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Program provides Christmas for wounded troops

JACKSON, N.H. — Two wounded soldiers and their families will enjoy an old-fashioned New Hampshire Christmas thanks to a new program that started with one family’s generosity and has spread to an entire town.

Gerald Carrier, a retired dentist from New Bedford, Mass., has been bringing his family to Jackson for the holidays since 1969. When he and his family offered to adopt two military families and put them up in a hotel for a week, the whole town got in on the act, with numerous businesses donating gift cards for lodging, shopping and activities.

“For us, Christmas goes over the top, as you can expect when you put that much love for one another in one room,” said Andre Carrier of Las Vegas. “We wanted to take some of this surplus and put it toward something charitable on our own, as part of our Christmas tradition.”

The first two soldiers to benefit from the Christmas Can Cure program will be Staff Sgt. Jerry Cortinas of Brownsville, Texas, and Sgt. 1st Class Roy Mitchell of Fort Drum, N.Y., both of whom were seriously injured in Afghanistan.

Cortinas, a Special Forces soldier, lost his left hand and suffered a traumatic brain injury when he was attacked by a rocket-propelled grenade five days before Christmas 2002.

“As you can imagine, Christmas time for us is a bittersweet time,” said his wife, Celina Cortinas. She said she tries to make the season special for their two children, “but with limited money and the memories of the worst time of our lives, it is a tough situation.”

“This trip would fill that month with good memories that we can associate with December, instead of a very bad one,” she said.

Mitchell has had a leg amputated and undergone 37 surgeries since being injured in November 2003.

“If I could, I would not change a thing, except having more time as a family,” he said. “We have not had a lot of time to spend just as a family.”

Andre Carrier said they plan to have baskets of Christmas cards in the families’ rooms when they arrive Dec. 18.

“For anyone who may have become cynical about Christmas and needs to find the power of the human spirit, they need to start initiating something like this,” he said.