More News

Every other week, Hyattsville resident Milton McGehee makes his rounds: Giant, Shopper's Food Warehouse, friends' homes and any store with an amazing sale.

He then fills empty pizza boxes with the treats he's gathered—cookies, donuts, candy and toys—and heads to Walter Reed Army Medical Center's amputee ward to deliver them to recovering soldiers.

"Here comes the donut man" is what some troops and hospital employees say as McGehee walks down the halls, he said.

McGehee said he has been making the bi-weekly trips, formerly weekly until gas prices rose, for about two years. It began when he and his wife, Linda, visited a friend who works in the amputee ward. The pair saw the condition of recovering soldiers and began bringing cookies when visiting their friend.

"I just feel for these guys," Linda said. "I worked in a hospital before as a volunteer, but you don't see anything like this in a hospital."

McGehee, who has volunteered for years, visited more frequently with donations he had solicited through local businesses. Soon, he was spending about $150 of his own money a month on the goods, and his dining room became his office, where he stores and organizes the boxes he delivers to four floors. McGehee estimates he sees about 200 soldiers every month.

"Oh I haven't used this dining room table in months, honey," Linda said.

McGehee doesn't act alone. Linda and other friends help deliver the goods. Fellow First Baptist Church of Hyattsville member Tommy Houchens, 83, bakes 350 cookies for every delivery. Other friends and businesses have donated items such as pizza boxes, handmade blankets and money. Local organizations also have donated money toward his efforts.

"I'm a World War II veteran," Houchens said. "So I know how I had appreciated, as a 19-year-old kid, receiving homemade cookies."

McGehee is also a veteran. He volunteered for the Army and almost fought in the Korean War, but instead officials picked him to work at Andrews Air Force Base from 1951 to 1953. He remembers close friends who were wounded or killed in the war but said his interaction with the wounded Iraqi war veterans has made him critical of the current war.

"What affects me the most is you see these guys and then think it really didn't have to happen," he said.

But McGehee doesn't bring any of that up when he talks to wounded veterans during his visits. He asks them where they are from, about their families and tries to make their days a little better, if just for a moment.

Assistant physical therapist Sherill Akemon, who works at Walter Reed, said troops often take pictures with McGehee, chat together and ask about "the donut man" when he's not around.

"They have mothers and fathers, girlfriends and wives, all of them there. But they don't have the facilities to cook that stuff for them," he said.

The soldiers appreciate McGehee's presence more than what he delivers, Akemon said.

And as much as the deliveries break some of the monotony of the recovering troops' days, they have also provided McGehee, a retired meat cutter of 47 years, with a new sense of purpose.

"It gives me something to do. I've got five days of work just going to churches and stores," he said. "If I can go to 100 different places and get them just to send one box, then I've got 100 boxes."

E-mail Elahe Izadi at eizadi@gazette.net.