RICHARD WALKER / RWALKER@STARBULLETIN.COM
Kailua Elementary School third-grader Scott Murphy read yesterday with teacher Melanie Hanohano in the classroom. Scott and other students wrote letters to U.S. soldiers in Iraq that were delivered by Gov. Linda Lingle.
Gov delivers
student mail in Iraq
When third-grade teacher Melanie Hanohano received a call from the governor's office last week asking if students at Kailua Elementary School could write letters to soldiers in Iraq, she was happy to oblige.
"I told them, 'Sure, no problem,'" Hanohano said. "We do writing in class every day. I didn't ask questions."
She and her colleagues, Robyn Ide and Linda Elia, had their students write 50 letters, as requested. Yesterday, they found out their mail went special delivery, handed personally by Gov. Linda Lingle to Hawaii soldiers in Iraq during her surprise trip to Baghdad.
"That's cool," said Scott Murphy, 8, when he heard what had happened to his letter. "When I wrote it, I thought about cheering them up if they felt sad about missing their families."
His letter read in part: "Good Luck. I hope you win. Thank you for protecting our country. I encourage you to win. I hope you can beat up a lot of bad guys. I believe in you guys. You can do it. You guys rock."
About 14 percent of the school's students are military dependents, so the issues are close to many of them. Luciana Malloy, 8, wrote her letter just a day before her own father, a Marine, was deployed overseas last week.
"My classmates said it would be funny if my letter got sent to my dad," she said. "I wrote: 'Dear Soldier, I'm really proud of you for saving our country. I appreciate that you guys caught Saddam Hussein.' I told them that my dad's in the military too, and I might join the military someday."
The students wrote rough drafts, then edited them, before carefully writing in script on lined paper.
"It was touching," Hanohano said. "I could feel their empathy. They said it must be scary at times to be a soldier. They called them true heroes."
She expects the letters to bring smiles to the soldiers who receive them.
"Hopefully, some will write back," Hanohano said. "That's part of the fun of writing a letter -- getting a response."
But Luciana was realistic about the prospects of hearing back. "I don't think so," she said, a knowing look in her big blue eyes. "They have lots of training to do over there and wouldn't have that much time to write a letter."
