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About Operation Give a Hug |
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Susan Agustin, an Army wife and mom, discovered
Huggee Miss You dolls when relatives sent
one to her 3-year-old daughter Maddie with photos of her cousins to keep
in front of her. When Captain Gene Agustin deployed to Qatar, his photo replaced
the cousins and a "daddy doll" was born. Read more about
Maddie's daddy doll below.
In 2003, Susan
Agustin began distributing daddy dolls through a
home-based business, with the encouragement of other parents and preschool
teachers.
A portion of the profits went to
Fisher House, and dolls were often donated to units that had suffered
casualties. After a few months Susan realized that the importance of getting
these dolls into the hands of children was far more important than any
business. Susan turned her energies into creating the non-profit program and
working on fundraising so that ALL military children who needed them
could have daddy dolls.
Operation Give a
Hug was founded in 2004. Since its
inception, Operation Give a Hug has given out more than 16,000 dolls through family readiness groups, family liaison officers,
family programs coordinators, school counselors, casualty assistance
officers, Fort Lewis Fisher House, and TAPS (Tragedy Assistance Program for
Survivors). The dolls are also being used by pediatric
psychologists at Madigan Army Medical Center, Fort Lewis, WA.
Operation Give a
Hug is an all-volunteer organization. The program is
sponsored by The Kiwanis Club of Greater Tacoma Foundation, a 501 (c)(3),
located in Tacoma, Washington, where the program was originally launched.
All funds raised go directly to providing dolls to children.
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Maddie's Story |
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In 2002, Maddie Grace Agustin received a Huggee
Miss You doll holding a picture of her cousins.
At the time, Susan Agustin didn’t give it much thought, other than that
it was a cute idea. The doll was soft stuffed with crazy yarn hair, but the
face was a picture frame where a photo of her cousins was inserted. Shortly after receiving the
doll, the Agustin family was informed that dad, Gene, would be deploying
to the Middle East. Susan decided to take the doll and make it “Daddy doll”
so that Maddie would have a way to hug her dad everyday.
“Daddy doll” did everything with Susan and Maddie. He
went to preschool, the commissary, he got a "no cavity" report at the
dentist, and if Maddie had a scraped knee, so did her dad. When it was
time
 to read books at night, Susan would tell Maddie and her “Daddy doll” to
go pick which books they wanted to read. It turned out that this little
doll wasn’t just benefiting Maddie during this challenging time, but it was
also great for her dad's morale. When he was able to call, Maddie would
have all sorts of things to tell her dad about what he was doing with her.
He was sometimes quite surprised at just how busy he was at home, as well as
overseas.
Maddie's "Daddy doll" served the family well during
Gene's 2003 deployment to Qatar and his subsequent deployments as he served
in Operation Enduring Freedom in Djibouti in 2004 and in Iraq in 2005. Her
"Daddy doll" has been an important part of most of her childhood and is
something she still holds onto today as a means of hugging her daddy while
he is away on TDY trips to Iraq and Afghanistan.
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