Volunteers continued ‘Holiday Gifts for Soldiers’ drive, in honor of Foultz

When Anna Foultz passed away last year, she left an enormous void in the Ocean Pines community. However, a small team of dedicated volunteers has kept her spirit alive by continuing one of her favorite causes: the annual “Holiday Gifts for Soldiers” collection. 

Now leading that effort are Barbara Peletier and Susan Walter, both former officers in Foultz’s Star Charities nonprofit. 

Peletier and her husband, Dan, moved to Maryland from New Jersey in 1963. They later moved to Ocean Pines from Columbia, Maryland in 2004. 

Prior to retiring, Peletier worked in office management for medical practices, something she said made her very detail oriented. 

Her second career, as a volunteer, started with a local Kiwanis chapter in 2005. Since then, both Peletier and her husband have served as club president. 

“He had a friend that said he’d take him along and he checked it out. It was all new to us, because he had just stopped working. But it just snowballed, and I kept going and they kept adding and adding things to do,” she said. “As my husband says, I don’t know how to say no – except to him!” 

With the Kiwanis, Peletier started a program of assembling holiday treats to be delivered to the Meals on Wheels recipients. 

“Three times a year, for Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Easter, I would make up little baskets for them to take with the meal for that day,” she said. 

She was also a prominent part of the Kiwanis’ presence at local events, often selling hotdogs and sodas to raise money for the club. 

Working with Anna 

About five or six years ago, Peletier started looking for additional ways to serve the community. 

“I thought I’d take a break from Kiwanis, because I was burning out, and that [time off] lasted all of three months,” she said with a laugh. “But, during that time, I went and I found Anna.” 

Foultz was known to many in Ocean Pines as a tireless volunteer and a woman with a keen ability to talk her friends into joining whatever worthy cause she was working on at the moment. 

“It was supposed to be an ‘I’m not going to do anything’ kind of time, but all of the sudden she had me running things,” Peletier said. 

Peletier first oversaw a fundraising event for Foultz at the Ocean Pines Golf Club, and soon after she became vice president of Star Charities. 

“It just snowballed from there,” she said. “Anna was just a cute lady that you couldn’t say no to. She just had a way, and she had a heart that was bigger than she was. And she was always giving.” 

When Foultz passed away in September 2019, Peletier and Walter scrambled to continue “Holiday Gifts for Soldiers,” collecting donations for U.S. Military men and women serving overseas, and then distributing the items around Christmastime. 

Foultz had started the campaign more than a decade ago with her late husband, Carl, a combat veteran. Peletier said the annual event also became one of her favorites. 

“That was closer to my heart than just raising money all the time. I enjoyed that one the most, and that’s why Sue and I decided it had to go on,” she said. “They’re forgotten – people forget that they’re there – and I don’t want that to happen and neither does Sue. No soldier should be forgotten.” 

“Gifts for Our Soldiers” starts each fall and runs through October, with donations then given to Operation We Care in Salisbury and from there shipped to U.S. Military bases overseas. 

This year, volunteers over four Wednesdays collected donations in the parking lot near the Ocean Pines Community Center. There were, of course, restrictions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, but Peletier said the collection was another success. 

“We had a really good turnout, and it was better than I thought it would be,” she said. “We had the masks and the gloves, and people were really good about it. They stayed in their car and popped their trunks or opened their backdoors, and they didn’t seem to mind.” 

Peletier said helping the collection this year was another local woman, Sharon Hilty. 

Hilty gathered donations in Ocean City in remembrance of her son, U.S. Army Sfc. John David Randolph Hilty, who died in April while serving in Iraq. 

“She emailed me and hooked up with us in the last two weeks, and that put us over the top,” Peletier said. “She did it in memory of her son, because he had at one time received something from Operation We Care. He had told his mother how wonderful it was and that everybody in the troop received something.” 

Peletier said she plans to continue the event for as long as she can – and as long as her friend is willing to help. “Without Sue, this all couldn’t happen,” she said, adding that the Kiwanis and Larry Walton of the local AARP were also instrumental. 

“It’s just the right thing to do,” Peletier said. “Anna loved to do it, but I think she most liked hugging the soldiers when they came to pick everything up.” 

Diakonia and looking forward 

These days, Peletier also works with Diakonia, a local nonprofit that specializes in homelessness prevention and rehabilitation. 

“I’ve been knitting hats to put in their bags for the homeless,” she said. “I’ve also made afghans for all my children and my grandchildren. That keeps me busy!” 

Peletier first visited Diakonia around 2005, while working with the Kiwanis. 

“We’ve been going there every year to sort and bag Kiwanis’ donations and anybody else’s donations,” she said. “It just feels like I’ve done something, and I can see it when somebody comes, and they say ‘thank you’ for the food. And I didn’t have to sell a hotdog! 

“I love it down there,” she continued. “It’s different. I enjoy raising money, but there’s more enjoyment doing something when you can see an end result right away.” 

For anyone considering volunteer service, Peletier offered a few words of wisdom. 

“I’d say if you have an idea that you want to do something, try it. You never know until you try it. That's what I did. I’m probably the shyest person going, and these days you can’t shut me up,” she said with a laugh. 

“It’s also very rewarding to see the response from this community,” Peletier continued. “We couldn’t do it without them, and this really is just the most generous community.” Donations to Operation We Care can be dropped off year-round at O.C. Carpet in the Route 50 West Business Park on 12319 Ocean Gateway #301, in Ocean City. For more information, visit www.operationwecare.org.