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Hello From Home
Staff member got idea when her dad was deployed
Journal photo by David Rolfe
Working on cards for soldiers in Iraq are (from left) Inez Webb, Kayden Bentley and Sydney Shelton. "People go there to fight to save our country," said Sydney, 9.
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Published: November 12, 2008
KING - On Thursday night, Inez Webb drove over to the Stokes Family YMCA to donate blood. Because of a collapsed vein, she wasn't able to do that. Still in the mood to do something to help others, she dropped by a room at the Y where people were making cards to send to soldiers in Iraq.
"This is fun, isn't it?" Webb asked as she cut out pictures of snowmen and glued them to folded pieces of construction paper. Webb often thinks about Iraq and the soldiers there.
"Who doesn't?" she asked.
So she found it quite satisfying to be able to do something for them. Before long, she had a stack of custom-made cards.
The card-making project was organized by Misty Cummings, the family-life director at the Y. It was hard on her family, she said, when her father, Ken Johnston, went to Iraq for the first time a few years ago as a staff sergeant with the B Battery of 113th Field Artillery Brigade of the N.C. Army National Guard.
"My whole family just did not know how to handle him being gone," she said.
Something they found helpful was participating in a card-making project for soldiers at the Sawtooth School for Visual Arts in Winston-Salem.
"It gave us a little bit of peace," she said.
So, when her father left his job as a deputy with the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office in October to return to Iraq to help train police there, she thought that making cards at the Y in King might be a satisfying project not only for her but also for others. As it happened, the night the card-making was held, Johnston was back in the United States recuperating from appendix surgery.
Before everyone arrived, Cummings laid out an array of raw materials -- construction paper, scissors, rubber stamps depicting Santa Claus and wrapped presents, paper printed with Christmas trees and snowflakes, ink pads, markers and pencils in an array of colors, stickers with images of Christmas lights and stars.
"If you have 10 ideas, you can make 10 cards," she said to Jared Gray as he shopped for supplies for his card. The Santa stamp ended up playing a major role in his first card.
Cummings invited the artists to write their name and age on the back, so that the soldiers would know who had made the cards for them. Jared wrote his name and noted that he is 7. Adding her age is not something that Webb would normally do, but with the kids doing it, she figured that she might as well, too. Her 65th birthday will be here in January, so she figured she might as well go ahead and round up.
Just down the table from Webb were Kayden Bentley and Sydney Shelton, both 9. They are also fellow fourth-graders at King Elementary School and good friends.
"She's really nice to me; I'm really nice to her," Kayden said. "We're like sisters."
Making a card was a snap for Kayden because she loves art and has already filled a big notebook at home with her creations.
"I'm thinking it up as I go along," she said as she outlined the words HAPPY CHRISTMAS on her card before filling in the letters with a marker. Next came an assortment of stickers and stamped images.
Kayden is aware of the situation over in Iraq because her uncle Jason Sutton, who lives in Kansas, served there.
"I was pretty worried," she said. "He got a broken arm while he was there."
Sydney doesn't know anyone there, but she does know about Iraq.
"People go there to fight to save our country," she said.
■ Kim Underwood can be reached at 727-7389 or at kunderwood@wsjournal.com.
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