NILES — A holiday giving program organized by Halbritter-Wickens Funeral Services was able to provide more than 150 active duty service men and women with holiday cheer.

“We are thrilled to share that our Stockings for Soldiers and Sailors has been received with a tremendous outpouring of generosity by the community,” said Sabrina Wickens. “Donations to stuff the stockings came from all over southern Michigan and northern Indiana.”

Program organizers were able to ship out 167 stockings to active duty service men and women all over the world.  It provided the Buchanan Blue Star Mothers #163 with 54 stockings to send to 25 service men and women from the local area. The remain 113 were sent in packages to service men and women organizers know personally. Those men and women then passed the stockings out to other sailors and soldiers in their groups. 

“We only know of a few places where the stockings traveled to, which includes Bahrain and Japan.  Stockings made it to crews aboard the USS John C. Stennis, USS Carl Vinson, USS Warrior MCM 10, and USS Patriot MCM 7,” Wickens said.

There is a video of a young man expressing his gratitude for his stocking on the funeral home’s Facebook page.

Stockings were sent to Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.  Next year, project organizers hope to be able to include Coast Guard as recipients in the project.

The funeral home also delivered 54 stockings to local veterans in nursing homes the week of Dec. 16. The nursing homes included Buchanan Meadows, Riveridge, Woodland Terrace, Brentwood, Chalet of Niles and West Woods of Niles. It also sent a stocking to a veteran in a VA Hospital in Pennsylvania that the business was made aware of through a Facebook group that staff are a part of. 

“We really enjoyed meeting the gentlemen at Buchanan Meadows,” Wickens said. “We are hoping next year to be able to meet more of our local veterans personally through the stocking delivery. It was truly an honor to be able to thank our service men and women for their sacrifices that were made so many years ago.”

Officials with Halbritter-Wickens said they wanted to thank everyone who supported the project.   

“We were overwhelmed by the community support,” Wickens said. “There were donations that we know of from Buchanan, Niles, Edwardsburg, Cassopolis, South Bend, Mishawaka and Bremen. It was amazing how the stockings multiplied once they were given to people. There were several folks who took one or two and returned 10 to 15 stockings filled to the brim. It was exciting to get to know the folks making donations.  There were so many who they or their spouse served in our military.”

Already, funeral home officials said they have plans to spread more holiday cheer to soldiers and veterans in the coming months, and they will be announcing those plans in the near future.