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Shop Owner Turns Bad Luck into Good

May-19-2004 » Filed Under: Homefront

Congratulations to Ruth Ann Young. We linked to a story about her a while back.

[Link to Full Article]
By Rudi Williams, American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, May 19, 2004 – When tragedy struck Ruth Ann Young of Kirkland, Wash., during the summer of 2003, she turned her bad luck into good luck for more than 6,000 service members on the battlefields of Iraq.

It was Father's Day 2003 – June 15 -- when fire ravaged a business next door to Young's "Spirit of Christmas" store and caused substantial smoke damage to her little shop. Young owns and operates a year-round shop devoted to selling Christmas items. Smoke damage to her merchandise was so bad that she wasn't able to open her shop for the rest of that year.

Though she was deeply saddened, she wanted to do something positive in the community in which she and her husband, Robert Young, had lived for eight years, Young said during the Armed Services YMCA's recent 17th Annual Recognition Luncheon on Capitol Hill. Her idea won the 2004 Raytheon Program Achievement Award in the Best Use of Volunteers category at the Junction City (Kan.) Family YMCA.

"I wanted to touch the hearts of my service people overseas, and that's what I chose to do," said Young, who was in Washington with her husband and representatives from the Junction City YMCA and Fort Riley, Kan., to accept the award. "So I hung a banner and told everyone we were doing 'Operation Iraq: Spirit of Christmas' and we were going to send packages overseas to all of our military troops for Christmas."

She ended up sending 6,000 Christmas boxes.


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