Volunteers Send Reminders Of Home To American Troops Overseas

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- It's Christmas in July for the local USO, as it sends care packages to thousands of American troops overseas.

Volunteers assemble the last of 3500 care packages being shipped off to active duty, National Guard and military reserve personnel stationed around the world.

"Games, sudoku puzzles, shower gel, deodorant, toothpaste, toothbrush, snacks and reminders of home, like Wawa coffee."

At a sendoff event at SugarHouse Casino, Liberty USO president Joe Brooks recalled the Marine from South Philly who wrote him four years ago thanking him for the package. She told him a member of her unit had just been killed in combat.

"The morale of that unit was as low as it could possibly get. And that care package had arrived at the exact moment it needed to."

A reminder, he says, that they had not been forgotten.