18:05:37

Maria Fleshren, my beautician, has started working with injured soldiers at Jefferson Barracks Medical Center just South of St. Louis, MO & is collecting things the wounded guys need such as:

-  Gently used clothes to wear while being treated in the hospital – casual stuff

-  Gently used better clothing for possible job interviews.

This includes all kinds of things, pants, shirts, jackets, coats, socks, robes, even shoes, underwear must be new. 

-  The guys also need personal supplies, such as toothpaste, disposable razors, shaving cream, tooth brushes and the like – particularly deodorant, for some reason.

You can bring the stuff to her shop – Rain Tree Salon-  at 219 S. Illinois Street in Belleville, IL across from the downtown YMCA & Maria will take it over or you can take it yourself – building 50 is where they do the sorting.  She says the person in the lobby will call somebody to come and take the stuff to where the sorting occurs.  Map below.

**If you aren’t from the St Louis area, you can follow the links below to find VA medical centers all over the US.

Maria is also teaching a ceramics class and might be doing haircuts. She spends most of her time with the guys with spinal cord injuries. If you are interested in volunteering personally, you can drop by Bldg 50 or call Volunteer Services and ask what they need done.  But especially, since GIs are not paid much, they really need all kinds of personal things – their pay is usually spent in supporting their families.

Here’s the link to the volunteer page  http://www.stlouis.va.gov/giving/index.asp  You can also donate cash. 

Here’s a link to a list of suggested things to donate and a form to fill out that you can use for tax deductions, if you want.  Maria doesn’t bother with the form so you would have to take things yourself if you want the form for your tax return. They will sometimes even accept mini refrigerators, CD players and other things, but call first for things like that to make sure there is a current need.    http://www.stlouis.va.gov/giving/Suggested_Donations.asp

And here’s a link to a map of the Jeff Barracks grounds showing Building #50 where Volunteer Services are located and donations accepted. 

http://www.stlouis.va.gov/images/JBGroundsMap.pdf

If you or your male family members need an incentive to clean out the closet – here’s a way to help out the guys who would really appreciate their clothes in good shape.  All sizes welcome.  You never know what Good Will does with clothing you give them – I know some of it goes straight to the rag buyers.   

Feel free to pass this along to anybody you think might help out. 

NB  Maria says they don’t need women’s clothing.  I think there are local women’s groups who take care of that.

Little nugget of trivia:  Lt. Robert E. Lee was stationed at the Jefferson Barracks before the Civil War where he functioned as an engineer doing surveys of the Mississippi River and other such things.

Here’s an arial showing the grounds of the Jefferson Barracks compound on the West bank of the Mississippi.

There is a big military cemetary there containing graves back to before the Civil War.

http://wikimapia.org/#lat=38.4868861&lon=-90.2662468&z=15&l=0&m=a&v=2

And here’s a link to the Fisher House that is going to be for the families of soldiers being treated at Jeff Barracks.

http://www.fisherhouseinstl.org/

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Tags: Donate, donations, Jefferson Barracks, Military, Missouri, soldiers, VA, wounded

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 at 5:27 pm by Julia   and is filed under Belleville, Miitary, PSA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.