Magnets raise money for troops

Oct. 21, 2004
By Brooke Gent
Staff Writer

They are on bumpers everywhere. The Support Our Troops magnets, are $3.99 to $4.99 at local gas stations and grocery stores all over.

“We sell them pretty fast at $4.98 each and we only have the yellow ones,” a Murphy USA employee Daniel Fibes said. “I have seen people with different colored ones, which I hope we will be getting in shortly. The ribbons have sort of become a craze. Nearly everyone has at least one on their car.”

According to WBT news, the magnets were started by a grocer in Maine named Louann Barnes.  She made a magnet design through a company in North Carolina and ordered 550 magnets.  She sold those in two weeks and decided to order more.  She began selling the magnets to raise money to send to her son, Sgt. Daniel Goodwin’s, 133 engineer battalion in Iraq.

People have chipped in and started to order the ribbon magnets so they can sell them and they can reach all parts of the United States. Including other fundraisers, Barnes has accumulated over $10,000 to use to send items to the troops.

Magnet America is now the producer of the ribbon magnets and has sold up to 100,000 a week.

“Everything is manufactured in the United States just to keep it patriotic,” a partner of Magnet America Dwain Gullion said.

Guillon said his first big customer started an underground Operation We Care and, like many other companies, is using the money from the ribbons to send packages to the soldiers in Iraq.

The Ribbons now come in many different designs instead of just the yellow ribbon.  All of them are still in ribbon form, but flag colors, camouflage colors, purple and pink survivor ribbons, and black and red ribbons are available.  There are also different sayings other than the “Support Our Troops” ribbon. These include, “half my heart is in Iraq”, “POW/MIA”, “Freedom isn’t free”, “God Bless the USA”, and “One Nation Under God”.

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