Every year on Memorial Day, Veteran’s Day and various other times (for me it’s hearing the Star Spangled Banner before a big game), we think about the sacrifice of our nation’s veterans. Each and every one of us has family members, friends, loved ones, someone we care about who’ve been a part of our country’s military service. We’ve all been affected by the ones who’ve protected our country in the years past and present.

I’m no different than many of you; we all have our stories. My father was in WW II, landed on the beaches of Normandy, marched across Germany, Battle of the Bulge, and more. I’m sure many of you could share your own family stories just as easily as I can.

Cheeriodicals has focused on utilizing corporate team building to create opportunities to bring our Big Green Boxes of Cheer to children’s hospitals, Ronald McDonald Houses and other charities where children are the focus. With nearly 200 children’s hospitals, 300 Ronald McDonald Houses and so many other children’s charities nationwide, it’s reasonable to think we’d keep our focus on children in need. We have a large and growing market to concentrate our efforts on with hospitalized children and their families.

That focus has worked very well and may have remained unchanged for years to come. That’s until we experienced the significance, the emotional impact of joining efforts with Wells Fargo Private Bank to assemble and deliver Cheeriodicals to the inpatients at the Birmingham Veterans Hospital last week. A team of 8 Wells Fargo employees led the effort to deliver our “cheer-up” gifts to 125 veterans, one by one, room by room, until every inpatient had a reason to smile.

This delivery event modified our company’s focus to make sure to include opportunities to deliver cheer to our veterans and military personnel. Seeing the positive reaction of the veterans in Birmingham reminded me how important every single veteran is to the story of our nation. Would our story still exist without their service and sacrifice? Maybe it would, but I can assure you that story wouldn’t include so many of the freedoms we often take for granted.

Usually when one of our children’s events is over and I think back through the day’s activities, I think through the individual deliveries, the individual reactions. I remember so many individual interactions with the children, what they say, what toys they like most, their names. What struck me so different about this delivery to our veterans was that my memory is more of the reaction of the veterans as a group. And maybe that makes sense, maybe these heroes have always blended in with each other because that’s what the best teams do well. These men and women have never wanted to stand out; they just simply wanted to serve their team and and protect their country.

To that end, our delivery team walked away in agreement with one overall thought for the day. The veterans were all much more concerned with thanking us for our gift when our goal was to thank them for theirs.

For details of this life-changing corporate team building for veterans activities, please see the following details and photos from AL.com:

http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/index.ssf/2015/02/veterans_receive_gift_boxes_fr.h