Package that soldier never opened inspires others

LAKE HAMILTON, Fla. — It was just a small package.

Glennette Jackson knew her big brother liked peanuts, and when he asked for more as he prepared to head out on a dangerous mission in Afghanistan, she didn’t hesitate. She had mailed similar packages twice a month since he deployed, and the peanuts he’d boil in the war zone were a hit with other Army Rangers in his battalion.

“I had sent John, like, five bags of peanuts,” Glennette said. “He said ... ‘Go ahead and send me more because by the time it gets here, I’ll need them.’ “

Her brother, Army Staff Sgt. John A. Reiners, sent that message to Glennette on Facebook. He and his sister were just a couple of years apart in age and always had been close as they grew up together in the small community of Lake Hamilton in Polk County.

Glennette dropped a few packages in the mail just before Valentine’s Day 2010, including the one with the peanuts. The package made it to Afghanistan, but its recipient wasn’t there to pick it up.

On the morning of Feb. 14, Glennette and her mother, Ronna Jackson, watched as uniformed officers walked up to their door.

“It brings reality to know the news they’re going to deliver ... that there’s no words and nothing you can do to stop it,” Ronna Jackson said. “I remember hitting the guy, asking him if he was sure it was my son. He stood there honorably. All he could do is extend his condolences.”

Her son was on a foot patrol in south Afghanistan when a motorcyclist detonated a bomb on Feb. 13, 2010. The suicide bomber killed the Polk County native and two other soldiers.

Two weeks after the officers showed up at the house, so did something else: the package with the peanuts. It was marked Return to Sender.

The months that followed were hard. Glennette couldn’t sleep. She tried counseling. Nothing seemed to work.

“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about my brother and there’s not a week that goes by that I don’t spend at least one night crying about him,” she said. “It’s just that it’s hidden. You hide it from society. You hide it from the people around you.”

Christmas was hard. Valentine’s Day was hard. Watching other soldiers returning from war on TV was the toughest, Ronna Jackson said.

“A part of me wants to rejoice with those families,” she said. “But then there’s still a part of me that knows that I’ll never be able to see my son come home.”

Yet through the pain, the family found therapy of a different kind.

They kept sending packages. In a way, each would be symbolic of the package John never got to open.

“So packing the first box was actually bringing back and reopening healed wounds. It was hard,” Glennette said.

But she knew much of the joy John got from opening the packages came when he shared the bounty with his friends.

“I used to always have to send John duplicates of items that I knew he would like because he would give them away to somebody else,” she said. “They give it to each other like we share gum or peppermints in church.”

Eventually, Glennette and her mom were sending so many baby wipes, tissues, cellphones and packages of beef jerky that they started a nonprofit in March and named it Project Packages. In May, they shipped 28 packages.

“They’re all hard to pack and even harder to sit there and write a letter to a soldier and tell him why, randomly, he was going to get these boxes monthly from some strange lady across the world,” Ronna Jackson said. “When the letters kept coming back -- the thank yous -- and knowing that they looked forward to it as much as I did ... it does sort of help a little bit.”

Glennette hangs on to her last conversation with John.

“It was my last memory,” she said. “It was a good memory. The conversation was good. And that’s the last memory that I wanted to relive.”