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Afghanistan, Kandahar, Bagram, Oman, Jordan, Kuwait –
we’ve delivered over 150,000 pizzas to our soldiers in the Middle East and around the world;
that’s a million slices of pizza.
I’m Master Sergeant Mark Evans, I’m the President of Pizzas 4 Patriots.
we send pizzas to the soldiers.
We want to send a message to them and let them know that we’re here thinking about them.
The project started on a Friday night with my son and I.
The war was on TV - we were eating pizza and he said,
‘Hey dad, can we get pizza to the guys out there?” and I said yes, we could do that.
We have a bunch of pizza partners, we call it our pizza coalition.
ARYZTA Great Kitchens builds the pizzas for us.
Mark approached us several years ago with an opportunity
to get behind and support the troops.
What we started to do was partner with a lot of our vendors to bring this program together –
was just natural that we would be the ones to support this
and we wanted to get behind a program to feed our troops.
Our Veterans Day project is to feed wounded patriots
who are permanently in veteran hospitals.
It’s their day, and when you walk in that room and you have pizza –
their eyes light up and they’re like, “Why are you doing this?”
I know the stresses they’re under, it’s vital that we let them know we’re here.
So just a slice of home out to them and let them know
we’re here thinking of them, there’s no better feeling.
Mark is kind enough to share all the stories – we see the letters,
we see on the website the excitement, the pictures of the people.
I just get overwhelmed when I read these cards. I had one soldier say you know,
“I’m a highly decorated combat veteran and I was sitting with my guys
and we were dropped some pizzas and I just started to cry, I wept.”
“And I couldn’t believe- I wan to thank you so much.”
“It just made me feel like I was home.”
And that’s our goal, the best pizza on earth for our guys.
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