East Pasco wants at least 50 of its friends and neighbors to be able to reach out and touch someone. From overseas.
Members of the Florida National Guard in Battery B, 2nd Battalion, 116th Field Artillery, shipped out from Dade City to Mississippi last week for three months of training before deployment to Afghanistan. The soldiers are expected to be away from home for up to 20 months.
Fortunately, theirs is a modern Army with all types of technological advances. What veteran of World War II, Korea, Vietnam or even the first Gulf War would not envy the current soldiers' access to communications equipment allowing them to e-mail and talk to families?
The sound of a loved one's voice is a precious gift to both soldier and those left behind. But, it comes with limits. Calling home requires more than just figuring out time zones. (Afghanistan is 91/2 hours ahead of eastern standard time.) The soldiers also will need overseas phone cards.
Before leaving east Pasco last week, each soldier received a book of stamps and the unit received 75 phone cards for domestic use. Now the goal of the Dade City Rotary is to raise approximately $1,900 to acquire international phone cards, with 550 minutes of talk time, for each member of the unit.
Interested parties can contribute by sending a check to the Dade City Rotary Club, P.O. Box Box 44, Dade City, FL 33526 and noting the check is for the club's support-the-troop fund.
The phone cards are just part of the effort being waged on the home front. The Rotary and Pasco County are creating a Web site to put military families in touch with contractors who can help with home or auto repairs for little or no charge. John Finnerty, a Rotarian and executive director of East Pasco Habitat for Humanity, estimated about two dozen vendors are participating, mostly plumbers, electricians and other contractors who have worked with the Habitat for Humanity. Still, more are welcome.
"Anybody who would like to be one of those people who is an asset, we'd like to put them on the list to make sure the troops are taken care of," Finnerty said.
Indeed, and there are plenty of troops to be considered. The local soldiers are part of the second-biggest deployment of the Florida Army National Guard since World War II. About 1,200 of Florida's National Guardsmen of the Tampa-based 53rd Infantry Brigade have been called up as part of a task force of 2,000 training together at Camp Shelby, Miss. Come July, Battery B will work a security detail, helping to secure training bases in Afghanistan for that nation's fledgling army.
Fretting about home repairs back home and wondering whether they'll be able to call their families should be the least of the soldiers' worries while serving amid the hostilities in Central Asia. Kudos to the Dade City community for attempting to ease those concerns.
