Last year, just prior to July 4th, MSgt Mark Evans started on a venture that has grown even beyond his wildest dreams.  Mark began his mission more than 10 years ago, as he sent 50 Lou Malnati’s pizzas to troops in Bosnia.  Last summer, his 16 year old son came up with an idea to send even more to the troops in Iraq. What started off with the idea of sending 300 pizzas in time for the 4th of July quickly grew into more than 2,000, with the help of donations from all over the country.  DHL offered the transportation for no cost.  With the blessing and continued support of General David Petraeus, Pizzas 4 Patriots was born!

For this year’s Super Bowl, P4P shipped over 2,000 pizzas, along with more than 6,000 beers. This was the first time that beer was allowed in Iraq. Again DHL supplied the transportation, and we were able to purchase Lou Malnati’s pizzas at a great price.

But Mark's dream got bigger. For the 4th of July this year, DHL has offered the use of an entire 747 jumbo cargo jet.  That’s nearly 1,000,000 pounds of cargo.  The goal is to ship 40,000 pizzas, this time from Uno Chicago Grill, with Miller Brewing donating 10,000 cases of beer.  With the support of Armed Forces Entertainment, a band called Queensrÿche has offered to travel to Iraq to entertain the troops, as we hold the World’s Largest Pizza Party. This will be a new Guinness world record, easily passing the current record of 13,500!

Prior to the other deliveries, P4P was fortunate to receive tens of thousands of dollars from folks all across the country. We have also been fortunate to receive donations from corporations and other organizations. Pizzas 4 Patriots is a non-profit corporation, so we obviously rely on this type of assistance.

Our goal reaches beyond the pizza delivery events, to include a program this year in conjunction with Patriots Group Support Network, in which we will coordinate pizza deliveries to Veterans hospitals, all around the country. We are reaching out to military bases to have active military personnel deliver these pizzas to these great American Veterans nationwide.