News-Info-Alerts

Re: Lynch Returning Home to Mountain of Good Wishes

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: July 19, 2003

"Returning POW will face mountain of letters and care packages

By BOB WITHERS - The Herald-Dispatch

Wirt County assessor Debbie Hennen sorts through some of the packages on Thursday that have been sent to Palestine, W.Va., resident Jessica Lynch. Mail sent to former POW Jessica Lynch is sorted, cataloged and held in a county jail cell until her arrival.

HUNTINGTON -- Vast throngs of people are expected to line the down-home streets of Elizabeth and Palestine, W.Va., Tuesday to welcome Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch home, but some of the residents have already tackled large numbers for four months now -- specifically, the mountains of mail addressed to Lynch.

An entire cell in the old Wirt County Jail -- now a courthouse annex and office building -- was piled to the ceiling this week with gifts for her. The Wirt County Sheriff’s Department has checked them to make sure nothing dangerous was inside, and five huge boxes outside the cell hold even more parcels that also have been scanned for derogatory messages and catalogued so acknowledgements can be sent.

"She has no idea what she has here," says Wirt County Assessor Debbie Hennen. "If I said this is all yours, what would you do?"

Hennen says she will be relieved when the long acknowledgement process is finally finished.

"Little old ladies are starting to write a second time and ask, ‘Did you receive my package?’ " she said. "We’ve got to get all these cards out."

Hennen says even the mail addressed to Lynch at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., is forwarded to Palestine for handling by volunteers helping the Lynch family.

"There has been every bit of 10,000 pieces of mail," she says.

She says Lynch gets mostly angels -- crocheted, on paper, on pins -- and there’s a lot of patriotism, too.
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"These World War I and II vets that send her their medals," she says. "It just makes you cry."

The first week after Lynch was rescued, Hennen says cousin Pam Nicolais would slice open the letters, give the money to Terry Edwards, another cousin, for safekeeping, write the amount on the envelope and pass it to Hennen. Then she would log the amount and the return address on a piece of paper.

"That was fine when we were getting 200 letters a day," she says. "But when we started getting a thousand, everyone was opening them."

Berylann Lewis, Palestine’s postmaster, says Lynch received more than a thousand letters a day for about three weeks after her rescue -- swelling daily letter volume from 7 feet to 11 feet.

"That all went through here," she says of an office that serves fewer than 500 customers. "Sometimes the rural carrier came in early and helped me sort it."

For awhile, volunteers picked up the mail daily.

"She still gets letters and packages every day, which is really nice," Lewis says.

And she’s certain that volume is about to pick up again.

"Once she’s home, people will feel they have more of an outlet to her," she says.

Hennen, who agrees that Lynch’s mail is sure to soar again concurrent with her homecoming, wants to transfer the operation to a larger storage building.

"We might need to put somebody in jail," she laughs.

Opportunity for collectors

The U.S. Postal Service is offering a special pictorial stamp cancellation for mail posted at the Palestine, W.Va., office on Tuesday, July 22 -- which will be dubbed the "Jessica Lynch Station" for the day.

Postmaster Berylann Lewis adds that for the following 60 days, collectors can mail envelopes to the office (with a self-addressed, stamped envelope) and have them canceled free of charge. Or they may purchase $2 cachet envelopes featuring a 37-cent Purple Heart stamp, Lynch’s quote that "I’m an American soldier, too" and a salute to all veterans, past and present.

The address is Postmaster, P.O. Box 9998, Palestine, W.Va. 26160.



Full circle

Deadra Lynch mailed two greeting cards to her daughter on March 19, 2003 -- the day the United States began hostilities in Iraq.

Jessica Lynch didn’t get them -- at first.

The cards apparently took a while to get to Kuwait, where the Army’s Fort Bliss, Texas-based 507th Maintenance Company originally camped once deployed. From there, the cards must have followed Lynch during the long recovery after her unit was ambushed -- to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and then Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

And since Walter Reed is forwarding everything home, the cards made it back to Lynch’s home post office in Palestine, W.Va.

"We found them on the Fourth of July, the day before several of us went to see Jessi," says Wirt County Assessor Debbie Hennen. "So I took them to her."

Young Lynch must have expressed a little skepticism about her mother’s promise to write.

"See," Hennen quoted Dee Lynch’s mild reprimand to her daughter. "I told you I mailed you cards."

© 2003 The Herald-Dispatch"