RSSMarine Shows Survivors They Are Not Forgotten
Carl | January 10, 2012
He traveled more than 1,300 miles to support children and their families, most of which he had never met. Like them, he had lost someone in the military that he cared about.
“I had a buddy (Lance Cpl. Jordan Haerter) who actually died in Iraq in 2008. He saved my life, and he gave me a new lease on life,” said Cpl. Corey Teague, an infantry skills instructor with the Training and Instructor Group (TIG) at Marine Corps Security Cooperation Group (MCSCG) in Virginia Beach, Va. “So, I (decided I would) start volunteering and give back to the people that gave so much.”
For Teague, the military families were those who gave just as much as the service members they lost, so he decided to become a mentor for an organization called the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (T.A.P.S.).
“T.A.P.S. is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide support and comfort for families of fallen military members after Sept. 11,” said Ami Neiberger-Miller, the T.A.P.S Public Affairs Officer. “Every staff member at T.A.P.S. is a survivor of a fallen service member or a military family member.”
Their volunteer workforce includes active duty military service members, who have spent more than 40,000 hours of their time in the last year training in how to companion a child who is grieving and volunteer their time to support the children left behind by fallen service members.
T.A.P.S. helps with an annual event in Dallas called Snowball Express to provide four days of fun and healing for surviving families. They provide a support team with grief counselors and mentors like Teague.
“We’re there to facilitate fun, enable laughter, supervise the kids and help the parents out in any way we can,” said Teague, who is a native of Norfolk, Virginia, “We give mom a break when the kids are all rowdy. We take the kids off her hands for a while and we take the kids out to have fun.”
Not only did many military moms attend the event but also sisters, aunts, uncles and dads as well. This year, almost 1,700 family members from all over the United States and from as far as Australia and Guam flew in on nine airplanes provided by American Airlines.
They rode to each destination on six greyhound charter buses and 40 Dallas County school buses escorted by the Patriot Guard Riders.
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