Daughters of American Revolution hit goal
Promoting patriotic goals is nothing new to the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Since its founding Oct. 11, 1890, the organization made up of descendants of Revolutionary War supporters included patriotic endeavors as one of its three major goals, along with promoting historic preservation and education.
However, during the term of past president general Lynn F. Young, DAR took her theme “Celebrate America” in a challenging direction. Young challenged members to participate in the DAR Project Patriot Committee’s endeavor to set Guinness world record for the “most letters to military personnel collected in one month.”
To set the new record, the chapters had to send handwritten letters to a variety of active duty service members all over the United States as well as abroad. The letters could be addressed to specific deployed individuals or to active duty personnel serving at the list of military installations available at www.DAR.org/WorldRecord.
What made the project especially daunting was the fact each member could write only a single letter. However, members were permitted to enlist others from the community, including children of the American Revolution societies, Veterans of Foreign Wars posts, service clubs, churches, workplace associates and schools.
“The DAR gave us an example of the three components each letter should have – a greeting, on original message of support and appreciation and a closing with our signature,” said Linda Horner of Washington, registrar of the National Pike Chapter of the DAR.
Besides carefully penning a letter of her own, Horner also got friends and family members involved. Daughter Michelle Ostrosky, principal at Trinity South Elementary School, had some of the teachers write letters, and her cousin, Bill Miller, got Bible study group at the Christian Alliance in Washington to write a total of 16 letters.
“Many of the men in the Bible study were veterans who served in time of war, and they wrote some very touching letters,” Horner said.
In all, Horner and associates contributed about half of the approximately 100 letters written by members of the National Pike Chapter.
Local chapter treasurer and 41-year member, Patricia Stavovy of Washington, also got her family involved in the letter-writing campaign. Besides herself, her husband, Ed, daughter Emily Stavovy and grandsons Corbin and Zane Scarberry also contributed to the cause.
Even with nearly 3,000 DAR chapters nationwide, the goal of writing 10,000 letters to set a new world record was not a sure thing. All the letters had to be stamped and left unsealed until they could be officially tallied and verified by Guinness representatives.
From all over the nation, DAR members brought their chapter letters, packaged in bundles of 50, to the DAR’s 125th Continental Congress in Washington, D.C., and delivered them in person to an official collection station. Deborah Davis of Washington, honorary state regent of Pennsylvania, delivered the National Pike Chapter’s letters to the Congress.
The carefully tallied total was revealed at the National Defense Night ceremony on June 18. As thousands in attendance waited to learn the outcome, members surprised them by carrying in box after box to give a visual representation of how many letters were submitted.
The adjudicator took the stage to announce the results using a number tally on a big screen. Cheers increased as soon as the number topped 10,000, but then the audience, including the night’s special guests, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert McDonald and the USO President and Chief Executive Officer J. D. Crouch, all went wild when the tally surpassed 100,000.
In all, the DAR had collected 100,904 letters, more than 10 times the minimum threshold needed to set the record for most letters to military personnel collected in one month.
According to Lynn Brandon, public relations representative for the National Society DAR, the letters started to be mailed out to military personnel the week following the Continental Congress with the hope that all would be mailed by the end of June.
“It gives us, the DAR, great satisfaction to complete another service project to honor our military servicemen,” Stavovy said. “We plan to continue to honor their commitment to keep our country free and look forward to the opportunity to honor and encourage our veterans in the future.”