6/30/2008 12:00:00 AM

By Megan Cassidy

Whether or not you agree with the war in Middle East has little bearing on the way Americans feel about their sons and daughters in the line of fire. It’s a scary time to be in the armed forces, and with no forseeable light at the end of the tunnel, the men and women who are deported depend on life’s little pleasures to get them through. Many take up new hobbies, such as reading, working out, or as recently-returned Army soldier Danny Fernandez says “hours of learning to solve a Rubix cube.”

The one constant variable throughout these otherwise strangers is the pure joy of a phone call to home, hearing the voice of loved ones, and knowing that they are not forgotten. While the United States government is known for offering some enviable, but completely deserved monetary and education benefits, one small favor that seems to have slipped through the cracks in the finance department is the funding for a simple phone call home.

In April 2004, teenagers Brittany and Robbie Bergquist (now 17 and 16) saw a story of a soldier on the local news who was stationed in Afghanistan and had almost an $8,000 bill to pay for calling cards home. “I think a lot of Americans don’t know that the soldiers have to pay for this themselves,” Brittany tells RelateMag.com. But lucky for thousands of soldiers, these teens knew how to turn their knowledge into power – cell phone power.

Cell Phones for Soldiers was conceived on the notion that if people would just donate their old cell phones, they could be sent to the soldiers and used overseas. But for security and just plain lack of signal reasons, the siblings soon discovered that they were going to have to get a little more creative.

“We already had the name, and we already had people sending us these phones, so then we just had to figure out what to do with them!” Brittany says. Word of mouth came to the rescue. After some bake sales, car washes, and a little coverage, the eco-friendly cell recycler ReCellular contacted the Bergquists, and worked out an exchange. Old cell phones for pre-loaded phone cards. To date 400,000 of them have been filled.

(Pic from www.cellphonesforsoldiers.com)When you mail in or drop off your old cell phone to one of the foundation’s drop off points, a phone card is sent to a soldier overseas at no cost to them or the family. And you needn’t worry about the condition of your Back to the Future-esque fire log you used to lug around. Many phones are just used for parts, batteries, or will simply get recycled and therefore out of our landfills.

“Old phones are usually worth about an average of $4,” says Bob Bergquist, Brittany and Robbie’s dad, and President of Cell Phones for Soldiers. “We get everything from some old brick phones to Razrs.” Your old clunker may not be able to hold a charge, but it can charge up a phone card for a full hour of chat time.

The wildly successful organization has already raised more than $1 million in donations, and hopes to raise more than $9 million in the next five years. Not shabby, considering they founded the company with $21 of their own money.

Drop off points can be found nationwide, and range from churches to tattoo parlors. Anthony Bruno, manager of AlleyKat Tattoos in New York decided to make his company a drop off point after seeing the dwindling drawer space in his own house. “I have four kids, and we had a bunch of old phones,” Bruno says. “I heard about this on the news, and thought it would be something that I could do to contribute.”