Published:
WESLEY CHAPEL - Children are children - whatever shade, ethnicity, religious stripe or country of origin. What they want is to laugh, frolic and have their curiosity satisfied. What they need is a sense of safety, of belonging, of being loved.In these and countless other ways, says one who should know, the children of Baghdad and Fallujah and Tikrit are not so different from the children of Tommytown and Lacoochee and the Central Florida village of Mascotte, famous for being near Clermont."You can see it in their eyes." So explains Erik Cone, a lean, 33-year-old Marine gunnery sergeant from Lansing, Mich., stationed in Tampa. Cone twice has been among U.S. forces storming Iraq, at the launches of operations Desert Storm (1991) and Iraqi Freedom (2003).During the peace between firefights in towns and villages, Cone says, it was not uncommon for Iraqi children to kick a soccer ball in the direction of dusty Marines - an invitation to play. Weird war.Wednesday, at the Pasco Veterinary Medical Center - just off State Road 54, near Quail Hollow - Cone recognized the appearance of hope, trust and expectation all over again. This time, the familiar glow arose from 17 upturned faces belonging to the 3- to 5-year-old tots under the direction of Dade City's Tricia Rizer. Five days a week, she makes the 90-minute round trip to teach the Redlands Christian Migrant Association child care class in western Lake County.
It's A Yuletide Tradition
The group comprised the latest lucky recruits to participate in the annual Marine Corps Reserve Toys For Tots kickoff in Pasco County. The event - full of a pets, horses, lunch-munching and package-ripping - borders on being a tradition that stretches back six years. That was the second yuletide season Bob Loring deployed a toy deposit box in the waiting room of Marlene Siegel's expect-anything veterinary hospital.Most of the youngsters come from single-parent households where mom works early and late, Rizer says."Some of the kids really, really need this," she said - that is, a day among folks demonstrating a different, uplifting way of life, lavishing them with attention, food and a little Christmas loot."It's exciting," says Alyssa Harrell, Siegel's 12-year-old home-schooled daughter. "It's nice to see the kids being recognized. I know they will appreciate this later on, because they will know we care about them."Consider it the Iraqi town of Baqubah, minus the improvised explosive devices. Like the sons and daughters of Iraqi parents eager for life without daily peril, the Mascotte field trippers rallied around Cone and sergeants Omar Abadie and Jose Perez - Miamians fluent in Spanish, the youngsters' first language.
Americans: Lucky At Birth
In Iraq, Abadie, 29, says, children wave, smile and shout, "We love America!" or "USA! USA! USA!""It makes you remember," Abadie adds, "how fortunate you are to be an American, to know that there is freedom at home. And to know that we're trying to bring freedom to the Iraqi people. We feel good about that."And there, the Marines agree, is the major difference between Iraqi and American children: However hardscrabble their lives otherwise are, youngsters in the United States grow up with at least a subtle sense of owning their own destinies. Iraqi children, Cone says, "don't know what to expect."The same may be said for the 17 who came to central Pasco County on Wednesday - a modest bunch representing the children of migrant workers across America. Plainly, they have not had the best of what the nation has to offer. But moments such as those that unfolded at the veterinary hospital demonstrate this country's enormous capacity to care on a scale that is simultaneously grand and intimate. Folded and pressed into the scrapbooks of their memories, Wednesday's events may come tumbling out at some pivotal moment, offering reassurance about the culture that surrounds them.It was enough to move Loring, St. Nick's red-haired, pipe-puffing chief elf-in-charge of toy supplies east of the Suncoast Parkway, to oratory:"Isn't it interesting that United States Marines - the meanest, roughest and toughest, always the first in the fight - are the most sympathetic toward children?"As Loring said this, Cone was crouched, catcher-style, before 3-year-old Alan Garcia, supporting cake on a paper plate in one hand and forking morsels into the lad's mouth with the other. All the while, little Alan played peek-a-boo with the Marine's dress white cap.Perez and Abadie squatted, too, giving little ones with icing on their fingers ample opportunity to smudge the shining brass buttons and silver awards for accomplishment on their well-pressed dress blues.The little ones' eyes opened ever wider throughout their visit, as morning dissolved into lunch and they were introduced to the wonders of veterinary medicine - including an X-ray of a 75-pound boa constrictor, a cheerful but seemingly frightened Australian shepherd and a few moments in the saddle of a sturdy chestnut horse.But in the final analysis, it seemed that nothing - not even the Christmas morning dress rehearsal that revealed noisy cars and trucks and wondrous fashion dolls for taking home - ranked ahead of the personal time offered without reservation by these strong men in uniform.
Like the war for the Sunni Triangle, the struggle for the welfare of children of migrant workers must be won and won again. But on the first Wednesday of December 2005, this small squad of Marines could, without argument, unfurl a banner of triumph: Mission accomplished.
