[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 13]
[House]
[Page 18989]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     CHRISTMAS AND THE EMPTY CHAIR

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Poe) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Madam Speaker, Thanksgiving is over and Christmas 
is just around the corner. All throughout America, families will gather 
to celebrate the traditions and festivities, and be together and 
celebrate faith. But there are some American families that won't have 
their entire family with them this year. There will be an empty chair 
at their table. That's because their loved ones serve in the U.S. 
military in lands throughout the world.
  War at Christmas is not new, and this year will be no exception for 
many of our warriors that are still on call, still on duty serving 
America. But there is a way to connect with our troops throughout the 
world, and it's a project that we are involved in in southeast Texas 
through the Red Cross and Operation Interdependence.

                              {time}  1010

  And here's how it works. It's a way of having young school-age 
children connect with troops not only in our war zone, but other places 
in the world where our troops are serving America.
  It started several years ago when I had the opportunity to go see our 
troops in the Middle East about this time of the year. Before I left, 
my staff came up with the idea that maybe I should take some Christmas 
cards and holiday cards to our troops that were serving overseas. And 
so they did all the work and they were able to get schoolteachers to 
get their kids to volunteer to make handmade Christmas cards. I took 
about 6,000 of those handmade cards by third-, fourth-, and fifth-
graders overseas.
  On my way back from the Middle East, I stopped off at the Landstuhl 
military base. That's the place in Germany where our wounded warriors 
are taken before they're brought back to the United States. I 
distributed those cards not only in the Middle East but to our troops, 
and even our NATO troops, at Landstuhl.
  But here is what happened on the plane when I was going overseas--I 
checked a couple of bags, but I took one bag on the plane with me. It 
was a night flight, flying overnight and arriving in the daytime. I 
started going through one of these suitcases that had all of these 
cards in it. I was looking at them, and the person next to me wanted to 
know what I was doing. I told him these were from schoolkids back in 
southeast Texas. He was passing them around. Before I knew it, these 
cards were up and down the aisles in that plane and I could hear 
sobbing and saw tears of emotion from some of the passengers on the 
plane reading those cards from schoolkids connecting with our troops 
overseas.
  When I came back to the Landstuhl military base, some of our troops 
who were wounded opened the cards and wanted the nurses to put the 
cards on the wall. Even NATO troops that were there from foreign 
countries had these cards that were made from American youth.
  Madam Speaker, there's something about a warrior from the United 
States opening up a handmade Christmas card from some kid in the United 
States. At that moment, the darkness of war seems to disappear because 
of the brightness of a child.
  I have had the opportunity to have these cards made by the kids in 
southeast Texas now for 5 years. I say I've had the opportunity. I 
don't do the work. My staff does the work, along with the chambers of 
commerce and all the teachers. Everybody volunteers. When my staff does 
the work, it's not doing it on government hours. It's after work, it's 
on the weekend, planning and getting these cards from throughout 
southeast Texas.
  Every year the number of cards that are either taken or shipped gets 
to be more. The first year, it was 6,000. The next year, 10,000 
Christmas cards were shipped overseas. The third year, 16,000 cards. 
And, Madam Speaker, this year kids from southeast Texas are shipping to 
our troops overseas 35,000 handmade cards, wishing them well, giving 
them Christmas greetings, saying some of the most awesome things that 
only third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders could say.
  So I want to thank those kids. I want to thank Rikki Wheeler and the 
chamber of commerce in Baytown. I want to thank Ross Sterling High 
School, Horace Mann Junior High, Highlands Elementary, and I want to 
thank those teachers. God bless our teachers who work to have these 
kids volunteer to make cards for our volunteers overseas who won't be 
home for Christmas, because there's an empty chair at the Christmas 
table where that soldier, that warrior, that sailor, that airman is not 
there because they're representing the United States in lands far, far 
away.
  And that's just the way it is.

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