Donating a few hours to help veterans’ families round out their Easter dinner table is a small sacrifice, given what those on the receiving end did for our nation.

That’s how the members of the Weatherly American Legion Auxiliary Unit 360 felt about packing Easter food boxes for VALOR, Veterans Assisted Living Outreach, veterans food pantry in Kunkletown.

Five auxiliary members volunteered to pack boxes that were distributed this week to more than 700 veterans and their families for Easter.

Unit President Georgeann Herling saw the nonprofit needed volunteers to pack boxes and members eagerly stepped up despite their own busy Easter week activities, she said.

“We try to honor our veterans’ sacrifice,” Herling said Tuesday, a day after the group helped pack 756 food boxes as a service to the nation’s veterans. “Some of them really need the help and they’re forgotten.

“People don’t think of them, of what they did,” she said. “They gave up their homes, their families, and in many cases, their lives, to make sure that we have freedom in this country.”

“There’s nothing we can do to totally make up for that,” Herling said, reflecting on her day of service.

The Easter food boxes contained staples such as potatoes, carrots, onions, sweet potatoes, apples, cans of green beans, corn, cranberry sauce, gravy, rice, stuffing, fruit filling and pie crust, along with eggs, butter, bacon, milk, juice and bread.

The extra help preparing the boxes for their 690 families in Pennsylvania and New Jersey was welcome, said Leia Collins, pantry manager, and they had 705 boxes going out.

The Weatherly auxiliary actually prepared more boxes than the pantry needed, Collins said, but it’s all good — great, in fact. As pantry manager, she coordinates food for any veteran in need, or any family with veteran that is in need, she said.

“We’re to the point where we’re going down to Bucks County now, too,” Collins said. “We have a coordinator there, too, but I am the central pantry. All the food donations come to me, and I process and inventory the and send them out the branches of the foundation that need it.”

The pantry is transitioning to a new location in Saylorsburg, where veterans will be able to come one Wednesday a month and shop, like a grocery store, Collins said.

‘If they need something specific, we can, through donations, go and purchase things for them,” she said.

Collins, 31 days into her job, loves every minute of it, even when it feels overwhelming, she said.

“The amount of people that you help in one day, it really hits you right in the soul,” Collins said.

Auxiliary member Georgia Farrow is struck by the amount of food insecurity in the area, not just veterans, but families with children.

“I don’t like to see hungry kids in any shape or form,” she said, “And if we can help our veterans — and some of them are having a hard time right now — I feel veterans are forgotten.

“I don’t want them to be forgotten, because they deserve the best. “Unfortunately, in this society, they don’t get the best.”

Judy Desrosiers, another auxiliary member who was packing boxes Wednesday, thought about her father, grandfather and father-in-law and where they were on Easter Sunday when they served in Germany and Vietnam.

“Where were they on Easter Day? What were they eating? Were they in a ditch? Were they in a jungle? Did they have a meal that day?” she said.

One week has 168 hours to get things done and prepare for the Easter holiday for her family, Derosiers said.

“All I had to give up was five hours to help do 756 boxes to put a smile on some veterans’ faces,” she said. “I had such a good feeling when I came home.”

People have freedom in this country because of our veterans, Desrosiers said.

“Everything we enjoy are benefits we have from the sacrifices that our veterans gave,” she said.