Employees at the Hollis, NH, Post Office have processed and mailed nearly 2 million greeting cards to military service members since 2017, thanks to the efforts of a local psychologist and her legion of volunteers.
In 2003, Laura Landerman-Garber began a family tradition of writing cards for the men and women deployed abroad.
In subsequent years, she reached out to neighbors and community members to help. By 2017, volunteers had written almost 5,000 cards — each one mailed from the Hollis Post Office.
Then a friend of her daughter was stationed on aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt.
“She told me there were 5,000 sailors on board, and I wanted to send a card to each of them,” Landerman-Garber said.
She spread the word through newspapers, social media and television. She also made hundreds of phone calls to veterans groups, churches and other organizations.
More than 17,000 cards arrived at her house, and she made almost daily visits to the Post Office to mail them.
The number of cards increased each year as more people learned of the initiative. A group of veterans built a shed behind her house so she could store the cards prior to mailing them.
On peak volume days, Hollis Postmaster Ashley Cook welcomed her in as early as 5:30 a.m. so employees could process the many boxes of cards.
“In 2024, we received 365,000 cards. That’s 365 boxes of 1,000 cards. And Hollis is not a large Post Office,” Landerman-Garber said. “Boxes spilled into the hallway. The sun hadn’t even come up yet. Snow was falling. It was hard work but it was joyful, and the employees did everything with a smile.”
Rural Carrier Chris Meade, Retail Associates Tony Hanneman and Katarzyna Farnum, and Clerk Scott Caldeira from the nearby Brookline Post Office picked up packages from her house and loaded and unloaded the boxes.
Andrew Niederberger, a USPS senior territory sales representative, showed Landerman-Garber how to use Click-N-Ship to apply prepaid postage and customs forms to each flat-rate box, making them shipping ready when they arrived at the Post Office.
USPS involvement helped transform her grassroots initiative into the nonprofit organization Holiday Cards 4 Our Military Challenge. The year-round effort includes sending Valentine’s Day cards and “Happy Spring” cards to not only current service members but also veterans in hospitals, nursing homes and assisted living communities. To date, 1.9 million cards have been processed and mailed.
“Everyone has been so supportive, and they handle everything with such care and dedication,” Landerman-Garber said. “It’s truly a shared mission that builds community.”
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