Montrose – Landon “Landy” Taylor – a World War II veteran – had just finished providing a pizza lunch to 90 soldiers shipping out of Montrose for Iraq back in the summer of 2003 when he thought about what more he could do.
And a sweet idea popped into his head.
“A lot of soldiers don’t have family,” Taylor said. “They don’t even get a postcard, much less a box of candy.”
Taylor went to the local Russell Stover Candies factory and bought 80 pounds of hard candies.
The factory’s retail store kicked in another 40 pounds.
Taylor packed up the candy, sent it off to the Montrose-based 109th Medical Battalion in Baghdad, and “Operation Sweet Tooth” was underway.
Since then, Taylor, 82, and his helpers have shipped nearly 40,000 pounds of candy to troops in Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Germany. Most of it has gone to the wounded in hospitals.
They’ve also sent 20,000 packages of donated dried elk meat, 250 bottles of honey, more than 2,300 pounds of red, white and blue jelly beans and 5,500 yellow bandannas with beads of coolant sewn into them so they provide relief from the desert heat.
Last Christmas, they gift- wrapped 2,000 1-pound boxes of chocolates so the candy would be more like a gift.
The nonprofit program has won kudos for “outstanding community service” from the Montrose Chamber of Commerce, a Montrose Mayor’s Award and a key to the city.
But what really matters, said Taylor, are the more than 1,000 e-mails he has received from battlefields and hospitals.
“What Operation Sweet Tooth is doing is unheard of,” wrote Jeff Poffenbarger, a neurosurgeon serving in Baghdad.
“We receive the soldiers with life-threatening injuries,” Poffenbarger said. “The soldiers that bring them in are battle-weary, exhausted from all the stinging heat, but you should see them smile when I offer them a box of elk jerky and candy.”
“You and your friends have enriched so many lives,” wrote Jeffrey Miller with the 30th Medical Brigade.
Raymond Mason, a U.S. Army brigadier general, wrote: “Thank you for the wonderful goodies! It means so much to our soldiers to know they are not only remembered, but appreciated.”
Those kinds of letters, along with pictures of smiling soldiers holding bags and boxes of candy and kippered elk, now take up one wall at the Sun Valley Truck Stop in Montrose, where Taylor – his oxygen tank sitting in the seat next to him – has his morning coffee.
Taylor, a retired manager of private aircraft services, suffered respiratory failure and was in intensive care for eight days last winter.
Friends kept his program going, collecting money from jars placed across town and helping his wife, Marta, pack candy.
Local radio station KUBC collected more than $20,000 to keep the sweets supply moving.
Supporters bought and put candy in donation boxes at Russell Stover, where most of the candy has either been donated or sold at a discount.
“We’re just glad we can do this for the troops,” said Russell Stover Candies’ Montrose store manager, Evie Pincus.
Still, Taylor said it is a challenge to find funds as requests for candy increase. Some donors are already tapped out.
“We can always use the help,” he said. Pointing to a picture of a smiling soldier in a wheelchair over his truck-stop table, he said: “They will appreciate it.”
Staff writer Nancy Lofholm can be reached at 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com.
