FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. -- The Sabalauski Air Assault School is spreading holiday cheer this season by sponsoring both a canned food and toy drive to benefit the local community.
The food drive returned for the second year in a row at the request of the school's instructors, Air Assault School Commander Capt. Michael Finch said. So far, three classes have helped fill multiple tough boxes full of canned food.
"I called the food pantry," Finch said. "They said that they were running out of food before Thanksgiving and were trying to build the holiday meals."
Finch estimates the Air School School donated as many as 450 cans to the Liberty Chapel food closet prior to Thanksgiving, which in turn helped the chapel's staff with Operation Helping Hand. As part of this effort, Liberty Chapel staff stocked more than 200 gift bags with food and Commissary gift cards to help military Families make holiday meals.
The Sabalauski Air Assault School food drive was conducted in-house. As an incentive, instructors allowed participants to forego the day's physical training requirement.
"It's not just this time of year either, but you know, it's always good to give back," Finch said. "Same thing with the CFC donations and things like that -- you always like to give back to the organization and help out. That's kind of what we've tried to do here."
Food closets are open throughout the year at several on-post chapels, including Liberty, Soldiers and Community, as well as a smaller one at Memorial.
"We maintain a food locker [at Liberty Chapel], and there is a larger one over at the Soldiers Chapel," said Garrison Chaplain's Office non-commissioned officer in charge Staff Sgt. Mhel Vallejo, in a November interview. "At Soldiers Chapel they also have a variety of items for babies, like diapers and formula."
Donations are received at any of these aforementioned chapels from 9:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. each weekday. Pfc. Jacob Daffron, a chaplain assistant at Liberty Chapel, said food drives organized by Fort Campbell units and organizations meet an important need that is especially evident during the holiday season.
"Whenever one of your battle buddies is down, you have to help bring them back up," he said. "Here at Fort Campbell, we're all battle buddies one way or another. So when one of us is down, we got to help them get back up."
With the success of the canned food drive, Finch also decided to get December's classes, ranging from Air Assault to Rappel Master, involved in a toy drive. While he is still researching and determining which organization will receiving the toys, Finch hopes the event will be something that can become a tradition of sorts at the school. Several years ago, Fort Campbell did something similar where the school's Pathfinder instructors completed a toy jump. Finch is injecting the Air Assault-flavor into the Fort Campbell event, where students from the classes will rappel or fast rope from a helicopter with toys.
"We're going to try to do like a toy fast-rope, or a toy rappel, and basically on the [landing zone], we'll have a Gator at the end of the LZ, so they'll come out of the helicopter with a toy in their pocket or maybe in their assault pack, and as they're running off the LZ, they'll just drop it in the Gator and we'll take it off and donate it," Finch said.
Finch plans to see if Santa Claus is available to man the utility vehicle at the landing zone, as each Soldier comes out of the helicopter with his or her donation. These toy fast-rope or rappel events will be held throughout next week as part of regular training activities. While the toy drive will again be conducted in-house, Finch does not see a problem with individuals dropping by donations at the Air Assault School (6883 Air Assault St.) next week.
"I guess we will accept them, if anybody around the division wants to bring stuff," he said. "We're just going to try it out this year and see what kind of participation we get with the students, and then go from there."
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