8th Annual Adopt-A-Sailor Christmas Dinner

For the 8th year McHenry Masonic Lodge No. 158 – A.F.&A.M. hosted a dinner on Christmas Day for fifty-five sailors through the Navy’s Adopt-a-Sailor program.  Donations from other local Lodges and area businesses helped the Masons treat the sailors, twenty-four men and thirty-one women from Great Lakes Recruit Training Command-Division 036, to free movies and refreshments at the McHenry Theater, free phone calls home, Christmas photos and cards for loved ones and a full Christmas dinner with all the trimmings.  This year product donations also allowed us to provide cosmetics for the women sailors to use while on liberty.

 

 

Worshipful Master Robert Backer said   "We would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to the 55 sailors who spent their Christmas Day with us. We realize it was a different way to spent your holiday but you brought so much enjoyment to the members of our Lodge. We all enjoyed talking with you, watching you have fun in the snow and we appreciated the way you all enjoyed using the phones to call your families and friends. We also would like to say 'Thank You' to the families of these wonderful men and women. We know the holidays can be lonely and long when you are away from home. We hope the home cooked meal, the trip to the movie theater and the few hours away from their daily routine helped make their Christmas a little less lonely. We wish you all--sailors and families-- a very happy, healthy and safe 2011."

 

 

Roland Wood,WPM the chairman of the Sailors Dinner Committee commented "This being seventh year of the event, for me, it continues to be as moving and emotional as the first year we did this...  I believe doing this for as many Sailors as we can, brings out the true meaning of Christmas and giving of oneself for others."

 

 

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