| Cool air headed to Iraq By Tatiana Zarnowski
So when his mother, Judy Mahoney of South Middleton Township, mentioned the business where her friend Denis Dumm works had 50 extra window air conditioners to donate to troops in Iraq, Mahoney passed along the information to his sergeant. In about three weeks, the air conditioners will cool an aviation support battalion's office and trailers where soldiers live. Although the units will cool the indoor air only to about 90 degrees during the peak of summer, that still will be a relief to soldiers who have been living in the 10-by-10-foot "ovens" where the temperature can skyrocket to well over 100 degrees. "They'll be able to get sleep; they'll be able to get a little more functional," says Kyle Lord, executive director for Keystone Soldiers, a non-profit organization based in Fleetwood, Berks County, that sends care packages to soldiers stationed in Iraq. The soldiers working in the hangar need to stay cool, Lord says. "If they can't see what they're doing because the sweat is running down their faces into their eyes, that could be pretty dangerous." Dumm coordinated the shipment through Lord, who says the battalion, which she could not name for security reasons, is "comprised largely of Pennsylvania soldiers." Packages appreciated It's not Mahoney's Army Reserve unit. The 25-year-old lives in new barracks in Iraq, where he has been serving as an engineer for five months. "We got lucky," says Mahoney, who is on a two-week leave and was on hand Thursday at Quietside with his wife, Crystal, and their two sons, Ryan, 4, and Austin, 1. The 1997 Big Spring High School graduate works at Giant distribution center. Mahoney says he has received care packages from the Cumberland Valley High School Key Club and from other people he doesn't even know. "I don't know how they get my name, but they do," he says. His mother is "ecstatic" to have her son home, she says. She sends him homemade cookies in care packages that arrive within 10 days. "He says the cookies are still pretty good when they get there." On Thursday Yellow Transportation trucked the units from Quietside in Middlesex Township to the Port of Philadelphia, where the container will be loaded onto a ship. When it arrives in Kuwait, everything will be inspected before the air conditioners go to Iraq, Lord says. The units were extra inventory the company didn't have room to stock, says Dumm, technical support adviser for Quietside. "My boss was actually just going to give them away to our wholesalers." Instead they decided to give the brand new appliances to troops in Iraq. About 300 more units from another company will join the first ones in the next two weeks, Lord says. FYI People can add local soldiers to Keystone Soldiers' care package list or pen pal list by visiting www.KeystoneSoldiers.com. The
non-profit organization also accepts donations for postage to send packages to
troops.
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