Photo By Cpl. Khoa Pelczar | A Marine with Combat Logistics Battalion 5, Combat Logistics Regiment 1, 1st Marine...... read more read more
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MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. – “Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see? I see a red bird looking at me…” She began to read the book to a video camera while sitting in front of a U.S. flag.
Like many other parents in the battalion, Lance Cpl. Allie Fazendin, welder, Combat Logistics Battalion 5, Combat Logistics Regiment 1, 1st Marine Logistics Group, recorded herself reading a bedtime story book to her son during an Operation Bedtime Stories event here, March 20.
Prior to the deployment to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, Marines and sailors with CLB-5 got the opportunity to make a recording of them reading a bed time story to their children, as well as recording a message onto a voice chip, which gets put into a teddy bear.
Organized by the battalion’s family readiness officer, Christine Winicki, two different non-profit organizations hosted their programs at the event, Operation Bedtime Stories and a Message from the Heart program, to provide service members with the ability to give their family member a personal gift to help the family remember their service member.
A Message from the Heart program, sponsored by the Lance Cpl. Jonathan W. Collins Foundation, provided the voice chips and offered the children of deploying parents the opportunity to create their own comfort bears to put the voice chips in at nearby Build-a-Bear workshops. The voice chips were prerecorded with messages from the deploying parents.
“This is meant to be a surprise to our Marines and sailors’ family members,” said Winicki. “We’ll send these packages to the families once the Marines and sailors are forward deployed.”
On the other hand, Operation Bedtime Stories is one of many programs sponsored by Operation Help a Hero. This program provided service members with books they could read to their children. But that is not all, the founder of the organization, Cindy Farnum, said they would then mail the books to the families after the departure of the deploying parents, along with the recorded videos of them reading the books.
“I love it. I think it’s really great. It really helps us reach out to our family,” said Fazendin, 23, from Bakersfield, Calif. “This will definitely help my 1-year-old son to remember my face and know what I sound like while I’m gone.”
Lance Cpl. Alejandro Torres, motor transport mechanic for CLB-5 and a soon-to-be father, had the same appreciation to these programs as Fazendin.
“It’s such an awesome program, the greatest thing they have for us right now,” said Torres, 23, from Bronx, N.Y. “My son will be born while I’m deployed in Afghanistan. But the program makes me feel like I’m closer to my family even when I’m not there. I wouldn’t be a stranger to my son when I return because he’d see me reading a bedtime story to him every night. I feel like a piece of me will be with them no matter what.”
| Date Taken: | 03.20.2012 |
| Date Posted: | 03.22.2012 17:10 |
| Story ID: | 85631 |
| Location: | CAMP PENDLETON, CALIFORNIA, US |
| Web Views: | 78 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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