Oprah Winfrey surprised an audience filled with military spouses by gifting them with a variety of "Oprah's Favorite Things," including an all-expense paid trip for two to Fiji. (Dancing shirtless men in grass skirts not included.)
The "Oprah's Favorite Things" episode aired last night on OWN, Winfrey's cable network. The military spouses that made up her audience received one of each of Winfrey's favorite things, including a Bose Video Wave II, a Jetson E-Bike, and a Tempur-Cloud Supreme Mattress.
Babette Maxwell, founder of Military Spouse magazine and of the Armed Forces Insurance Military Spouse of the Year Award® program, was one of the audience members. She wrote in the Huffington Post that many of the spouses present at the show taping plan to either give away their gifts to another military spouse, or use their gift to help others:
Eli Arroyo-Allen, a breast cancer survivor and advocate, is setting aside some of her Favorite Things gifts for an auction she intends to hold in the spring to help raise money for breast cancer awareness.
Cat Woyee-Jones intends to give her new Tempur-Pedic Cloud Supreme mattress to a fellow army family stationed at Fort Gordon, Georgia, who lost everything they owned in a house fire.
Erin Whitehead is placing some of her items under “Brendan’s Christmas Tree,” a tree decorated in honor of her nephew Brendan Scott Coates, who lost his battle with brain cancer at the age of five. Before Christmas, all the items under the tree will be donated to a local Ronald McDonald House charity so that families staying there may have a holiday.
