‘I can do that’: Hilton Head volunteer showed how one person can make a global difference | Opinion

Remember this the next time you’re feeling puny, thinking you can’t make a difference.

Think about “The Cookie Lady” of Hilton Head Island.

Think about “Treat the Troops.”

And think about the global impact of 13 select words that fueled the volunteer work of Jeanette Cram.

Some knew this lady who passed away on Christmas Eve as a volunteer for 19 years at the island office of the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office. But the world knew her for sending homemade cookies to American troops serving overseas.

What began in her kitchen on one cookie sheet has grown into a national nonprofit.

It started with seven simple words.

Jeanette and her late husband, John, were watching TV in their New Jersey home in 1990 when President George H.W. Bush read a letter from a serviceman to his mom.

“Send letters and cookies. Lots of them,” the letter read.

Jeanette turned to John and said, “I can do that.”

She could and she did. And she recruited neighbors, urging them to help “treat the troops.”

A nonprofit by that name was created in 1991 and when Cram settled on Hilton Head the notion of those 11 words boomed from a handful of volunteers into an army of volunteers in kitchens across the nation baking cookies from scratch.

Cram was known as “The Cookie Lady” and they called themselves the “Crumbs.”

The first to tell the story nationally was Good Housekeeping magazine. Then came appearances on the “Martha Stewart Show,” the “Montel Williams Show,” “Fox & Friends,” the “John Walsh Show,” and a CBS morning show.

That fed corporate donations for supplies and bakeware. DuPont promoted its Teflon cookware with a “Great American Cookie Swap” benefiting Treat the Troops. DuPont expected about 1,500 people to sign up, but it turned out to be 20,000.

As piles of sugar cookies and snickerdoodles were boxed, hauled to the post office and shipped to most every continent and to ships at sea, commendations from the military piled up as well, and she received the island’s Alice Glenn Doughtie Good Citizenship Award.

Twice, Cram was invited to The Pentagon. She received a medal from the secretary of defense for “exceptional public service.” And in March 2006, she was welcomed into the Oval Office by President George W. Bush and Laura Bush along with representatives of 14 other grassroots organizations supporting troops.

She stressed at the time her volunteer work was not political.

“I don’t know about the damn war,” she told me. “I’m not privy to all the information. But I do know something about morale. I can do that. We can all do that.”

Cram was a pistol, and should have been a general herself with her innate ability to lead charges up a hill.

She was a double-breast cancer survivor who had been clean for 23 years before learning in October cancer had come back with a vengeance. She was 82 when she died, and she had selected her neighbor Meredith Hay to lead the Treat the Troops organization three years ago.

Today, the all-volunteer organization has shipped 8.2 million cookies — usually with a personal note and some other comfort items — to individual troops on duty outside the continental United States.

It has about 150 volunteers in more than a dozen states, making cookies at their own expense and soliciting donations for the shipping, which is $21.20 per box.

About 300 requests per month come in for specific soldiers to receive cookies. It’s all done by word of mouth, and via their website: treatthetroops.org.

So one person can make a difference.

And that leads to the last two words that made this uprising from island kitchens thrive: “Thank you.”

Cram ended up having a long-term relationship with the first of countless soldiers to send a touching note of thanks. And long after that U.S. Army master sergeant ended her 23-year military career, she looked back on the Cookie Lady saying:

“Her food has been around the world and it’s done a lot. And it’s still doing a lot. Soldiers are real people and little things go a long way. God bless her.”

David Lauderdale may be reached at LauderdaleColumn@gmail.com.