Students send some love to soldiers overseas

A little inspiration goes a long way — all the way across the ocean.

Andrea Giordano, a school crossing guard and lunch monitor at the George Washington School in West Hempstead, motivated students to reach out to service men and women last month simply by sharing stories of missing her son, Cpl. Joseph Giordano, 24, a Marine helicopter mechanic who is on his second deployment in the Persian Gulf.

“She was talking about her son and she had this fabulous picture of his carrier, actually showing the children how he is on an aircraft carrier, and she was saying how she was going to miss him for the holidays,” George Washington Principal Theresa Ganley told the Herald. “One thing led to the other and the children started saying, ‘Couldn’t we do something nice for the holidays for him?’”

After some brainstorming, Giordano and Ganley came up with the idea to create care packages for not only Giordano’s son, a 2005 West Hempstead High School graduate, but for a number of soldiers at military bases around the world.

Throughout a two-week period, each of the 16 homerooms in the school, from the first through the fifth grades, spent two weeks collecting items to include in the packages. “It was really great,” Ganley said. “They packed the boxes themselves. … We just had such a positive experience.”

But the students did hit a bump in the road — exorbitant shipping prices. “I was shocked at what the cost was, but we were very blessed and people stepped up to help,” Ganley said. West Hempstead business owner Karl Riesterer, of Riesterer’s Bakery, donated a gingerbread house that Hilda and Bob Manuella, of Finest Security, raffled off to collect enough money for postage to ship the packages. Still, a number of people had to reach into their own pockets to make up the difference, but “that’s the beauty of the holidays,” Ganley said, “people are willing to do it.”