On April 19, 2007 approximately 1630 MyHuggy.com Teddy Bears arrived at Hargrave Military Academy. The $59.99 bears are the highlight of a special outreach effort from Hargrave to Shoemaker High School in Killeen, Texas. The outreach is sponsored by a group of seven Hargrave Cadets and their advisor Dianna Lavoie.

The idea to help the Shoemaker students came from an NPR broadcast entitled “Iraq War’s Effects Seen, Felt in High School’s Halls” The broadcast focused on one interesting bit of information. Approximately 85-90% of the students in the school have at least one parent serving overseas in the U.S. military.

Shoemaker serves the parents stationed at Ft. Hood, Texas, where the Army's Fourth Infantry and First Cavalry divisions are based. The two divisions have alternated deployments through the last four years of war.

For the students, the lack of parents has been tough. The story reported that parents are noticeably absent from football games and other typical school functions. With so many parents away, school attendance has fallen. Students' grades are slipping, so fewer are graduating. The school also is seeing more discipline problems.

In order to reach out to their peers, a small group of Hargrave Cadets have taken a leadership roll in supporting Shoemaker’s students. They have three phases to their project.

In the first phase, members of the group and Corps of Cadets wrote personal notes of thanks to Shoemaker’s students. In the second phase, Hargrave held a prayer service for the Shoemaker students and flew small American flags, enough for each Shoemaker student, in honor of each Shoemaker student on campus. These flags also shipped in the third phase. The flags flew on Hargrave’s campus for about a week.

In the third phase, the students enlisted the aid of MyHuggy.com, a Thiensville, Wisconsin based teddy bear company with a very special bear. The MyHuggy.com bear features a voice recorder that activates when hugged. The intent is for a parent to record messages, (love, encouragement, wisdom, values), prior to deployment or leaving for a trip. The child can then hug the bear to hear a message. Over twenty messages can be recorded.

The owner of MyHuggy.com, Steven Cotcher, is a former Marine who was deployed for an extended period of service. Upon return home, he found that his youngest child was afraid of him and his older children were very distant. The MyHuggy.com bear is an effort to bridge the gap for a parent away from home.

Cotcher stated that his 1630 bear donation to Hargrave’s effort comes from his heart, and was not intended as a stunt. Further, he personally drove the bears from Wisconsin to Hargrave for the Cadets.

Hargrave Cadets placed batteries, bows, the flags and recorded a short message in each bear prior to their shipment to Shoemaker. This idea germinated into a school wide project.

The bears were shipped to Shoemaker from a donation from Hargrave’s Parent’s Council, who raised the money to for shipping. The bears are currently at Shoemaker awaiting distribution for Friday, May 18, 2007. Lavoie has seven students in her advisee group. They are:

John Adams, the son of Craig and Nancy Adams of Raleigh, North Carolina.
Klaeton Davis, the son of Brad Davis of Fairfax, Virginia and Traci Cahill of Flower Mound, Texas
Scott Dinius, the son of Brian and Susan Dinius of Carmel, Indiana.
Zachary Edmunds, the son of Catherine Palmer of Arlington, Virginia.
Christopher Hung, the son o f Li-Fand Kwan of San Francisco, California.
Julian Schneider, the son of Darren and Amanda Schneider of San Francisco, California.
Jeffery Tabor, the son of Mark and Ann Tabor of Crofton, Maryland.