THE FACE OF PHILANTHROPY
Donated Guitars
Provide Musical Tonic
for the Troops
ROBIN A. WEBER, who owns a high-end guitar business in Nashville, received an e-mail mes- sage in July 2009 from an Army sergeant
serving in Afghanistan. Would Ms. Weber consider
donating a guitar to his troop so he could learn to
play from one of his comrades?
“There was no hesitation on my part,” says Ms. We-
ber. “If a soldier deployed on active duty wants a gui-
tar, I’m going to send him one.”
Today, about 130 active-duty servicemen and wom-
en have received donated instruments from Guitars
4 Troops, a project founded by Ms. Weber; another
60 soldiers are on the waiting list for an acoustic or
electric guitar. Ms. Weber has reached out to other
guitar makers and music stores for donations of gui-
tars and accessories, such as strings, pitch pipes, and
lesson books, which she sends along with the instru-
ments.
“If they can have a guitar to help them escape or
remind them of home, I want to do anything I can I
make their life a little more bearable while they are
over there,” says Ms. Weber, who has been playing
guitar since high school. “Music is a healer, it makes
you feel good.”
A former nurse who once considered joining the re-
serves, Ms. Weber is aware of the sacrifices soldiers
have made to serve. “If I had been called up I would
have lost my business,” she says.
Ms. Weber estimates that she has spent about
$5,000 of her own money on the group—she now donates 10 percent of her business profits to the venture—and says she has received about $10,000 in
cash contributions from individuals. One guitar maker who helped the cause donated $1,000 from the sale
price of one of his guitars in Ms. Weber’s shop. Another gave a guitar worth $500. Individuals have also
mailed her their guitars, but Ms. Weber says money
is more helpful; it costs $50 to ship a guitar overseas
and she can buy a good guitar wholesale for $150.
“I’m not going to send a cheap guitar to a soldier,”
she says.
She runs Guitars 4 Troops out of her home with
the help of a part-time employee for her business,
Guitar Gallery. Ms. Weber says she will apply for
tax-exempt status for Guitars 4 Troops within the
year. For now, a group called Artists in Christian
Testimony International, in Brentwood, Tenn., accepts tax-deductible gifts to Guitars 4 Troops and
channels the money to the organization through an
arrangement known as a fiscal sponsorship. Music 4
Jeremy’s Cherubs, a charity in Overland Park, Kan.,
has offered to help accept donations of instruments.
Testimonials and photographs—including one of
a soldier and a snowman jamming together on guitars—on Guitars 4 Troops’ Web site speak to the positive power of music in tough times. To maximize its
impact, Guitars 4 Troops requests that when soldiers
who receive the charity’s instruments end their deployments, they pass them on to other service members.
“Having some playing time really help[ed] to take
my mind off being deployed and being away from my
wife and three kids,” wrote Michael J. Vosen, a for-
mer safety officer in Sharana, Afghanistan, in Octo-
ber. “It was a wonderful change of pace.”
Here, a soldier stationed in Afghanistan momen-
tarily trades his rifle for one of the charity’s guitars.
—NICOLE LEWIS
Photograph by Sgt. Robert Persch
