When Jennifer Jackman, Elsmore, was asked to help decorate Christmas trees at the White House, expenses for the trip were a consideration.
In stepped husband Mike. The trip was his Christmas gift to her.
Specifically, she was one of three American Gold Star Mothers asked to decorate the tree designated for the organization, a national group for mothers of military personnel who have died while on active duty.
She spent the five days immediately after Thanksgiving in Washington, D.C.
The first two she and 135 other volunteers prepared decorations, many recycled from years past, for the White House’s 32 Christmas trees. Each tree has a distinct theme.
The next three days they were at the White House decorating the trees.
“It’s quite an honor to be selected,” she added; many who apply wait years for the honor.
“It took us a day and a half to do our tree,” she said of herself and two other Gold Star Mothers. “Then we helped with the other trees.”
Jackman, the AGSM national chaplain, also was asked to introduce First Lady Michelle Obama when she unveiled the trees to the nation.
“I was given some guidelines and asked to write a 90-second speech,” Jackman said.
With 32 years of mainly executive duties in health care, Jackman’s final draft was so well prepared that no changes were made. She delivered it, standing side-by-side with the First Lady.
“That was a phenomenal experience,” Jackman said, as were all that occurred with the decorating, being in the halls of the White House, “where Kennedy and Lincoln and the other presidents once stood.”
Jackman said she also had a message for the First Lady: “Please make sure the troops who are coming home have good jobs and benefits.”
The decorating was distinctly bipartisan, Jackman observed: “It was all about
America and volunteering.”
AMERICAN GOLD STAR Mothers was organized at the end of World War I.
Jackman, 54, first learned of the organization when she went to a veterans event after their son, Marine Ryan Jackman, died in a training accident in California, just a week before he was to deploy to Iraq in 2007.
