‘Twas the night before Christmas at BIA Wyoming outfitter donates clothes for returning troops

A section of the terminal at Bangor International Airport on Christmas Eve looked more like an aisle in that discount store famous for blue-light specials than it did a waiting area for holiday travelers.

Men and women tried on winter jackets, vests and sweaters. They compared colors and styles and fingered material. They did everything but check the price tags.

That’s because this clothing was a surprise Christmas gift from a Wyoming outfitter to soldiers returning from a 141/2-month tour in Iraq. Nearly 300 soldiers headed for Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas, and Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, Colo., stopped in Bangor for a short layover about 5:15 p.m. Monday.

It was the first time clothing has been given away to returning soldiers, according to veteran troop greeters, who thanked them for their service and directed them to cell phones, restrooms, smoking areas and the table piled with clothing.

Two young women wasted no time getting into the shopping spirit.

“I like this color,” Spc. Shaunette Buntain, 21, of San Antonio, Texas, said as she held a pale blue sweater up against her desert fatigues to show fellow soldier Spc. Cassandra Strassburg, 21, of Seattle. “It’s kind of girlie. I like that since I’ve been dressing like a guy for over 14 months.”

After trading the light blue one for a

steel gray version, Buntain eventually settled on a gold sweater.

Spc. Tonia Littlejohn, 38, of Gainesville, Ga., will spend the holidays alone in a hotel room, she said Monday.

“For me, this is a nice surprise because I have no clothes,” she said, “and these clothes are very high-quality.”

Cloudveil is a decade-old outdoor clothing company based in Jackson, Wyo. Its products cater to mountain athletes and fly anglers and are sold in more than 450 outdoor specialty stores in the U.S. and abroad. The items given to soldiers retail for $100 to $400.

Cameron Barker, who does community outreach for the firm, decided the best way to dispose of the boxes and boxes of prototypes sitting in the office basement was to give them away as presents.

Since her brother Sgt. Stephen Barker, a reconnaissance Marine in the 2nd Battalion, was returning home this month from his second tour in Iraq, she decided to give the clothing to the returning troops. Cameron Barker remembered her brother’s stories about the troop greeters at BIA and sought them out through the American Legion headquarters in Washington, D.C.

“My job,” she said in a telephone interview Monday, “was to find a way to donate the clothing to people. We wanted to spread the love, so I decided to do that through a cause close to my heart.”

The only drawback was that because the clothes are samples, everything came in only one size – medium.

“If the soldiers can’t wear the clothing themselves,” she said, “they can take something to give someone as a gift.”

That’s exactly what Spc. Joachim Francis of Long Beach, Calif., did. He picked out a black winter vest for his sister who lives in Washington state.

“It’s the right size for my sister,” he said.

Cloudveil also sent boxes of clothing to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Bethesda Medical Center and disabled veterans’ groups so the warm jackets and sweaters can go to cold, homeless veterans. She also sent 14 boxes to Randy Kluj, 60, of Milo, who is the liaison from the American Legion posts in Maine to the troop greeters.

Kluj and his wife, Janet Kluj, 59, steered soldiers toward the merchandise. He posed with soldiers and their selections while she snapped their pictures.

In a way, the couple was rehearsing on Christmas Eve for their son Randy S. Kluj’s homecoming at Fort Hood on Jan. 5. The troop greeters will welcome the 26-year-old chief warrant officer at BIA, while his parents await his arrival in Texas.