Having spent two years as the Regional Logistics Manager in Southwest Asia, Artie Van Riper knew what it was like to receive gifts from home during the holidays—and what it was like when they didn’t come.
“Logistics used to send boxes from headquarters to the SWA LG team prior to COVID,” said Van Riper, a logistics analyst who returned to Dallas in August 2022. “It was easier when the headquarters staff was working in the building, because they’d put boxes out and they’d be filled, and they’d send them out.”
Then COVID hit.
“My second year in SWA, nobody was in the office, and nothing came,” Van Riper said. “I realized how important those boxes were to the folks over there. I’d had family send me a box, and I realized how enjoyable that made my holidays.”
Van Riper began asking around in Dallas and started to spearhead an effort to send holiday boxes. He stresses that the boxes weren’t his idea originally. “My time in SWA did inspire me,” he said. “But it was really reinvigorating something that happened in the past.”
At LG’s 2022 holiday gathering, boxes were there for HQ associates to donate gifts. Nearly 50 people donated out of their own pockets, shopped on their own time and even contributed money to cover postage and shipping costs. Boxes included snacks, socks, gift cards and more.
The HQ team collected more than 12 boxes for the five LG team members in SWA: Lewis Meza, Regional Logistics Manager-SW Asia; Alecia Barrett, logistics technician; Robert Boothe, operations manager; and contractors Amer Bedsok and Khansa Mohideen.
Good timing helped with the surprise: The packages arrived on Christmas Day.
“We were working on Christmas Day,” said Meza, who deployed in August, “so we were able to open them in the morning on Christmas. I could tell that everyone back home pitched in. They were very thoughtful about it. Everyone got gift cards, which was especially nice for our other-country nationals. It’s nice for them to be able to go into the store they help to move merchandise into and buy something, knowing it was from the LG team in the US.”
Van Riper said sending gift boxes to the SWA LG team will resume as an annual tradition.
“COVID changed the world for us,” Van Riper said. “You have to adapt. Now that we know how to do this post-COVID, we’ll get it done. Just seeing the joy in their faces is well worth it.”
Leave a Reply