But the look on that little girl’s face, her joy at having new clothes, made it worth every penny.
This story goes back to 1998 when I first joined the Navy. After boot camp and “A” school for culinary arts, I was assigned to a ship called the 455 Beaywood LHA III. Upon boarding, I learned that the ship was preparing for deployment. The mission, called Operation Open Heart, involved delivering goodwill to the people of the Philippines by providing Thanksgiving dinners and Christmas presents to children living in a place called Smoky Mountain, essentially the city’s dump site. On the day of our arrival, we prepared 4,000 turkey dinners and distributed toys and clothing donated by the people of California. Everything seemed to be going well until the end. We tried to distribute the items as evenly as possible. For the boys, we provided three pairs of pants, two pairs of shorts, five t-shirts, five pairs of underwear, five pairs of socks, and five dress shirts. For the girls, we gave out two dresses, three shirts or blouses, two pairs of pants, one pair of shorts, and five sets of underwear and t-shirts. What made this experience unforgettable for me was what happened at the very end. We ran out of many items, and there was one little girl, about nine years old, who was left with nothing in her size. The only clothes we had left were too small. She came from an extremely poor family, and the clothes she wore were dirty and three to four sizes too small. They didn’t cover her properly, her bottom was exposed, and her underwear was full of holes. Seeing her like that broke my heart, especially since she was the last one left. I got permission from my chief officer and the girl’s mother to take her to a local department store. When we arrived, the store wouldn’t let her in because of the way she was dressed. I had to bribe the store manager just to get her inside. In the end, with the bribe and the clothes I bought for her, the total came to just under $50. But the look on that little girl’s face, her joy at having new clothes, made it worth every penny.
