Group celebrates 10 years supplying troops with reading material

“GQ,” “Outside” and “Men’s Fitness” are among the most popular publication titles that fill flat-rate shipping boxes at Magazines for Troops’ Lakeside headquarters.

Volunteer Donna Chase can stuff as many as 40 periodicals in a box, which are often topped with a crayon drawing from local students during the holiday season, before they make their way to far-flung destinations.

For their military recipients, the magazines are more than a simple source of entertainment in a spartan post. Within those glossy pages are reminders of home and proof that they’re not forgotten. Magazines for Troops sends boxes of periodicals to American soldiers deployed around the world at no charge to any military service member who requests one. The nonprofit currently serves between 50 and 100 units, but peaked at one time with 270.

A soldier in the 82nd Airborne Division stationed in Kabul, Afghanistan, said via email that the magazines “help me feel connected to my family and friends back home.

“When the box arrived I was so excited! I didn’t know my wife signed us up for Magazines for Troops, so it was an even better surprise,” he wrote. “The organization packed the box full of magazines so there was something for everyone to enjoy in the box.”

It’s these types of reactions that have kept the volunteers behind the magazine mission going strong for the past decade. Volunteers include Chase, Patty Faloon, Sunnie La Vigne, Caroline Casteel and Esther Gunlock.

Magazines for Troops was born in 2007 once Chase learned of the need for overseas reading materials after she began sending care packages to soldiers through the Adopt-A-Soldier program.

“After some time it became known that they needed reading material, so I just thought, well, I’ll just put a few [donation] boxes at the store if they’ll let me,” she said. “I figured people would clear out their coffee table [of magazines] and that would be the end of it. It just kept going and going and going and got bigger and bigger.”

Popular reading topics include outdoors and fitness, and while the program ships out the occasional box of women’s magazines, supply has far outpaced demand.

“We don’t do much for the ladies, we serve them, [but] they don’t want the ladies titles, they want these,” she said. “They’re tough gals, they like guns.”

Chase said Magazines for Troops tries to send one box each month to every unit they serve, but costs can mount quickly.

“If you look at our needs at $13.60 a box… I just filled 60 of them — you do the math,” Chase said. “That’s several hundred dollars.”

A total of $816, to be exact. And that’s for just one shipment.

But Chase said the cost of postage doesn’t mean she’ll turn down a request for magazines.

“No matter where they are, if they contact us, we’re not going to say no to an American soldier,” Chase said.

Service members in Afghanistan get the majority of shipments, although Magazines for Troops mails boxes to troops deployed in Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Korea and various locations in Africa.

To help raise funds for postage, the group has cash collection jars placed throughout the Flathead Valley and magazine donation sites in Kalispell and Lakeside — although a share of their material arrives via the Postal Service.

“People from all over the country send us boxes. It’s very rare to go to the post office and not have boxes waiting for us,” she noted.

In the group’s early days, Chase ran the operation out of her home, stacking incoming titles beneath a coffee table, recycling near the door and rows of outgoing magazines in her kitchen and hallway during shipping time.

La Vigne noticed a vacancy at Lakeside Landing, and approached owner Bill Eisenlohr about using the space until he could find a paying renter.

When Enterprise Allies moved in, Eisenlohr and his wife, Mary, allowed the group to relocate to a unit in Lakeside Business Center in the early summer, also free of charge.

“They’re doing a heck of a job and it’s something that so important for our troops,” Mary Eisenlohr said. “When you think of all the time they spend, and probably their own money to do this, it’s absolutely outstanding and we’re so proud of them.”

The new home gave the program the space they needed to store and sort magazines and prepare shipments for delivery. Free rent and volunteer labor keeps the group’s costs low, but Chase said there is always a demand for postage fees.

Magazines for Troops launched the Adopt-A-Box program a few years ago, where donors could contribute $13.60 per month — the cost of shipping a single box — on a recurring basis. But interest in the venture fell flat.

“If a whole bunch of people did that, it’s not much out of their pocket, it would add up. But it didn’t go,” Chase said.

There is still an option on the group’s website, www.magazinesfortroops.com, to contribute.

“All the cash that we raise goes into postage and packaging tape,” she said. “Everything’s by donation — magazines, postage, time.”

As the holiday season approaches, the nonprofit reaches out to area schools, soliciting drawings to top the boxes with added yuletide cheer. In previous years, students from Stillwater Christian School in Kalispell, Ruder Elementary School in Columbia Falls and Cherry Valley Elementary School in Polson have contributed their artistic works.

Looking ahead, Chase said she hopes to continue the organization’s mission of providing American soldiers with a little mental respite from their duties overseas.

“As much as it is important to get the reading material, it’s a reminder that people back home are thinking of them and they’re not forgotten,” she said. “And that’s really important.”

Reporter Mackenzie Reiss may be reached at 758-4433 or mreiss@dailyinterlake.com.