“Dear, Mr. President,” wrote 10-year-old Brittany Ogden earlier this year, a letter-writing effort that came about quite by accident one day while she was visiting her grandparents.

“I was just practicing typing when I got the idea to write to the president,” says the bright-blue-eyed Brittany. But the idea had a tremendous amount of thought and reflection to it, reflection of what this 10-year-old has experienced about the war in Iraq in her young life. And the response from President George Bush was not an accident.

Her Papa, George Bunker, said, “I remember Britt was over our house and she was working on the computer. She came over to me and announced to me she was writing the president. I didn’t question her about what she was going to write but did encourage her to, ‘Go for it.'”

And so she did. In her letter to President George W. Bush, Brittany wrote, “I hereby call a welcome home party for the Iraq soldiers in Washington D.C. which you and I will plan if you agree to the recommendation that I am stating at this moment.”

As she pondered the idea of how she came about this “welcome home party,” she said, “I watch the news, my mom was getting ready to go to a funeral for a soldier who was killed, and I saw how my friends Jasmine and Dylan would get so excited when their dad came home. I saw my uncle G G (George) come home on the Theodore Roosevelt ship, too.”

Even Papa noticed the magnitude of the message. “When she was finished, I was amazed of how deep her thoughts were,” said Bunker.

But this avid reader and now writer went one step further in composing this masterpiece to our nation’s leader. She remembers reading about a thing called a slush pile, and so she went online and Googled for more information.

“I was just trying to make my letter sound like it was from a grown up because I had read about the slush pile that if it was from a kid, he wouldn’t read it, but apparently he did,” she said with a beaming smile.

The letter does have an adult tone to it, so her Papa stepped in to assist. “He told me I needed to write that I was 10 years old. So he helped me edit the letter and made sure I corrected some spelling and added commas.”

Perhaps the real surprise came when the mail arrived from the White House to her Hampden home in September. Her mother, Candace, was even more shocked as she had never read the letter but only knew of her daughter’s pastime activity while visiting Nana and Papa. In one quick phone call to Brittany’s grandparents for a copy of the e-mail letter, mom was in-the-know and as excited as Brittany.

“When mom saw the mail, she yelled, ‘Brittany, it’s from the White House … it’s for you,'” said Brittany.

The package contained a letter addressed to Brittany and a picture of the president and first lady. While the letter doesn’t specifically recognize Brittany’s request to plan a party, it does acknowledge she is a kid.

“I always enjoy hearing from young Americans, and I appreciate your thoughtful suggestions … The key to unlocking these opportunities is knowledge, so I encourage you to study hard and learn something new everyday by applying your education, your character, and your compassion, so you can help build a better America and write a hopeful new chapter in our history,” the letter said.

When asked about the message Brittany replied, “I don’t know, it sounds cool.” It’s not so much the message that excites Brittany, but the fact, “I got a letter on official White House stationery with a real seal on it.”

Anne Gabbianelli O’Reilly lives in Hampden and is an educator at area colleges.