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United Arab Emirates, e
Japan, Korea, Afghani
stan, Qatar and Kuwait,
during peacetime and |
war. Services ranging
from crisis counseling
and housing assistance to
e-mail access and mobile
units bring hope to troops
in haid-to-reach, and often
unstable, locations.
“The bulk of what we
do is like a big hug,” USO
CEO Ned Powell says.
“That’s all it is, and that’s all
it was during Worid War ll—just a little bit of home to
remind you that people were still behind you, still cared
and knew' where you were. Our mission is the same as it
was in 1941: to make sure that our men and women in
uniform know that America holds them in their heart.”
Powell recalls the day a young caddy approached him
during a fund-raising golf tournament to diank him for
the moral support the USO provided his father. "He liter-
USO CEO Ned Powell at a Fort Hood homecoming
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Then and now:The* technology has changed, but soldiers
have always used USO facilities to communicate with
their friends and families back home.
ally picked me up, with tears streaming down his face
and he said, Tou guys saved my dads life in Vietnam.’
For almost all of the folks that went to Vietnam—and
I’ve been told this rime and again by the vets —the
USO was the only friend they had.”
That friendship, Powell says, is courtesy of hard-
I working volunteers. "At the core these are people who
I are deeply patriotic, who understand the importance
i of saying thank you,” he says. "These are people w'ith
I good hearts."
Uniting families across the miles
It’s not just soldiers who benefit from USO ser-
vices. Their families do, too. Chantelai Lyons, 10, and
her four younger siblings in Norfolk, Va., may not under
stand all of the effort behind the USO’s United Through
Reading program, but they’ have reaped its benefit. In
2006, while their father, Craig Lyons, was serving six
months aboard a Navy ship in the Persian Gulf, they
received a DVD of him reading a Berenstain Bears book
aloud just for them. “It was pretty' cool that I got to see
him,” Chantelai say's. "When we first got the DVT) we
were like, ’Ooh! Were going to read a book with Dad!’
We were happy and excited.”
The reading program is available at 41 USO sites,
where the organization supplies recording equipment,
books and packaging materials, and handles the mail
ings. "Children can turn the TV on 10 times a day and
see Mommy or Daddy," says Mary' Moyer, director of the
Fort Eustis (Va.) USO. "There's no better program for
people in the service to communicate with their kids.”
“It meant a lot because they could actually see me live
and in person, so they didn’t have to miss me the entire
six months," says Lyons, a paralegal now stationed at
Tell us your USO story!
I Salute America’s veterans, visit
americanprofile.com/veterans
Naval Station Norfolk. "I think it was more about seeing
dad than about reading books.”
His wife, Kimberlee, 27, agrees. As soon as the first
DVD arrived, she watched it with their children. "They
sat and opened the books and followed along with him
the first time," she says. “But the second time they just
wanted to look ar him.”
The USO made it possible for Craig Lyons to read
a bedtime story to his children—while he was sta
tioned on a U.S. Navy ship in the Persian Gulf.
......
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