Park crowd celebrates a bang-up 4th

The little boy stared at U.S. Army Spc. Rick Roush as if the man in desert camouflage were a living GI Joe.

“I taught Iraqis infantry tactics. I had six Iraqis under me,” Roush said, then reminded the boy at the Army recruiting booth in Riverfront Park on Monday that he’d paint the boy’s face in camouflage colors in return for some quality push-ups.

“I really want to go back. I think 80 percent of Iraqis want us there. We give stability to their lives,” Roush said.

The Army and Army National Guard set up recruiting tables to take advantage of the heightened patriotism of Independence Day and the crowds attending Neighbor Day festivities.

Dale Larsen, Riverfront Park event coordinator, said he expected about 80,000 people to wander past the booths displaying everything from magnetic jewelry to chip bowls painted in an American flag motif.

Many people wore red, white and blue on shirts or on oversized hats, even on their fingernails. Those were the people whom Roush, who now is assigned to the Spokane Valley recruiting station, wanted to reach.

“The more Iraqis we train, the less Americans we have to send over there,” he said as if even a 5-year-old could understand the sense in his words.

Roush was available to recruit because he was wounded in February. He was training Iraqis in Balad, about 30 miles north of Baghdad.

“We called the area ‘Mortar-ritaville,’ ” he said, the nickname being a takeoff on Jimmy Buffet’s song “Margaritaville.”

An explosion on the side of a road threw Roush from his vehicle.

He told the story softly so passers-by wouldn’t hear.

“We try not to talk about that at the recruiting table,” he said, chuckling.

Roush said his right shoulder was dislocated and two tendons in his back were torn. He was sent home for repairs and assigned to the Valley recruiting center as a wounded soldier returning to Iraq.

The Army couldn’t have found a better cheerleader.

“I have two years left; then I’ll re-enlist for six,” Roush said. “I volunteered to go back. I can’t wait.”

His dedication is one reason Gilda and Fred Meyer of Spokane were selling yellow “Support Our Troops” magnets at their two vendor booths in the park. U.S. Army reservist Richard Lee Meyer, their son, is another.

The Meyers are selling the $2 magnets to raise money for telephone calling cards to send to soldiers from Spokane in the Middle East, Gilda Meyer said.

The Meyers have sold temporary henna tattoos and sunglasses at the holiday celebration for years but didn’t connect their son’s military service with the Fourth of July celebration until this year.

That’s because Richard Meyer, 34, was a city of Spokane police officer and SWAT team member until last October when the Army deployed his Reserve unit.

Now the former U.S. Marine and Desert Storm veteran is a drill instructor at Fort Huachuca in Arizona.

His mother is convinced he’s heading to Afghanistan. “Those are the rumors,” Gilda Meyer said. “I’m keeping my fingers crossed he’ll come home in November.”

The Riverfront Park crowd grew by the minute as the warm day worked toward the fireworks hour. The Meyers’ story about their son, which they had posted at their booth, and the Army recruiting booths drew people like free food samples.

Like Roush, the Meyers hoped the holiday would magnify patriotism.

Meanwhile, Roush and U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Jon Barker applied camouflage to young faces as fast as their fingers could fly.

“That’s a soldier,” a dad told a little boy in a stroller while pointing at Barker, who was dabbing paint on his niece, Madison Walker, 11, from South Carolina. “Maybe that’ll be you someday.”