The Rotary Club of Dearborn is doing its part to help American soldiers in hospitals overseas and in the United States call their loved ones through the donation of more than $8,500 in phone cards.

This is the fourth consecutive year the Rotary Club of Dearborn has raised money to purchase and distribute free phone cards. And despite these tough economic times, the Rotary Club says it has quadrupled the amount of money raised to purchase phone cards since the project began.

“We start asking for donations on Veteran’s Day so that we can deliver them in time for the holidays,” said Dearborn Rotarian Ray Trudeau, who has spearheaded the Club’s fundraising efforts for this project. “This year, we raised more than $8,500 which gave us enough money to purchase more than 400, 700-minute phone cards.”

In addition to the generosity of Dearborn Rotarians, Trudeau also acknowledged donations received from other local Rotary Clubs as well as friends in the community.

Trudeau says 150 phone cards were shipped to the U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany while another 150 were sent to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C. and the remainder to local Veterans’ hospitals.

In response to the latest delivery of phone cards, Trudeau said he received a warm letter of appreciation from the Wounded Warrior Ministry Center at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. The center strives to provide a free phone card to each of the 700 patients who are evacuated from the different military theaters of operation every month.

“This gives us a better idea of how great the need really is,” Trudeau said.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 12:18 am and is filed under Around Town. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.