By Tony Cantú – Contributing writer/Southside Reporter

Web Posted: 04/29/2010 12:00 CDT

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When her son was deployed to Iraq, Tracy LaPorte sought a support group of like-minded moms not with whom to commiserate but to galvanize around community projects honoring soldiers.But her search proved fruitless.

“The groups I found didn’t fit the bill as to what I was looking for,” the Austin resident recalled. “I wanted something more than a support group. I wanted a group that was making a difference, not just with care packages.”

Her son, Adam Huckstep of the U.S. Army Infantry Division – a member of the renowned “Hell Hounds” – gave her the nudge she needed while stationed abroad, encouraging her to create the group herself.

In October, Military Moms of Texas – now 3,000 members strong – was born.

Austin-based, the organization will next month launch a branch in San Antonio, from where it receives its greatest support, she said.

“Some of my most active members are from San Antonio,” LaPorte said in a recent interview. In addition, locally based Fitness in Motion – a supplier of fitness equipment to commercial clients owned by local businessman Paul Cuevas where her husband works – is the group’s biggest sponsor, she added.

Military Moms of Texas offers the full range of support to a military contingent – preparing care packages, collecting food for families, home repairs, organizing welcome home gatherings send-offs for soldiers and more.

LaPorte expressed particular pride in the group’s Deployed Night Out, providing an evening out for soldiers and their families through donated gift certificates and tickets to shows, restaurants, sporting events, concerts and other diversions.

“They’re giving us the ultimate for our freedom, so whatever I’m doing I’m doing it for them,” said LaPorte, mother to three other children, ranging in ages from 17 to a year. “What little part I can do needs to be a million times more, but I’m going to try to make a little bit of difference.”

Some of the group’s other activities include delivery of much-needed but suddenly unaffordable baby formula for a young soldier’s wife, the clearing out of accumulated brush at a widow’s Seguin property – vegetation her husband had hoped to get to before being deployed but now never will.

“She needed manual help clearing out the brush and changing the property to the way it was before he left,” LaPorte explained, describing how a team of volunteers rushed to the widow’s aid.

Such needs abound, she said, and provide her greatest motivation: “It puts a fire in me.”

But with a soft economy, she noted donations have begun to dwindle. The group is always in need of cash donations and items for soldiers’ care packages including beef jerky, energy drinks and protein-packed snacks.

She added that despite the group’s name – a moniker born of a distressed mother’s instinct – anyone can join, regardless of gender and with or without family members stationed overseas.

“It’s kind of a Catch-22,” she said of the group’s identity. “But you don’t even have to have a soldier. You can adopt one of ours!”

But the most efficient communication conduit has been a popular social networking website.

“Facebook has become a powerful tool,” she said. “That’s how our soldiers communicate, and that’s how we have found 99 percent of our soldiers.”

Those interested in contacting or donating to Military Moms of Texas can visit www.militarymomsof texas.com. The mailing address is P.O. Box 1627, Round Rock, TX, 78680.