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Community Outreach
School supply drive

The Lt. Dennis W. Zilinski, II Memorial Fund would like to thank everyone for participating in our school supply drive.

Thank you so much!

We've collected over 5,000 items including:

• 1,000 Pencils
• 500 Colored pencils
• 50 Pencil sharpeners
• 210 Erasers
• 110 Notebooks
• 30 Pads of construction paper
• 370 Markers
• 200 Pens

We're going to ship the supplies to US servicemen/women in Afghanistan to distribute to schoolchildren.

Any questions? Contact Abbey Thorpe: abbey_thorpe@bths.mcvsd.org, 732-671-3327

About this Project

The Zilinski family attends Middletown Reformed Church. Lt. Dennis W. Zilinski, II went to Middletown Village Elementary School, Thorne Middle School, and graduated from Christian Brothers Academy in 2000. He then attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, graduating in 2004.

Dennis died in November of 2005 while fighting in Iraq. Since his death, an entire organization has been created that does fundraisers and other things to support soldiers and veterans, all in Dennis's name. This supply drive is just one relatively small project with the Lt. Dennis W. Zilinski, II Memorial Fund.

Shortly before Dennis died, he had a conversation with his mother in which he mentioned how terrible the conditions for kids in Iraq were, specifically how little resources they had. He asked her to send him candy and school supplies to give to the kids that he met while in Iraq. Unfortunately, the supplies never reached him.

Last year, Mrs. Zilinski asked that this project be done in Dennis's memory. With support from many wonderful families, schools, and churches, we collected over 6,000 school supplies. Those supplies were sent to a US airmen and contact of ours in Afghanistan. With your help, we hope to send even more supplies this year.

For more information about the Lt. Dennis W. Zilinski, II Memorial Fund, please visit www.runwithdennis.org