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Charity founder wins favorite mom award

Patti Patton-Bader, founder of Soldiers’ Angels, has been named America’s Favorite Mom and has won $250,000 — which she intends to use to benefit more troops.

Patton-Bader was named the winner of the contest on an NBC-TV show Sunday honoring the 100th anniversary of Mother’s Day. Although she is mother to a soldier currently deployed in Iraq and another who was previously deployed, Patton-Bader is, in effect, a mother to many more troops and their families because of her army of Soldiers’ Angels volunteers, who have sent hundreds of thousands of packages to deployed troops as well as helped the wounded.

When she found out she’d won the grand prize, Patton-Bader said, she was shocked, but at the same time, she knew the honor was not hers alone. “When I stood there, there also stood all the mothers who have raised heroes, and all our boots on the ground, and all the people who support them,” she said.

“I was glad this was bringing some attention to the troops,” she said. “All the work, all the sacrifices troops have made. People understand. They get it. They’re in there supporting the troops.”

The $250,000 will go back to the troops, expanding her work in a new direction, she said. She is looking for property for a retreat for troops when they return from the war zone.

“The end goal is a piece of property where we can put up cabins, or mobile homes, a place where they can come to relax, fish and ride horses ... just have fun with their families,” Patton-Bader said.

By the afternoon after the TV show, she said, she had seen another benefit — an uptick in the number of people wanting to adopt troops.

“Our database had a waiting list of over 1,000 troops waiting to be adopted, and now it’s less than 800,” she said.

When she found out her son, Staff Sgt. Brandon Varn, had nominated her in the “military mom” category of the America’s Favorite Mom contest earlier in the spring, “it felt so good,” she said.

“What mother doesn’t feel good when your child is proud of you? You’re always proud of your children.”

When Varn deployed to Iraq in 2003, Patton-Bader began sending him care packages. When he told her that some soldiers were not getting packages from anyone, she founded Soldiers’ Angels. To date, the all-volunteer military support group has “adopted” more than 200,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.

“My mom has hepatitis C and fibrosis of the liver and is in pain most waking hours and does all of this from her bed,” Varn wrote in his nomination. “She works as a mom for all the military and their families from the time she arises early in the morning until the time she falls asleep from exhaustion.”

Patton-Bader thanked NBC and Teleflora for holding the contest, and the military bloggers and radio stations, the Soldiers’ Angels volunteers and troops for supporting her and drumming up votes.

“I got messages from Iraq and Afghanistan saying they were going on a mission and couldn’t vote, but they would vote for me in their hearts,” she said.

Patton-Bader competed in the “military mom” category of the contest, and was one of three military mom semifinalists featured on the “Today” show May 5. For 12 hours, viewers voted for their favorite in that category. Each day of the week, a different category of moms was featured.

The mother with the highest winning percentage of votes on her specific day became America’s Favorite Mom.

A spokeswoman said NBC is not allowed to reveal what Patton-Bader’s winning percentage was.

Another gift she received during the taping of the show Saturday was a live satellite feed with her younger son, 20-year-old Army Spc. Bretton Varn, now deployed to Iraq.

When she saw him on the screen, she instinctively started moving toward him, and was held back by Marie Osmond, who was co-hosting the show with her brother Donny.

“I so bad wanted to touch him,” she said. “Marie said, ‘Patti, honey, you can’t touch him. It’s satellite.’”

“He said thank you to his family and to Soldiers’ Angels for keeping him sane,” she said.

When they announced that she had won, she could hear him cheering, she said.

“I turned around and held my flowers up to him. I didn’t realize he couldn’t see us,” she said.