SAN ANTONIO – Students at Medina Valley Potranco Elementary took some time away from their ordinary schedules on Friday to welcome Florida singer/songwriter Savannah Maddison, founder of the "Savannah's Soldiers" letter writing campaign.
Savannah, 11, started the program after her best friend's father was deployed to Afghanistan.
Initially, she wrote a song about the ordeal, and then decided to expand to something bigger.
"I write songs about stuff. I picked up my guitar, and a piece of paper, and I scribbled some notes on what I thought what was happening with deployment and about her dad," Savannah said. "I started brainstorming with her about ideas and what we could do, and writing letters came up, and we figured if something that small could make that big of a difference, we should do it."
Through the program, 30,000 letters to overseas troops have been written to date, with 620 of those coming from Medina Valley Potranco Elementary.
Savannah visited the school on Friday, to thank Trystan Benke, the student who organized the effort.
"I was inspired by her, doing all these different things for the soldiers. I thought it would be really cool if our school got to help with that," said Benke. "Just to know that there's someone out there that really cares about how much they've done for us. And that even though it's not family that's writing, there's someone that is still writing to them."