Troops’ return true occasion to celebrate

The long-awaited homecoming of troops from Iraq has inched close enough that communities have started organizing celebrations for when they return.

Post Falls is holding its first meeting next week. Bonners Ferry has been meeting intermittently for three months. Boise and Twin Falls are also organizing festivities.

Some are doing dinners for soldiers and their families. Others are holding communitywide bashes.

One commonality is the intended message: Welcome home.

Another is that the events have no fixed date yet. The communities won’t know exactly when their troops are coming back until the day they fly out, so organizing committees are trying to get things in place beforehand.

“When they give us a date, we’ll be ready to roll,” said John Dunlap of the American Legion, who’s spearheading the private dinner in Post Falls. Based on information from service members’ wives, he anticipates that the National Guard troops will be back in early December. The festivities will be open to any returning troops, however.

Bonners Ferry plans to have a public event early next year to give soldiers time to spend with family and settle back into the community, said Mayor Darrell Kerby. The city will also be renting a billboard on U.S. Highway 95 to display a welcome home sign from January through March, Kerby said.

Dunlap, from the American Legion, said welcoming events show soldiers that the community supports them, thus helping their adjustment process.

“They’re not supporting the war,” said Dunlap, a Vietnam veteran. “They’re supporting the troops.”

That distinction is important to people like Jeannie Morgan of Athol, whose husband left for Iraq in July. She and other wives of soldiers are fed up with their men getting lost in the negativity surrounding the war.

To her, affairs like the dinner send the message: “The families have not been forgotten, and the soldiers have not been forgotten,” Morgan said. “We’re welcoming them home.”

The families of soldiers have gotten close since their significant others deployed, Morgan said. They’ve organized ladies’ nights out, playgroups and coffee mornings. Having soldiers present at gatherings like the dinner “would be absolutely heavenly,” Morgan said. “A dream made true.”