Holiday Heroes: Marietta woman fills soldiers' requests

With the Thanksgiving holiday behind her, Kathy Testa turned her attention once again to Christmas and U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

For years, she has been collecting books and other goodies and then shipping them overseas to servicemen and women, and this year would be no different.

It started, Testa said, in March of 2007, when she felt the urge to volunteer. She had the time. She enjoyed giving of herself.

But Testa didn’t want to do just any kind of work. She wanted to do something that would somehow feed her twin passions -- books and reading.

In a moment of clarity one day, she ran an Internet search on the topic books for soliders and found her answer at BooksforSoldiers.com.

“I didn’t even realize it was a website,” said Testa, remembering the moment recently at her home in Marietta.

The site, an online volunteer effort founded by Storm Williams, is a forum where soldiers can post requests for specific items, including books, magazines, DVDs and even video games.

Williams got the idea in 1991, when he began collecting and shipping books to a U.S. Army hospital in Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War. In 2003, as U.S. troops were poised to invade Iraq, he stepped up his effort and launched Books for Soldiers.

Just weeks after submitting her application to volunteer, Testa was given access to the online requests and began filling them.

More than three years later, the 54-year-old mother has fulfilled requests from nearly 700 deployed soldiers, including some service members made on behalf of Afghan and Iraqi children.

Testa credits her husband Tom and dozens of relatives and friends who donate items and pay for postage for fueling her efforts and propelling them far beyond what she had imagined.

Jane Darrish said she had to help the moment she saw the craft room Testa and her husband set up to house her project.

“There were hundreds of books, sorted by category, author and title so that she can find just the right books for each soldier,” wrote Darrish in her Holiday Heroes nomination letter to the AJC. From that moment, Darrish said, she knew that Testa was someone special and that her efforts were meant to send compassion and collaboration out from her small corner of the world.

A part-time substitute media specialist at Kennesaw Mountain High School and Pine Mountain Elementary, Testa said she uses her salary to pay for the crafts she needs to make greeting cards, the books she purchases at garage sales and the toiletries and food items that don't get donated.

From the beginning, Testa wanted her packages to impart the love and appreciation she has for the troops even though she doesn’t know them personally.

And so, with every request she includes a card she designed and filled with puzzles, comic strips, a note about whatever is happening in her life, pictures of animals and beautiful land and seascapes.

The project, she said, has brought unexpected rewards, not the least of which are the many notes of thanks she receives from soldiers and the joy of having found her calling.