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- A 96-year-old grandma hand-wrote 8,000 holiday cards to American troops this year.
- Since 2020, she's written almost 24,000 cards, averaging about 50 a day.
- She said her husband served in WWII, and she knows how hard it is to be separated from loved ones.
A 96-year-old grandmother in Kansas has made it her mission to cheer up military service members during the holidays.
Mary Peterson — or Grandma Mary, as she signs her cards — of McPherson, Kansas, has handwritten nearly 24,000 holiday cards to US military members worldwide since 2020, according to local outlet KAKE.
This year alone, she wrote 8,000 cards in her elegant cursive — a task that she begins in mid-summer, averaging about 50 cards daily, KAKE reported.
"God bless you and keep you safe. That is my prayer for you. Grandma Mary, McPherson, Kansas," she wrote in one of her cards, according to KAKE.
And if you've noticed the price of a single holiday card lately, don't worry — Peterson told KAKE her community donates thousands of blank cards to her each year, saving her what would likely otherwise be a very expensive endeavor.
When she's done filling the cards out for the season, she takes them to the Fort Riley Army base to be shipped out.
Peterson told KAKE that she does it because she knows what it's like to be separated from family and friends during the holiday season — she said her husband fought in World War II, and her older brother served abroad when she was in high school.
"There's so many heartaches and broken homes, and people that went to the service because it was simply something else for them to do. And they won't hear from family because they've lost their connection," Peterson told KAKE.
"I hope it makes them realize that there's somebody that still loves them, and loves what they're doing," she added.
Peterson isn't the only person sending thousands of cards to US troops over the holidays.
In 2021, a Colorado woman named Marlys Halbeisen wrote more than 38,000 cards to military members around the world after crowdfunding money to pay for shipping on GoFundMe.
In 2019, Laura Landerman-Garber of New Hampshire helped lead a project to send over 100,000 cards to US troops, CNN reported at the time.