Here is an older article about a Lance Cpl. Brad Durkin of Andover, MA:This year, Santa will be two days late to the Durkin family home on Shawsheen Road.
That's because 20-year-old Brad Durkin, a lance corporal with the Marine Corps, will be spending Christmas Day handing out toys with Toys for Tots, and the family plans to celebrate Christmas on Saturday, Dec. 27 after he is finished.
"I'm going to be very happy on Christmas morning knowing that I have done all that I can. Sgt. Boice (his supervisor at Toys for Tots) and I have a saying: 'We won't stop until every tot has a toy, and every toy has a tot,'" said Durkin.
Durkin has spent seven 12-hour days a week through December working as assistant coordinator for the Toys for Tots effort in New Hampshire. It's a role he "fell into," he says, after going into the Marine Corps Reserves to recover from a series of surgeries.
Last June, when Durkin was halfway through a three-month Marine training stint in the Mojave Desert — and just two months away from deployment to Iraq, his appendix burst. His injuries were life threatening, as previously reported in the Townsman, but after several surgeries and a few setbacks, he has been home in Andover since August, steadily recovering.
Once healed, he hopes to be deployed overseas with his Bravo 1/25 reserve company out of Londonderry, N.H., he said.
This fall, Toys for Tots asked Durkin to help them buy calling a few people to ask them to participate in the program again this year. But he so threw himself into the work they gave him the title of assistant coordinator, he said...
Read the rest of the inspiring article here.
