CAYCE, S.C. — A South Carolina grandmother has become a sensation among stressed-out U.S. military men and women around the globe by sending the most incongruous of gifts: pliable, google-eye dolls.
Not that soldiers, Marines and airmen are doing much cuddling with her hand-stitched, foot-tall playthings. Carol Davis' "Dang-it-Dolls" are built to take punishment from homesick, frustrated troops and her work is getting rave reviews.
"The legs are shaped so you can grasp onto them," Air Force Staff Sgt. Rachel Staub wrote in a recent e-mail recalling her homesick days based in the United Arab Emirates. "It returned with me to the States with an eyeball missing and the stitching around the legs loose with some of the stuffing coming out."
The little doll "was used mostly for laughs and to keep my mind off being homesick," said Staub, of Melbourne, Fla. "It brought a smile to all our faces!"
Nearly 17,000 of the goofy dolls have been shipped around the world in the four years since Davis made her first one and sent it as a joke to her grandson, who was in the Air Force then in Aviano, Italy.
"I thought it would get a rise out of my grandson, 'Why are you sending me a doll?"' Davis said. "But after I sent 'em, I got messages back: "Can you send us some more?"'
Davis's grandson, 26-year-old Senior Airman Thomas Hagmaier, estimates he's given out between 1,000 and 1,500 of the dolls on his own.
"Everybody around me asks for one," he said in a phone interview from his base in Little Rock, Ark. "And I tell them, even if they destroy one, that's what it's for. I can give you more."
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