Kids' Letters to Our Soldier

As many of you know, our nephew, Kyle Elliott, has served as a medevac in both Iraq and now Afghanistan. He also flew relief/rescue missions during Hurricane Katrina and Rita, so obviously, in our book, he's a true American hero.

He was due to get out of the Army and return to school when he was stop-lossed and sent to Afghanistan. Even then he stayed optimistic, looking forward to getting back home to Oregon in time for this year's fall semester at Oregon State University, which is also sweetie's alma mater. Unfortunately, he recently learned isn't going to happen because the military doesn't have enough medevac replacements to send to that part of the world right now.

Well, the good part of this story is that I have the best writer friends and readers in the world, because several have leaped in to help raise his morale by sending him care packages and letters. One FaceBook friend's eight-year-old daughter, Casey, has even gotten her classmates to write him letters. Here are two her mom sent me yesterday:




Thinking of Casey organizing the letter writing campaign -- and her friends jumping in to help lift the spirits of a soldier so far from home -- makes me feel really optimistic about the future of our country. (I told her mom we could even be looking at a future president. Fortunately she still has time to go shopping for an outfit to wear to Casey's inauguration.)

ABC news filmed Kyle's crew for a few days. Although he's not named, you can get a couple of quick glimpses of him prepping an IV and an oxygen mask and hear his voice telling the pilot about incoming fire on his side. Oh, although the reporter's absolutely correct about the team's courage, she does have one thing wrong. The flares aren't being used to light up the area (they have infrared spotlights for that), but to decoy missiles and ruin Taliban gunners' night vision.