“These are nice cards!”

On the King Day of Service this past Monday, January 19, some of the 100,000 thank you cards that The Gallery Collection donated to Operation Gratitude made their way to Washington D.C.’s Calvin Coolidge High School, where students, military families, and local service groups were helping with various activities for the troops. The thank you cards were being used to write letters to service members deployed overseas.

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama made a special appearance at Coolidge High School during a service tour they were taking of Washington. While make their rounds to meet all the volunteers, then-President-Elect Obama stopped at one of the tables, picked up one of the thank you cards and exclaimed, “These are nice cards!” He then told one of the volunteers he was speaking to that he would only keep one of the cards, and handed it off to Michelle. The whole conversation was caught on video, and we have it for you to check out. He comments on our cards at one minute and 20 seconds into the video:

At another point during his visit to the high school, Mr. Obama said a few encouraging words about the volunteering and honoring the King Day of Service: “If we’re waiting for somebody else to do something, it never gets done,” he said. “We’re going to have to take responsibility, all of us. This is not just a one-day affair.”

How great it is to have such a significant man make a nice comment about the products we sell. Of course everyone who works at The Gallery Collection already knows how nice our cards are, but it never hurts to have the President of the United States of America reaffirm that for everyone to hear!

The King Day of Service was a Success Indeed!

This past Monday, January 19, was a very special day for The Gallery Collection. Not only was it the day before Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, but it was also the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service. And in honoring Dr. King as well as our troops currently stationed overseas, we donated 100,000 thank you cards to be included in Operation Gratitude care packages. Operation Gratitude teamed up with Target and Serve DC to set up a care package assembly line at the RFK Memorial Stadium in Washington DC. In paying tribute to Dr. King and acting in the spirit of the National Day of Service, thousands of volunteers came to the stadium to help assemble the packages and personalize thank you cards to individual soldiers. Here is some footage from the stadium:


You’ll notice in the video that some special guests made an appearance, including Michelle Obama and Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut. At the end of the day, over 75,000 care packages were assembled, thanks to the thousands of people who volunteered their time to help. We all worked together to make this past Monday a day ON instead of a day off.


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