Cleveland: Helping hands needed to pack music for soldiers

CLEVELAND, Tenn. — A hundred volunteers are needed to get more Tunes 4 the Troops on their way to America’s military around the world.

Kaylee Marie Radzyminski, the Cleveland High School student who founded tunes4thetroops.org three years ago as a freshman, is planning a big packing party next Saturday at Cleveland High School.

Miss Radzyminski was featured on CNN earlier this year in the CNN Heroes feature. Since then, DVDs and music and audio CDs have poured in from about 200 collection sites across the country. Contributors range from individuals to entertainment companies, including the Showtime cable network.

The job, Miss Radzyminski said, is to pack nearly 50,000 items in a day and get them in the mail to 270 APO (military) addresses.

“It’s the biggest party Tunes 4 the Troops has ever attempted,” Miss Radzyminski said.

Her mother, Stephanie Radzyminski, said the packing party will be set up like an assembly line so no one has a particularly difficult job.

Boxes and packing tape already are available.

Volunteers are needed to unwrap donations, sort the genres, make and fill boxes, seal, label and address the goods. She hopes the work can be done in about four hours.

Volunteers don’t have to register or sign up, just show up.

Miss Radzyminski has said in interviews with local and national media that she organized tunes4thetroops among her friends after learning that American troops craved music and movies from home. She said the program is not meant to express an opinion on the war itself.

She said donations to date are valued at about $4 million.

The project needs some financial help, too.

Each box costs about $15 to ship. Those 270 boxes will total about $4,000. Miss Radzyminski is suggesting groups and organizations “adopt a box” to help out.