Trees for the Troops

by Gary Sledge
Readers Digest
December 2005

Little miracles. That's what Jim Adelis thinks Christmas is all about. One day last November, he wandered over to Dees' Nursery in Oceanside, New York, and Tom Dee told him about a woman who had just been by asking if there was some way to send a Christmas tree to her son who was serving in Iraq.

Jim had a son in Iraq too: 20-year-old Jim Jr., a convoy machine gunner stationed at Camp Anaconda in Balad, Iraq. He'd had a narrow miss with a roadside bomb earlier in the year. Tom told Jim he'd be happy to donate 75 trees, if there was any way to get them there in time. But no one knew how it could be done on such short notice. Jim said, "Let me see what I can do.”

First he figured he'd better get the Army brass to sign on. He called Maj. Gen. Richard Colt, commander of the 77th Regional Readiness Command at nearby Fort Totten.
"Great!" Colt said. "How are we going to do it?"

Jim figured the ball was still in his court. As the owner of a security company at Kennedy Airport, he knew where to turn next. He called the international shipping company DHL. Officials there readily agreed to fly the trees all the way to Camp Anaconda for free.

But what good are trees without decorations? Jim talked to friends who were in the Port Authority police; they knew where there were some special lights. Lights that had been intended for the World Trade Center during the Christmas season 2001 -- and had been in storage for three long years. Now they could shine.

On November 19, a huge DHL tractor-trailer pulled into Dees' Nursery, loaded up carefully boxed trees and headed for the airport. A DC-8 carried them to Iraq, and they arrived at Camp Anaconda on November 22.

No way to ship Christmas to Iraq? No problem! Hey, it's miracle time.

And there were more to come -- on December 16, another 50 trees were sent, along with menorahs for Jewish soldiers. In addition there were steaks, lobsters and lamb chops.

This Christmas, Jim's son is home. But other people's sons and daughters are in harm's way. So the plan is to up the order to 400 trees.

Oh, yes. And that woman who came to the nursery and first floated the idea of sending a Christmas tree to Iraq in the middle of a war? Well, she never appeared again. And Jim Adelis thinks he knows why. "She was an angel," he says.