Take Pride
This is a cool idea and I love the shirts. I wish they weren’t so expensive. I hate spending more than $10 -$12 for a t-shirt. I love Old Navy, but I never buy anything that isn’t at least 25% off, but usually I wait until they go on sale for 50% off.
TakePride is a grassroots effort started by young artists and former members of the military to re-define what it means to support the troops by using art, style and the stories of real-life Americans at war. Their line of contemporary t-shirts has received more nationwide media attention and motivated more young Americans to be involved in this cause than any other symbol of support. TakePride donates a minimum of 20 percent of its profits to the Wounded Warrior Project.
My favorite shirts are the “1776″ and “a boy, a bear, & a Soldier” t-shirts. Today they launched the “a boy, a bear, & a Soldier” t-shirt – inspired by an amazing story told by Mike Geary, a 23-year-old Army Sergeant stationed in Iraq.
In 2005, when he was 20-years-old, Mike’s life, and the life of every member of his squad, was saved by a young Iraqi child. At the time, Mike was serving his first tour in Iraq, running combat patrols in Tikrit. A day after handing out stuffed animals to Iraqi children gathered in front of his base, Mike was traveling down a nearby highway when he noticed one of the young boys from the previous day standing with his hand raised in the middle of the road directly ahead of his Humvee convoy. Mike’s squad leader decided to pull over and dismount to investigate. The young boy grabbed the squad leader’s hand, walked him down to a spot in the road where they had been about to drive and dusted off a 155mm roadside bomb buried in the sand. It turned out to be one of three IEDs that were daisy-chained together at the distance that their Humvees traveled apart. As Mike watched the bombs being safely detonated from the side of the road, he reflected on how this little boy who he tossed a stuffed animal to just a day earlier had saved the life of every member of his squad.
“A boy, a bear & a Soldier” was designed by a phenomenally talented young illustrator named Aya Kakeda who has done projects for Nike, The New York Times & Nickelodeon. It is available in men’s and women’s sizes for $25 exclusively at www.takepride.com.
