Vicenza children meet to create holiday craft projects for deployed parents

Vicenza children meet to create holiday craft projects for deployed parents
By Kent Harris, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Tuesday, December 4, 2007

VICENZA, Italy — Hundreds of children whose parents are assigned to Caserma Ederle, or Schweinfurt or Bamberg in Germany will be celebrating Christmas while a parent is deployed downrange this year.

So the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team’s rear detachment in Vicenza decided to kick off the holidays a bit earlier this year to give kids a chance to share some seasonal spirit with their moms or dads in Afghanistan.

Hundreds gathered at Club Veneto on Sunday afternoon to work on a variety of craft projects that might soon be making their way downrange. Amanda Grigsby, a family readiness special assistant for the brigade, said the party was designed “to get the families together for the holidays and encourage the children to make something for their parents who are deployed.”

For the last seven months, family members routinely have been participating in a variety of organizations designed to make life more bearable. But most of those activities are based at the company level or in even smaller settings.

All-too-frequent exceptions are community members attending a series of memorial services honoring the 21 soldiers from Vicenza who have died during the rotation.

The rear detachment commander, Lt. Col. Todd Johnston, said the morale in the community is generally good, “though it’s often somber with us, because of the duties involved” in handling arrangements for the fallen soldiers and about 150 wounded personnel from the brigade.


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