Reindl bakes hundred-plus cookies for vets; Columbia Falls junior high kids help

Most people bake dozens of cookies around Christmas. For Janet Reindl, the big bake comes at Valentine’s Day, when she cranks out more than 12 dozen heart-shaped sugar cookies for the veterans at the Montana Veterans Home in Columbia Falls.

Reindl has a soft spot for veterans. Her two children, Andy and Heidi, both enlisted in the Air Force when they graduated from high school in 2005.

Heidi spent six years in the Air Force and is now an assistant physical therapist in Nebraska and Andy is a technical sergeant based in Colorado.

Reindl missed her kids, so she started baking cookies for the veterans at the home about 9 years ago. At first, she frosted them in red, white and blue frosting all by herself.

“I wanted to honor the vets and my kids,” she said.

But in recent years, she got the junior high student’s from Paula Koch’s advanced studies class involved.

Reindl provides them with the cookies and the frosting and they do the rest.

It takes a few class periods to get them all decorated. Then Reindl delivers them to the Vets Home, where they’ve become a bit of a tradition.

“The veterans and the staff really like them,” Reindl said. “They taste really good. The secret? A little almond flavoring in the cookies.”