NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, Nev. — Senior-leaders’ spouses and volunteers gathered donations of cookies for the annual cookie drive from Nellis AFB, Creech AFB and the local community to be delivered to Airmen here Dec. 11.
Cookie donations began arriving at the base chapel where they are gathered and assorted into boxes at 7 a.m. to be handed out to Airmen living in the base dormitories due to teamwork and preparation.
“We actually started in August and I have a really great team of ten senior-leaders’ spouses,” said Suzanne Lofgren, wife of U.S. Air Force Warfare Center commander Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Lofgren and head of the Nellis and Creech AFB’s senior-leader spouses organizing the Cookie Drive. “We start planning in August and each of the gals takes an important part of the planning, volunteerism, publicity and donations. We send out the supplies for school children to make the holiday cards, we ask the commissary to donate all of our packaging supplies, and then we get the word out to our community on and off-base to start making the cookies.”
“Almost all of the bases that I have ever been to do this in some form or fashion and we get together and bake and help distribute the cookies,” Lofgren added. “It’s fun working with the girls and it brings Nellis and Creech together.”
The cookie drive is a way to show Airmen that they are thought of during the holiday season and for some it is a way to give back.
“We just had an enlisted person come in, a young Airman, who lived in the dorms last year and he actually baked some cookies himself and said ‘I enjoyed it so much last year that I wanted to give back myself and pay it forward,’ so you find out that everyone is really enjoying the cookies,” Lofgren added.
All the preparation of senior-leader spouses and volunteers for the cookie drive ends with the cookies hand-delivered to the Airmen’s doorsteps.
“We’re gathering cookies that we’ve received through donations on base and throughout the community and deliver boxes of them to the Airmen who live in the dorms so they can have a little taste of home,” said Lofgren.
“After they are packaged into the trays, they are divvied up amongst all the dorms and then the first sergeants hand-deliver them,” said Stella Buck, wife of Brig. Gen. David Buck and senior-leader spouse.
First sergeants and volunteers transported the cookies to the dorms and delivered 840 Airmen one dozen cookies each. Overall, the cookie drive received 1,200 dozen cookies total. The remaining cookies will be distributed to people at work on base over the holidays.
“We hope that they really enjoy the thought and sentiment that goes into these cookies,” said Lofgren. “We also attach a holiday card from some of the local school children and youth centers. We let them know that even if Airmen aren’t traveling home the [military community] is thinking of them.”
