Laurie Naumu displays the phone card and a personalized message intended for her husband, who is deployed in the Middle East. The cards will be funded through sales of yellow ribbons.
Ribbon sales to buy
troops phone cardsProject buys shoes for Afghan kids
Spouses of Pacific Army reservists in Iraq since March hope Hawaii residents will show their support for those in the Middle East tomorrow by buying yellow ribbons.
The Oahu chapter of the 411th Engineer Combat Battalion (Heavy) Family Support Group will be selling 8-inch magnetized yellow ribbons from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. tomorrow in front of Wal-Mart at the Mililani Shopping Center.
"Money raised by the sale," said Karinne Cortes, "will be used to buy phone cards for the soldiers in Iraq."
The group hopes to sell 300 of these yellow ribbons, which bear the unit crest of the Army Reserve's Hammerhead battalion. Cortes said her husband, Capt. Marwin Cortes, is one of the few lucky ones who can afford a cell phone.
"He calls me every other day," she said. "They have AC (air conditioning) in their trailers, so it's pretty comfortable."
But Karinne Cortes said the Hawaii reservists are working 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, repairing roads and constructing buildings at their base near Baghdad.
Laurie Naumo, whose husband, Spc. Michael Naumo, has been in the 411th for the past six years, said the temperature at Camp Victory North has climbed to nearly 112 degrees in the past few days.
"There's no tradewinds there," she said, "so it's worse than Kona weather."
She said the support group hopes to raise enough money to buy several hundred phone cards for soldiers in the lower ranks.
She said her husband tries to call at least once a week. "Once I was in panic when we were cut off and he didn't call for a week because of satellite phone connection problems," said the Hawaii Kai resident.
There is no established genesis of yellow ribbons, which blossomed in January 1981 to welcome the American hostages home from Iran.
A 1981 Library of Congress report notes that in a 1981 CBS broadcast, Penelope Laingen, wife of the U.S. charge d'affaires in Tehran, Bruce Laingen, was shown outside her home in Bethesda, Md. "It just came to me," she said, "to give people something to do, rather than throw dog food at Iranians. I said, 'Why don't they tie a yellow ribbon around an old oak tree?'"
The Library of Congress further noted that a song, copyrighted in 1972 under the title "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree," was recorded by 30 vocalists in the late 1970s. The hit version was done by the vocal group Dawn featuring Tony Orlando.
The song sketches the story of a convict riding the bus homeward after three years in prison who is hoping his sweetheart ties a yellow ribbon on a roadside oak tree if she will have him back -- and finds the tree is covered with yellow ribbons.
In 1949, the Library of Congress added, Argosy Pictures released a motion picture starring John Wayne and Joanne Dru, which was called "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon." The picture was popular, and the theme song, "Round Her Neck She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," was a hit.
But according to Gerald arsons, writing for the American Folklife Center News, various versions of the song have been around for about 400 years.
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Operation aims to
outfit Afghan kids
with footwear
In Afghanistan, members of the 15th Infantry Aviation Brigade have begun "Operation Shoe Fly" -- designed to help children there who have no shoes.
First Sgt. James Thompson said in an e-mail to his wife, "Just about every flight engineer and crew chief have noticed over the course of flying across this place called Afghanistan these past few months that a large percentage of the children have no shoes to wear and of course, almost all the girls are shoeless."
He added, "In addition to protecting the feet of these young innocent children, we might even win some hearts and minds among their parents and who knows where the shoes might take these kids."
He said contributions of children's shoes, new or used, should be sent to Operation Shoe Fly; B Company; 214th Aviation Regiment; Bagram, Afghanistan APO AE 09354-9998.
