Salt Lake City refinery sends a taste of home to Marines in Okinawa

Community News

Salt Lake City, Utah, Foundation
Standing next to crates of non-perishable food items going to U.S. Marines in Japan are Salt Lake City refinery employee volunteers, including (l-r): Warehouse Manager Corey King, Pipefitting & Welding Supervisor Travis Bettencourt, Senior Commercial Sourcing Advisor Eddy Bisharat, Operations Excellence Manager Jeremy Holmes and Corporate Social Responsibility & Community Relations Representative Dean Adam. 

Key Points

  • U.S. Marines deployed overseas recently got a taste of home through a 700-pound shipment from Marathon Petroleum’s Salt Lake City, Utah, refinery.
  • Employees at the facility purchased and packed non-perishable food items to send to a regiment in Okinawa, Japan.
  • The effort was organized by the refinery’s chapter of HONOR, the company’s Veterans Employee Network.

Of the many valuable shipments that leave Marathon Petroleum Corporation’s (MPC) refinery in Salt Lake City, Utah, very rarely is one of them edible. Recently, however, 700 pounds of non-perishable food items left the site for Okinawa, Japan, after a collection drive by refinery employees for deployed U.S. Marines.

“Our motto was ‘a taste of home,’ so we tried to find items that we thought would remind them of home,” said Operations Excellence Manager Jeremy Holmes, an original member of the refinery’s chapter of HONOR, MPC’s Veterans Employee Network, that organized the drive.

“We just want to give back to the men and women who serve our country.”

The site’s workforce purchased and donated all the items, which included everything from cookies, hard candy and protein bars to nuts, snack cakes, noodles and seasonings. The recipients in Japan are members of Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 23rd Marine Regiment.

The wooden crates sent to Japan included signatures from employee volunteers on stickers that thanked the deployed Marines for their service. 

“We collected for three weeks and packed everything up in wooden crates in just a couple of hours,” Holmes said. 

The collection drive builds on other outreach by the refinery’s 32-member Veterans Employee Network. HONOR also makes charitable funding recommendations and provides volunteer hours in support of several nonprofit organizations in Utah, such as Utah Veterans Alliance, the Major Brent Taylor Foundation, Courage Reins and Utah Honor Flight.

For Holmes, who served in the Marine Corps for four years, the motivation behind his involvement in these efforts is pretty simple.

“We just want to give back to the men and women who serve our country. This is the third time we have completed this food drive for deployed units, and, each year, we get more and more participation,” he said. “We really enjoy the satisfaction of being able to give back in this small way.” 

Assorted goods that were part of the 700 pounds of non-perishable food items that went from Marathon Petroleum’s Salt Lake City refinery to Okinawa, Japan.