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Charlie Brown trees heading overseas

Jim Ward always enjoyed the annual family outing to choose and chop down a Christmas tree.

But in September 2006, when one of his daughters, Spc. Luisa Gonzalez, went to Iraq, he realized it would be the first Christmas without her and their tree-cutting tradition wouldn’t be the same.

So he set out to send her a decorated, full-size tree.

Not so fast, said the U.S. Postal Service, which pointed to weight and height restrictions Ward couldn’t get around.

Frustrated, he pondered the challenge until it hit him like a giant snowball.

“I was sitting around one night thinking about it and I don’t know why but Charlie Brown popped into my head, and I was like ‘Wait a minute, I got it,’ ” he said, picturing the scrawny two-foot-tall tree featured in the holiday episode of Peanuts.

After some research, Ward found a vendor in North Carolina and bought 75 miniature, potted Alberta spruce pine trees and for $20 apiece, including lights, ornaments and shipping, sent them to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This year, Ward is at the head of Operation Christmas Tree, a nonprofit foundation he started after last year’s shipping. The organization is getting ready to ship 5,000 trees to troops in the war zone.

“We don’t need it to be a full-size tree, it’s the spirit of it, the tree itself that matters,” said Ward, of Westminster, Md., who will host a tree-packing event Dec. 1 with the help of dozens of donors and Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, D-Md., who has helped get names and addresses for deployed soldiers.

The best part of the operation, Ward said, is that his daughter, Luisa, will not be getting a Christmas tree this year because she’s scheduled to be home to Fort Hood, Texas, before the end of November.

To help send a tree, go to http://www.operationchristmastree.com.