Mrs. Claus ... seriously

My dad takes every December off from work, partly to play Santa at the many parties and family get-togethers in Gillette throughout the month; partly just to brag at Thanksgiving that he's not coming back to work 'til the next year.

And we always tell my mom that she needs to get a Mrs. Claus costume to go along with Dad's very elaborate Santa costume.

But whether she has the costume or not, my mom is a true Mrs. Claus, especially when it comes to veterans and active military in the area and their families.

Every Christmas, Mom organizes a Christmas party for Gillette-area kids whose parents are in the military or the guard, deployed or not. "We don't have a base around here, and these people lose out on a lot of stuff because of that," she told me over the phone. The kids get bags of toys in addition to generous gift cards. Their parents got gift cards this year, too, so they could have a nice dinner out.

She organizes an "angel tree" for veterans now living at a veterans' retirement home in Buffalo (Wyoming). This year, she also organized a "forgotten veteran" gift drive and blanket drive for patients at the VA hospital/rehabilitation facility in Sheridan (Wyoming).

In short, my mom wears herself out at Christmas. If Dickens had written a fourth Christmas Spirit, I would vote that it be The Spirit of Christmas Patriotism.

She writes fundraising letters. She gets on a local radio talk show to raise awareness and support. She and Dad pound the pavement and talk it up to raise the thousands of dollars necessary to buy the gifts and gift cards. She'll speak at any civic organization that will have her. She organizes armies of volunteers, half of whom back out at the last minute. She organizes "backup plans" for people who forget to return their gifts for the veterans they've adopted.

And sometimes, she is the backup plan.

She spent all day Thursday buying the gifts for the children's party and the last-minute gifts for the veterans whose gifts hadn't come back yet. She spent all Saturday morning with six other women wrapping the presents for the kids' party, then spent Saturday afternoon at the party itself.

With or without a costume, my mom is a firecracker of a Mrs. Claus whose heart bleeds red, white and blue. And at this time of year, with almost a thousand Wyoming guard members getting ready to head to Afghanistan in 2009, I can't think of a better Christmas Spirit to have working on behalf of the military here in Wyoming.

A (Gillette) News-Record story about the party can be found here.