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Operation Sweet Tooth

Bomoseen, Vermont - December 4, 2009

A locally owned home improvement store in Bomoseen is making an effort to send the sweetness of home to our troops overseas.

Supporting the troops is taking a sweet twist. In Bomoseen the Gilmore Home Center wants troops overseas to have an authentic taste of Vermont so they began Operation Sweet Tooth 3 years ago, taking donations from the community and sending soldiers half pints of maple syrup.

"It all kind of stemmed from a newspaper article of Governor Douglas. They had a fake bottle of syrup on the news and I was like we can do better than that. So that's kind of what stemmed the idea," said Mark Flynn of the Gilmore Home Center.

With a struggling economy some are seeing a drop in donation dollars, but Operation Sweet Tooth is not seeing this problem. Every donor gets a maple leaf hung to represent their contribution.

"We just kicked off December 1st and it's been surprisingly,  you know we got about 100 bottles purchased, roughly $500 just in the 1st few days, so I think with such a large deployment it kind of hits everybody," said Flynn.

And they are keeping the donation dollars in the community

It's money coming in so we try to put it back. Its not like we go to some mass wholesaler or something, it stays as local as we can get it," said Flynn.

The Castleton Community Club at the Elementary school decided to join the effort as their holiday project. The group of 5th and 6th grade boys remembered Operation Sweet Tooth and decided to join forces with Gilmore to continue the tradition.

"My favorite part is probably that soldiers get to get a taste of Vermont maple syrup, and they know that there are people over here supporting them," said 6th grader Cody Adams. 

"I like that we're going to help people who helped us, who are helping us, said 5th grader Max Ratelle.

The syrup is expected to be sent in February or March when the troops are settled. 

Molly Smith - WCAX News