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Our Towns

Toy Goo Might Save Some Soldiers’ Lives, but It’s Stuck Here

Ron and Marcelle Shriver have 80,000 cans of Silly String stacked in boxes. They would like to send them to Iraq.Credit...Tim Larsen for The New York Times

STRATFORD, N.J.

They send everything.

People send family members in Iraq work goggles from Home Depot, BLSS helmet kits and $275 Spartan II armor vests. They send teriyaki beef jerky, baby wipes, sunscreen and Tylenol, water pistols, Twizzlers, Pringles, Bowflex exercise machines. Anything to keep them safe, happy, in touch with home.

So it’s not entirely unfathomable that Ron and Marcelle Shriver have 80,000 cans of Silly String stacked in boxes under a blue tarp behind Bruce Baelz’s Pro-Pak Professional Package and Shipping shop in Deptford. They’re all packed up to send to Iraq.

But despite the sign out front (“We Ship Anything Anywhere!!”), what began as a small request from one soldier has turned into an untidy parable of this war of epic effort and epic frustration, where almost nothing turns out quite right.

It was almost a year ago when a phone conversation about the next package from home produced an unlikely request. Todd Shriver, their 28-year-old son in Ramadi, wanted some cans of Silly String, the goo shot out of aerosol cans used at children’s parties. “I figured they had parties in his room,” his mother said.

But it turned out the marines who had been there said the goo was useful for entering homes or buildings. You shoot it out 10 to 12 feet and see if it falls to the ground or ends up hanging from trip wires. If it does, you know not to enter. It might not be the goo that could win a war, but it might be the goo that could save American lives.

She sent him about a dozen cans and then figured it might be a good church project to help other soldiers as well. She talked about it with two local priests, who put notices in their church bulletins and agreed to leave donation baskets at the back of their churches. The effort got reported on by KYW radio in Philadelphia, then by The Associated Press, then on the Internet.

Soon, Ms. Shriver had a thousand cans of the stuff in her garage. Then it kept coming. Mothers and wives contacted her, asking that their soldier be included in whatever was sent. It filled up the garage, and she was lucky that Mr. Baelz let her store it. “I didn’t know there was so much Silly String in the world,” she said.

But, as in Joseph Heller’s novel about a different war, there was a catch. Since the goo came in aerosol cans and was considered hazardous, it could not be sent through conventional mail or shipping services. And since it was not standard military issue, the military was not interested in helping. A Defense Department spokesman said that he could not speak to the need, but that because of almost limitless demands, the military could not assist in individual donations or shipments to Iraq.

She looked into bulk shipping operations, seaborne freighters — whoever could get the boxes to transfer points in Kuwait or Bahrain. She said she was willing to do the voluminous paperwork, which meant sending each box to a soldier who could then distribute it to others in his unit. Last January, she sent 40,000 cans through the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base at Willow Grove, Pa. But since then, despite daily efforts, and a legal pad full of contacts, nothing.

“Everyone was going to be helpful, and then nothing happened,” Ms. Shriver said. “There was one sergeant, I think he was at Fort Dix, who told me, ‘I’m the guy who’s going to get this to our boys in the sand,’ and then before long, he was gone and there was someone else.”

Stray shipments keep coming her way, but if anyone asks, she tells them not to send any more. She no longer knows if the soldiers she addressed the boxes to are still there.

The cans bear hopeful messages — “We Care, Butler, Pa,” “American Legion Loves You,” “Be Safe.” But for now, the Silly String, the product of the main American manufacturer, and the various competitors, mostly from abroad, Goofy String, Party String, Crazy String, all selling for about $2 a can, just sit.

For all the war’s reversals, Mr. Shriver, a Vietnam veteran, says he still believes in the military mission, sees progress, thinks it can succeed. But at this point the Shrivers wonder what it will take to accomplish their own little part of it.

Ms. Shriver said she’d be glad to keep the effort going, but if it’s futile, at the very least she needs to find a way to ship what she already has. “I talk to people and they say, ‘Who’s your contact person?’ ” Ms. Shriver said. “I tell them I don’t have a contact person, I have a son who’s fighting a war.”

E-mail: peappl@nytimes.com

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