VALDOSTA – When Elaine McPherson watched both her son and husband deploy just three weeks apart, there wasn’t a dry eye, or Kleenex, left in the airport.

After returning home from the airport, she began wondering why there wasn’t anything in the airport to provide extra tissues during emotional moments such as hers.

This is how McPherson came up with an idea for a ‘sniffle station’ that became a reality Tuesday morning.

With help from the Lowndes County Board of Commissioners, McPherson took a hotel television armoire and turned it into a place for people to pick up individual packs of Kleenex for free. While the ‘sniffle station’ is not exclusively for military families, there is a military side where patches and insignia hang along with a jar where families can leave a patch.

“The one phrase I always think about is that ‘the best ideas come out of time of need,'” McPherson said. “This came to me in a time of need and I home it gives others a sense of comfort in their time of need.”