Screen Actor Members Help Create Care Packages for U.S. Troops

by Mike Hall, Jun 6, 2009

SAG members, from left, Jo Anne Worley, Nancy Sinatra, Cole Pierce, France Nuyen, Rene Taylor, Joe Bologna, Angel Tompkins and Ted Lang help stuff USO care packages.

More than three dozen Screen Actors (SAG) members, including several veterans of USO troop tours, joined some 400 workers from Northrop Grumman’s operation in Southern California last month to stuff personal care packages for U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and other overseas deployments.

Nancy Sinatra, who first entertained U.S. troops in Vietnam on the legendary Bob Hope USO tours, said:

Every time we send out one of these packages, I think about where they are going….And I always hope and pray that the person receiving the package will be able to come home.

In an El Segundo plant that normally produces F-18 fighter planes, SAG members and volunteer workers stuffed the two-gallon, zip-lock plastic bags with  personal items such as sun screen, packaged body wipes, granola snacks, playing cards, prepaid international phone cards, disposable razors and chewing gum.

In less than six hours, the volunteers stuffed 20,300 care packages—a USO single day record.

SAG members joining Sinatra and the volunteer workers on the assembly lines included Gary Sinise (”CSI: NY”), D.B. Sweeney (”Crash”), L. Scott Caldwell (”Lost”), Peter Reckell (”Days of Our Lives”), Robert Forster (”Heroes”), Kate Linder (”The Young & the Restless”), Joe Bologna and Renée Taylor and Erik Estrada.

Connie Stevens, another longtime USO trooper, also took part on the package assembly line. She recently appeared as one the 47 screen and stage stars in online video by Artists for Workers Choice that explains the case of the Employee Free Choice Act.

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