When we stand together, we can make a difference!

WHO WE ARE: Operation: Cool Our Troops was started July 2, 2003. Cool Our Troops is an effort to 'Cool' our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. We raise funds to send personal misters to military personnel serving in the Middle East. The misters are portable, no batteries or electricity required, and rely on evaporation to cool surrounding temperatures by 20-30 degrees. Learn more about misters...

NOTE: We are not affilated with Misty-Mate or Obit Irrigation, the vendors supplying the misters.

Sue McCormick (photo left), founder of Cool Our Troops writes daily updates which you can read here. Susan Czubek (photo right), co-founder of Cool Our Troops designed and maintains our website.

HOW YOU CAN HELP: YOU ALONE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE... You can be personally responsible for boosting morale and providing relief to one of our own serving in Iraq or Afghanistan by donating to 'Cool Our Troops.' For every $10 one soldier or Marine will get a personal mister.

HOW CORPORATIONS CAN HELP:
1. Become a STAR Contributor! Learn how
2. Are you in the media? Donate some air time to help get our message across.
3. We are open to suggestions, no one knows your company's resources better than you do.
3. Are you a PR firm? Donate your services to send our message nationwide

THE PROCESS: We collect enough funds to buy the misters at a discount from our distributors in Arizona, and then we send misters to entire units or batallions. We prefer to send the misters in bulk for 2 reasons: 1) we learned the hard way that most soldiers are 'all for one and one for all,' meaning that if they all don't have one, no one will use them. 2) ease of shipment - if we get the misters to an AFB, they ship them by military aircraft - saving us money and speeding along the process.

HOW WE GOT STARTED: After hearing on the news and from my friend Rick how the temperature in Iraq was 130 degrees I was horrified. Although Rick never complained, I felt that there had to be something I could do to help make them more comfortable. I am not God, so I couldn’t make it snow. I knew that he moves around a lot so an air conditioning unit was out of the questions, but wait, what about this thing that claims to cool the air by 30 degrees that I saw at a local store. I decided to buy a mister and send it to Rick in hopes that a) he would receive it before winter, b) that it would work as its claims stated. I was skeptical, but for $20 I figured it was worth a shot. I bought and sent the unit to him 2 weeks before Father’s Day. I was shocked to get a call on Father’s Day from Rick in Iraq. He had received the package and said it worked beautifully. The only problem was that there wasn’t one for all of his Marines! How could I have sent a box and not sent one for everyone. My parents taught be better than that. Only problem was $$, or should I say, lack there of.

What to do now? Susan Czubek, the friend of one of Rick’s friends who is also a Marine contacted me to get together. You see both of our Marines are off serving our country. The night we had got together was only the 3rd time we had met. We had dinner, wonderful conversation and a true inspiration. I told Susan of my dilemma and we discussed how to help our troops. Although Susan’s fiancé was no longer in Iraq, she still felt for the troops in Iraq and the unbearable heat they were having to endure. She inspired me to take an “idea” to reality and has been walking with me through this journey every step of the way. Our Mission was to get a portable mister to all of our troops serving in the heat, we had to have some money. Within a day, we had the name of our organization. That was easy, our name just simply states in 3 words our mission which is to “Cool Our Troops”. We didn’t anticipate everything else being so easy. We still had to set up an account at a bank, get set up with the IRS as a non profit organization and then lastly get people to help us Cool Our Troops.

Miraculously everything was that easy. Erin Peters at Bank One took to the idea immediately and helped us get our bank account set up and also helped us with the IRS EIN number. She was truly heaven sent. . It couldn’t have been easier! The woman at the IRS was so helpful and we had it done in 30 minutes. I think we set a record. Within 1 day, we had created 'Cool Our Troops'!

- Sue McCormick, founder of Cool Our Troops

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away." - sent to us by one of our supporters.

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