Va. -- The Navy and Marines said on March 6 they plan to introduce random breath tests of personnel on duty as part of a broader health-and-safety push, a move officials concede will be a tough sell with weary troops after a decade of war.
The U.S. military already randomly tests members of all branches for illegal drug use. But resorting to breath tests-which detect blood alcohol levels from a breath sample-represents a first for military personnel. Click here to read more ...
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Have you signed the petition yet?
| |  It's time to amend the FMLA
MarineParents.com, Inc. and its Gold Star Family Support Group™ need you to sign the petition supporting an amendment to the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) as it affects military members and their families.
The Farley-Kluger Amendment inspired The Senate Bereavement Act of 2011, and it needs your support so that parents of service members who have died are covered by new FMLA regulations.
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We hope this week's edition of our email newsletter has been useful for you and your family. If there are topics you would like us to address, or if you have other suggestions for the newsletter, please contact us.
The banner photo is a 3/7/2012 picture from Marines.mil of Cpl. Theodore Criswell, with 2nd Battalion, 11th Marines, standing guard at a checkpoint in Helmand province, Afghanistan. Criswell, a native of Waukon, Iowa, serves as the vehicle commander and fire team leader during the mission conducted in in order to talk with local Afghans. Photo by Army Sgt. Laura L. Bonano.
MarineParents.com, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) public charity. MarineParents.com, Inc. was founded in January,2003 in response to parents' needs to find information and to have a Place to Connect & Share™ with one another during deployments. Our free online services and connections have expanded to support and educate Marine moms & dads, spouses, families and friends. We've helped 400,000 Marine and recruit families during boot camp, training, active duty and deployments. We've shipped more than 32,000 care packages overseas to our Marines in Iraq Afghanistan, sent 60,000 of prayers and letters to injured Marines and served thousands of meals to Wounded Heroes and their families on both the East and West coasts. You've found a Place to Connect & Share™.
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