Lighting up for Care Packages

Lighting Up for Care Packages
12/14/11

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Leave it to a veteran to find a brand new way to support his fellow service members…

Chris Withrow deployed to Iraq in 2009-2010 as an Army officer and now lives in Southern California after leaving military service last May. This holiday season, he and his wife have put their penchant for amazing Christmas light displays to the work of supporting his brothers and sisters in arms still deploying.

“We’ve always gotten into Christmas displays,” Chris says, “but this year we doubled our efforts.” It’s the second year he has used computer-generated lights, and the display is drawing a lot of attention. That attention is the whole point, as right outside his light-festooned home he has created a collection point for care package supplies that will be donated to Soldiers’ Angels.



Chris’ amazing display uses 1,450 feet of extension cords to power 8,840 lights dancing to five different Christmas songs, drawing visitors from throughout his new hometown. It was recently covered in a local news paper, resulting in a bigger-than-expected jump in donations. Chris expects the rise to continue as word spreads.

Surprisingly, Chris never encountered Soldier’s Angels while on active duty. When he came up with the idea of supporting the troops this way, he reached out to the FRG (Family Readiness Group) coordinator of his old unit for advice on choosing a nonprofit to receive the expected donations. She suggested two different organizations and—after researching Soldier’ Angels online—Chris decided the Angels would be the best fit for his plans.

So far, Chris has collected one large storage bin’s worth of donations and expects to collect much more. Fortunately for his pocket book, he won’t have to ship everything to Soldiers’ Angels. He lives about 1.5 hours from the Pasadena office and hopes to be able to drive everything over there after Christmas.

Thank you to Chris for both his continuing service and his amazing creativity!