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HILLSBOROUGH: School kids pack goodies for soldiers

Triangle School shows its support

By Andrew Corselli, Staff Writer
   Students at Triangle Elementary School did their part Monday morning to help troops overseas.
   At the second annual Packing Day event, each student was given a plastic bag and instructed to fill it for soldiers with items that ranged from candy and food to personal care items such as hand sanitizer, wipes and lotion.
   ”It’s indescribable,” said Maj. Rob Movshin of the Army National Guard’s Recruiting and Retention Battalion. “Besides the feeling we get that the next generation is supporting us, for them to send things over to the soldiers is beyond words. They’re going to appreciate it more than these kids know. For (the kids) it’s a (school) project (but) it’s really going to affect the soldiers over there to make them realize that someone back home is thinking about them.”
   After each of the 450 bags — one from each student — was packed, they were handed off to the Newark-based group Jersey Cares to get the care packages to the soldiers in Afghanistan.
   ”Jersey Cares is the organization that we partner with and they will come this afternoon, take all these bags, pack them up with their big boxes and send them off,” said Lisa Heisel, principal of Triangle Elementary School. “The goal is to get them there for Valentine’s Day.”
   To support Packing Day, the school held a pair of fundraisers over the past few months. One involved selling pretzels from Philadelphia Pretzel Factory and the other consisted of letting students wear pajamas during classes for a price of $1 per child. Through these efforts the school raised several hundred dollars and used the proceeds at local supermarkets to buy the supplies to send to the troops.
   ”(Shopping at the Pathmark in Hillsborough) was excellent,” Ms. Heisel said. “We ended up spending somewhere around $300. The store was very generous. They collected $100 from their staff and gave us the discounts that were limited. The kids had a great time.
   ”At Pathmark we did a lot of the small personal care items — hand sanitizer, wipes. We didn’t do any food there except for the candy. The ShopRite in Hillsborough allowed us to buy 200 cans of soup and 200 cans of tuna on the Price Plus, where you can only buy four. So the soup was 40 cents apiece and the tuna was 70 cents apiece.”
   Present at Packing Day, which had been rescheduled from Friday morning due to snow, was a handful of soldiers who came out to give thanks and oversee the process. One, Maj. Jonathan Lapidow of the Recruiting and Retention Battalion, graduated from Triangle Elementary “many years ago” and comes to a lot of the school’s events involved with the armed forces.
   ”We have a contact who lives here in Hillsborough, Tom Comyack, who is with the (National) Guard,” said Ms. Heisel. “He has put us in touch with the Somerset Armory and that’s where most of (the soldiers) came from.”
   Needless to say, the soldiers seemed grateful to be getting help from a community known for its generosity and congeniality.
   ”It’s outstanding,” said Maj. Lapidow. “When you’re over there and doing a tough job and you know that you’re getting support back from home it makes it a whole lot easier to do it. Those guys are away from their families for a year while deployed, and doing a job that they might not be happy doing, when they know that they’re getting stuff and these kids are thinking about them it makes the job a lot easier over there.
   ”There’s a lot of New Jersey units still going (overseas), and this is Jersey. I grew up here and I love the support this township has for its military. The committeemen and women and mayor all support the military well, and it’s great. It made me want to stay here. I grew up here and now I live here. It’s a great environment.”
   When all was said and done, the best part of the day, according to third grader Jackie Eschbach, was helping soldiers who are fighting for our freedom.
   ”It’s cool,” she said. “It’s fun packing all the stuff. We do it to thank the soldiers and help them. It feels good to help soldiers overseas.”