Spencer community’s appreciation for veterans is in the cards

Near the end of any given Honor Flight, it has become customary to hold a Mail Call to give veterans a little happy reminder of what it was like to receive letters and cards from loved ones during their time of service. Upon opening their package, they will find cards from all sorts of people thanking them for their service. They may not know all these people personally or from where they come, but local veterans will instantly recognize the source of at least one of their cards: from the Spencer Community.

For the past four years, the Spencer Public Library has coordinated an effort out of Spencer to send cards of thanks to veterans who travel on the annual Honor Flights. For one hour, people from the community — whether young or old — sit in the library making cards that will later go to a veteran during the Mail Call.

“Our goal is to make 100 cards so everyone on the flight gets one,” said Audrey Kohlbeck, the Spencer Library coordinator. “They just started having posters on all the hotel doors for the vets and they asked for posters so we’ve started doing that. One hundred cards and 100 posters get done in one hour.”

Kohlbeck said she first started this program after she started working at the Spencer Library five years ago. She said at one point, she saw some coverage of the Wausau Honor Flight and was inspired to try to do more, not as an individual, but as a library.

“I was watching on TV one time the coverage on the Honor Flight and them coming back from their trip,” she said. “I thought, ‘Is there something we can do to help?’ I called the Honor Flight in Wausau and they told me about the Mail Call. It’s been going ever since.”

Though Kohlbeck said the goal is to make 100 cards for the Mail Call, she said the actual number of cards made often exceeds the 200-mark. This surplus of cards, she said, is just one of the signs of how much the Spencer community cares about Wisconsin’s veterans.

“I’m very impressed,” she said. “We have a very good turnout. We have people who stay at home and make cards and then bring them in from home. They bring in stickers, red, white and blue pom poms and they ask, ‘When are we doing it again next year?’” Another sign of Spencer’s care? All one has to do to see that, Kohlbeck said, is look at one of the cards. Each one is handmade, but given the level of work and skill put into each one, it could easily be mistaken for one made by a professional.

“The artwork that people do, the care they put into these cards, it’s hard to believe they do them freehand,” she said. “People are so willing to do it. Doing something for vets, it’s their way of saying, ‘Thank you for your service.’” And these thank you cards don’t go through the Mail Call unnoticed.

Every so often, Kohlbeck said she will hear from someone who recently went on an Honor Flight. They may be a local, perhaps from a place a little further away such as Stratford, or even further, but she said the appreciation they have for the cards they get in the Mail Call is always the same. “What I find from people around here that go on the Honor Flight is that the cards are signed as from the Spencer community and they’ll say, ‘I got a card from Spencer,’” she said.

The Spencer Library held its annual Mail Call card making event on Feb. 10 and in one hour made 209 cards and posters. These items will be sent to the Wausau Honor Flight and put in their Mail Call packages for their scheduled April flight.

CHEYENNE THOMAS/STAFF PHOTO