Fiance's deployment inspires military food drive
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On Sunday nights, Ali Phillippi uses Skype to see and talk with her fiance, Sgt. Robert Catto Jr., a teacher who lives in South Park and was deployed in November to Afghanistan.
"A week after we got engaged, he got deployed. He left before Thanksgiving, so we did not get to spend any holidays together," she said.
Ms. Phillippi, 21, of Mt. Lebanon, works as a chef at the Embassy Suites near Pittsburgh International Airport. She has cooked up a plan to help her 27-year-old fiance by collecting nonperishable food, snacks and toiletries to send overseas to him and those who serve with him in the 305th Military Police Company.
The Support Our Troops Food Drive will be held from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at the Mt. Lebanon Recreation Center, Room B, 900 Cedar Blvd. It is sponsored by Mt. Lebanon High School Student Council, and Carlie McGinty, the school's activities director, helped to organize the drive.
Students will be on hand to accept donations. Ms. Phillippi and her close friend who helped with the initiative, Katie Gordon of Mt. Lebanon, also will be there.
Items sought for donation are cereal bars, fruit snacks, drink mixes, instant coffee, toaster pastries, aspirin, dry cereal, packets of protein powder, peanut butter, shaving cream and razors, toothpaste and toothbrushes, hand sanitizer, lip balm, absorbent food powder and tissues. Some of the snacks that soldiers enjoy are Twix bars, Skittles, cheese crackers and packaged drink mixes for lemonade, Kool-Aid and Gatorade.
Ms. Phillippi and Sgt. Catto met on the website Match.com and plan to marry in 2013.
"We get to Skype about once a week. We communicate through Facebook a lot, too," Ms. Phillippi said, adding that her fiance will be in Afghanistan for at least 10 months.
Sgt. Catto, she said, works 12-hour days, six days a week with Mondays off. This is his second deployment. He previously served in Iraq in 2008.
He is a teacher at Pathfinder School in Bethel Park and joined the U.S. Army after graduating from Canon McMillan High School. He is the eldest of four children and grew up in Cecil.
"He just has the biggest heart. He's so patient. All that I know is that he is safe. That's pretty much all he has told me," Ms. Phillippi said.
She was speechless when he told her of his deployment.
"I didn't really know what to say. I knew that I was going to stand by him no matter what," Ms. Phillippi said.
First Published February 2, 2012 5:25 am
