FL MORRIS / FMORRIS@STARBULLETIN.COM Army Reservist Spec. Agnes Pontino had her photo taken yesterday for her new ID at the Army Reserve Center at Fort Shafter in preparation for her deployment to Bosnia next week. Second Lt. Norman Nakama worked the computer.

15 isle Reservists
to join peacekeepers
in Bosnia

The soldiers will leave next week
for a 6-month deployment

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By Gregg K. Kakesako
gkakesako@starbulletin.com

Spec. Agnes Pontino has placed her hope to get a nursing degree on hold for the next six months.

Spec. Joy Paglinawan's family business, Kamehameha Bakery on North School Street, will have to do without the services of its secretary.

First Lt. Dave Keleti will not only miss watching his son play outfield on Farrington High School's baseball team, he will also miss his son's performances as a trombonist in the Honolulu district honor select band.

These people are among the 15 citizen-soldiers who are members of the Pacific Army Reserve's 305th Public Affairs Detachment (Press Camp Headquarters), which will be part of the 25th Infantry Division's 1,000-member, six-month peacekeeping deployment to Bosnia. As part of Task Force Eagle, the 305th will providing public affairs support out of Tuzla, Bosnia, until October.

FL MORRIS / FMORRIS@STARBULLETIN.COM Army reservist 1st Lt. Dave Keleti and wife Laura with baby Brianna, Bryson, Dave and Brandii Keleti were at the Army Reserve Center at Fort Shafter yesterday where they were getting new ID's as he readied to leave for Bosnia.

Yesterday, unit members and their families spent the day at the Army Reserve Center at Fort Shafter Flats getting numerous briefings on their new roles as active-duty soldiers and dependents, as well as getting new identification cards. The soldiers will leave the islands next week.

Maj. Dana Minor, acting commander of the unit, said 13 of the 15 soldiers are traditional reservists who put on camouflage fatigues one weekend a month and two weeks during the summer. These soldiers in civilian life are a corrections officer, security guard, students, secretaries and small-business owners.

"We've been told to expect long hours," said Minor, who has already served a tour in Bosnia from 1996-97. "We were told to just be prepared to work. At one point, the unit we will be replacing were doing 16-hour days."

Among the public-affairs duties the Hawaii unit will assume from the 382nd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment from Maryland is escorting media, producing a weekly eight- to 10-page newspaper, providing analysis of the stories in the local newspapers and providing videotape of the activities of Task Force Eagle to the Armed Forces Network.

Minor, 42, went to Bosnia in 1996 when he was a member of the 346th Psychological Operations Company in Columbus, Ohio. He expects things to be a little more settled than his last Bosnian peacekeeping tour of duty.

Minor said he has been told that the media attention surrounding Bosnia has "kind of leveled off." However, he has been warned that "it spikes at certain times," such as when actor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently visited the area.

Pontino, 21, is the youngest member of the unit, having been a reservist for a little more than three years. She joined the Army Reserve because it will pay for her nursing education. Although Pontino, a 1999 Farrington High School graduate, said she is "very excited" and looking forward to the next six month overseas, leaving her family and friends will be tough.

"The hardest thing will be saying good-bye to my family. I am Filipino and I come from a very large family," said Pontino, who also works as a security guard to support herself.

Paglinawan is the unit's newest journalist, having completed the Defense Information School in Maryland just two months ago. She's been to Korea twice with the 305th, but those times she was in charge of the unit's administrative matters.

"I'm kind of nervous, but I know I can do the job (as a journalist)," said Paglinawan, a 1997 Radford High School graduate.

Keleti, a 14-year Army Reserve veteran, will miss his wife's birthday in August; the 17th birthday celebration of son Brandon in July; and the ninth birthday of daughter Brandii in June.

His wife, Laura Balon-Keleti, said her parents, Rose and Atanacio Balon, help by babysitting the couple's 3-month-old daughter, Brianna-Taylor, and another son, 4-year-old Bryson, while she is at work in the admissions department at St. Francis Medical Center in Liliha.

But Balon-Keleti, a 1986 Farrington High School graduate, admits that things could get rough if she is accepted into the University of Hawaii master's program in public administration later this year.

The 15 Army Reserve journalists are among the 280 citizen-soldiers in the Pacific Reserve here and on Guam who have been placed on active duty since the Sept. 11 attacks. They are the second group of reserve journalists to be sent to Bosnia. In 1998, journalists and photographers belonging to the Hawaii Army National Guard's 117th Public Affairs Detachment were called to active duty and spent nearly a year working in Tuzla.