Student championing ‘Cards for Courage’

Coe College junior Nina Wilson wants members of the military to know that she and others in the community are thinking of them.

So Wilson, who is from Indianola and is majoring in creative writing and history, is trying to raise money to send about 6,000 greeting cards this holiday season.

About five years ago, Wilson said she saw a Hallmark commercial featuring a little girl who sent her enlisted father a greeting card. That inspired her to take action.

'I was thinking about all those people who don't have kids to send them cards,” Wilson said.

That year, Wilson and her mother, Sharon, sent 200 cards through the Red Cross, she said.

The following year, Wilson's mother told her about troops who have returned home and could benefit from receiving a holiday greeting card.

Wilson contacted Camp Lejeune, where her grandfather was stationed during the Korean War, and sent cards to 200 members of the Wounded Warriors battalion.

Over the past five years, Wilson and her mother, along with friends and community members, have sent more than 15,000 holiday cards to military members and wounded warriors.

This year, Wilson plans to send 6,000 cards to bases in Alaska, Georgia, Texas and North Carolina.

Most of the cards are donated by their manufacturers, Wilson said.

To help pay for the cost of postage for her Cards for Courage program, she set up a GoFundMe page at gofundme.com/cardsforcourageia. The goal is to raise $800.

Wilson said she always sends a small token along with the card, such as a friendship bracelet, child's drawing or bookmark.

Rod Pritchard, a spokesman at Coe, said the college is 'highly supportive” of Wilson's effort.

'Various students and student groups have done this same sort of thing on and off over the years at Coe and the college is supportive of all of these efforts to support our active duty military,” Pritchard said.

Elsewhere in the Corridor, local artist Suzanne Aunan has donated artwork to grace holiday cards for BMTinfonet.org, according to a news release. This year's card features her work 'Ice Skating at City Park.”

Aunan is a physician assistant at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in bone marrow transplant. Cards with envelopes are sold by BMTinfonet in packs of ten for $12.95. All proceeds from the sale of cards will benefit bone marrow, stem cell and cord blood transplant patients and their families.

How to help

' To help Nina Wilson's effort to pay for postage for Cards for Courage, go to gofundme.com/cardsforcourageia. A card signing event will be from 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday at Coe College's Clark Alumni House.

' For more information on the Blood and Marrow Transplant Information Network, go to BMTinfonet.org.