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Mattresses help troops
Mattress toppers 1 jd
Shean Suter, left, and Bjorn Pvlsen unload a truck full of mattress toppers Wednesday at the Cumming Post Office. The mattresses are headed to soldiers in Afghanistan. - photo by Jim Dean
Soon another 100 American soldiers in Afghanistan will be able to rest a little easier.A shipment of 100 memory foam mattress toppers was sent overseas from the Cumming Post Office earlier this week.The boxes, 20-by-20-by-16 inches, were piled into the post office by Rita Scott, a Forsyth County resident who founded the nonprofit Hero Support.Since March 2008, Scott has been shipping the 4-inch thick mattress toppers overseas, and estimates that she’s sent more than 1,000 to date.“It’s amazing to see the notes and e-mails I get from [the soldiers] about how grateful they are for that little bit of comfort,” she said. “It makes a difference, not only in that they get a better night’s sleep, but also [in seeing] that people care.”Scott had sent care packages for a long time, but didn’t focus on mattress pads until after meeting Marine Lt. Col. Margaret Weitzel at a Sean Hannity Freedom Concert.Weitzel, a Carrollton resident who was deploying to Iraq, said she would let Scott know what items the troops would most like to receive in care packages.It was the worn mattresses that caught her attention.“We were grateful to have some kind of mattress, but springs were sticking out of them and they were really horrible,” Weitzel said. “What little time we had to sleep, it was hard to get any.”She asked Scott to send some egg crate-style toppers, but was surprised a couple months later to receive a dozen top-of-the-line Memory Foam mattresses Weitzel kept one for herself and distributed the others to junior Marines, with one stipulation — that they write letters of thanks to Scott.“Our ability to get a good night’s rest impacted our ability to perform our duties,” Weitzel said.