Update: Debra Schaefer

    Mao Tse-tung once said that all power comes from the barrel of a gun. Former Valley Courier Person of the Week Debra Schaefer of Deep River knows there is enormous power from something far less intimidating: the taste of a home baked cookie. That’s the reason why Debbie and her volunteer cookie makers are still baking for U.S. service personnel serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwait.

    “I get letters and emails from soldiers and their parents saying how grateful they are,” she says. “You bite into a cookie and it brings you a little taste of home. It’s all worth it to bring a smile to a soldier’s face. That’s why we are doing this.”

    On Saturday, Nov. 22, Debbie and a host of volunteers will package holiday cookies at the Deep River Firehouse and she still needs additional helpers.

    It’s a big job; each small plastic tub contains a dozen cookies, separated with squares of wax paper; each tub is sealed with plastic wrap to keep in the freshness before the lid goes on. The cookies are then packed in cardboard mailing boxes–medium-sized cardboard boxes contain five cookie tubs, large mailing boxes have 12. 

    Each box is addressed to a soldier serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Kuwait. Deb receives the names of soldiers through relatives, Internet contacts, or other service personnel.

    Last year, Deb and her volunteers sent 232 boxes of cookies; this year she already has names and addresses for 280 boxes and is still receiving more. That will add up to some 18,000 cookies in all.

    Postage costs, Deb says, ordinarily run around $500 for a monthly shipment, but for the holiday shipment, Deb estimates they will go as high as $2,000. Contributions help defray these expenses, though Deb admits she also uses her own funds to cover costs.

    Although Deb says her own oven is going six days a week, she has volunteer bakers, including a number of young people who participate through their schools, throughout the state. Her champion baker, she says, is a woman in Shelton who has delivered up to 3,000 cookies a month.

    Deb’s work isn’t just about the cookies–it’s about everything from filling out customs forms for each package to including a holiday message in every plastic tub along with a snowman and a little bag of candy for each cookie recipient. 

    Deb started what she then called the Cookie Brigade when her own son, Christopher Scholfield, was deployed to Afghanistan. Now Chris has finished his tour in Afghanistan and is stationed in Italy and the group that Deb formed is currently called the Cookie Platoon (a woman in Wisconsin was using the name Cookie Brigade, accounting for the change).

    In addition to the Cookie Platoon, Deb is helping organize Help Our Homeless Veterans a benefit for ex-service personnel in Connecticut. She urges people to drop off everything from clothing to linens and towels at the Old Saybrook Fire Department between Dec. 3 and 10. 

    “It’s a way of helping these people get out of shelters and get back on their own,” she says.

    Deb has been so busy she hasn’t even had a chance to think about her own plans for Thanksgiving or Christmas. 

    “I don’t really know what we’ll do. I haven’t thought about cooking anything,” she says.

    Still, she knows what she would like to do. 

    “If somebody told me there were some veterans in Connecticut that needed someplace to go for a Thanksgiving dinner, that’s something I’d like to organize,” she says.

To find out about helping the Cookie Platoon, call Debra Schaefer at 860-526-2789 or visit www.cookieplatoon.com. Contributions can be sent to: Cookie Platoon, P.O. Box 635, Chester, CT 06412.