Bayside High sends gifts to women troops

While there may be an upside to being one of 120 women soldiers among a contingent of 14,000 men it is certainly not access to toiletries and feminine product lines.
At least this was the surprising discovery by Bayside High students when their American Humanities class teacher Steve Goodman encouraged them to correspond with troops stationed in Iraq. Over a period of several months, the students developed a rapport with the soldiers, many of whom were high school students themselves not so long ago.
The correspondence was by email with the students often knowing little more than the first name of the soldiers they contacted. Even so, deep bonds developed when it became apparent that the soldiers who are serving their nation not only have the same hopes and dreams of young Americans living safely at home, but also the same everyday needs. Because the military in Iraq is so overwhelmingly male, the women there had great difficulty in obtaining everyday items like chapsticks, hair combs, sunblock, body lotions and shampoo.
It occurred to the students that they could solve their problem. With the support of the school principal Judith Tarlo, coordinator of student activities, Michelle Barretta was able to get approval for a humanitarian project to help these women soldiers through the holidays. Students, faculty, parents and friends immediately took up the challenge.
What began as a school project quickly spread to the wider community when a United Parcel Service (UPS) store in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn volunteered over $500 worth of packing materials.
It did not stop there. Dave Velkas, a mathematics instructor at Bayside High contacted his Masonic Lodge, and before long Velkas and his fellow lodge brothers were making daily drop-offs of shopping bags full of needed products.
A student in Goodman's Humanities class, Anna Trub, enlisted her mother to persuade her supervisor in Dermatology Faculty Practice at The Mount Sinai Medical Center to arrange for a carload of feminine dermatological needs such as sunscreen, body lotions, Neutrogena, and hair rinses.
The gifts were shipped out on Tuesday, December 12 and will be delivered in time for Christmas to the troops in an Army truck decorated with a banner especially made by the students of Bayside High School.