We are overwhelmed with the gratitude and letters we have received! On January 22, Learning Without Tears launched a letter-writing campaign in celebration of National Handwriting Day to say thank you to the sailors on our adopted US Navy ship, the USS John C. Stennis. Our aim was to help students in school districts across the nation send handwritten notes of thanks to the sailors at sea.

The response was overwhelming—students from over 1,000 classrooms, including homeschoolers and occupational therapists, wrote letters. With the help of our partner, VetAdvisor^®, we are packing up over 15,000 letters to send off to our ship!

The letters will take a journey of almost two months to reach the ship, which is in the middle of a 16-month deployment.

Dan Frank, VetAdvisor CEO, points out that “Soldiers and civilians alike use handwriting as a way of getting work done—from service updates to sticky note reminders to mathematical calculations; but this program aims at using the skill to bring joy to our troops and allows students to learn more about what happens outside the classroom.”

Students embraced the program with enthusiasm, drawing pictures, asking questions, making Valentine's Day cards, and, of course, practicing handwriting.