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An American Legion Post 320 crew set up a barbecue pit just outside the patio fence where they cooked all afternoon to raise postage money to mail the items that people brought.
"This is really beautiful," Ida said. "I wanted to come to Pacific last year but couldn't make it."
Ida's story is so ordinary it defies superlatives. People call the whole AdoptaPlatoon thing awesome, or amazing, or astonishing.
It is all those things to me. But to Ida, she is just a mom whose world was shattered when her only son Chauncey came home at the end of his second year of college and said, "Guess what. I joined the Army."
For Ida, an 11th-grade English teacher, it was unthinkable that her son would leave college, but his decision was already made.
It was 1998. He was assigned to the Air Defense Artillery Regiment in Fort Hood, Texas, and almost immediately was deployed to Bosnia.
She thought she wasn't going to be able to stand it. He was on her mind constantly and every Friday she sent him a small package. After several weeks, he wrote with a request.
"Mom, the packages are nice," he said, "But the next time you send me something like a toothbrush could you send 10 toothbrushes. There are nine other guys in my unit, and you wouldn't believe it, Mom, but some of these guys don't have families and never get any mail."
The idea of nine 19-year-old soldiers standing for mail call every day and never receiving anything spurred her to action.
The following Friday she had 10 toothbrushes in the mail. The Friday after that she sent 10 packages of beef jerky, then 10 packages of cookies.
The boxes on her kitchen countertop captured the attention of family members. Chauncey had two sets of grandparents who wanted in on the weekly package routine, which turned out to be a good thing because very soon she was going to need a lot of help to keep up her weekly routine.
"The grandparents bought things like 10 packages of Jolly Rancher candy," Ida said. "Chauncey loved Jolly Rancher candy."
She still remembers the day she received an unexpected letter from Chauncey's company commander. He just wanted to thank her for sending packages to the young soldier who didn't have families. It was amazing what the packages meant to them, he said.
"I was just wondering, if you could send 40 boxes instead of 10 so everybody in our outfit would have a box?" he wrote.
That was the first time she went out of her way to ask any for help. She turned to the extended family and, together, they were soon sending 40 boxes each week to her son's unit.
Then she received another letter from a company commander. The troops in the second platoon were just wondering why the troops in the first platoon received those packages every week like clockwork and their platoon didn't receive any.
"You really wouldn't have to send them anything," the company commander said. "If you could just write a little "thank you," to them it would mean a lot."
It was then that she made a public plea for help in sending mail to the troops.
She turned to local schools, churches and businesses, 4-H clubs, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. Before she knew it she had more packages and supporters than soldiers, so she wrote to the commanding officer in Bosnia who arranged for packages to be distributed to soldiers from the 82nd Field Artillery stationed at Eagle Base Camp in Bosnia, just in time for Christmas 1998.
From there the program grew.
"It was easy for me," she said. "I absolutely believe that supporting our troops is the right thing to do. It's our obligation."
Today, there are AdoptaPlatoon programs all over the United States that send packages and mail to 200,000 men and women stationed away from home.
Ida's life has completely changed.
AdoptaPlatoon has a Web site that is so comprehensive it takes 20 volunteer moms working with Ida to keep it updated.
Sure enough, when I checked it, right there at the top was a spiffy waving flag and a top of the page advertisement for the barbecue jam fest at the Great Pacific Coffee Company in Pacific.
"I stopped cooking every day," she said. "I told Mike (her husband), you're going to have to get your own dinner."
Standing next to her on the coffee company patio, Mike shrugged and tilted his chin in a little double take. He's glad to help, he said. He not only gets his own supper when he has to, he takes messages and travels with Ida to meet people all over the country who have taken up her cause.
It's absolutely the easiest thing in the world to do," Greg Hart said. "Once you let people know that they can send something to an American man or woman stationed away from home, people just come forward."
This year American Legion Post 320 wanted to know if they could join with the Harts and the Roadhouse Band at the fundraiser. Post 320 started an AdoptaPlatoon project last year and has now been assigned its second deployment.
"You only keep the platoon that's assigned to you until the end of their rotation," Greg said. "It just happened that our platoon had completed its rotation and we hadn't received a new platoon yet, so all of this collection will go to Post 320's unit."
The supporting D Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, known as The Dagger Brigade, is stationed in Iraq. This unit is part of the famous Big Red One, 1st Infantry Division, which is the oldest continuously serving division in the United States Army.
AdoptaPlatoon will leave the drop boxes around Pacific until July 11.
More information about AdoptaPlatoon is available at www.adoptaplatoon.org
