WEST PARIS – Small-town America showed its big heart Sunday when it lavished gifts, love and laughter on six returning Iraq War veterans, and prepared to send two more soldiers into the bloody, dusty conflict.
“There’s nothing more different than the hills of home and the deserts of the Middle East,” hometown humorist Joe Perham told the soldiers and their 200 friends and family members who attended the afternoon party at the town elementary school. “… You answered that simple call to duty. For that we appreciate you, we admire you and we thank you. We thank you.”
He added, “You taught us how to heal and how to come together, and for that we thank you, too.”
Babies and toddlers babbled loudly at times but, like a big family reunion, no one tried to shush them. A group of youngsters sang patriotic songs, the smallest ones humming when they forgot the words – which was often. Majorettes twirled batons, occasionally hitting the girl beside them, but no one was hurt. Boy Scouts, with crooked shirts and cowlicks, led the Pledge of Allegiance, and dancers bobbed and weaved to the classic hit “I Feel Good,” which summed up how the crowd was feeling.
A potluck lunch was spread over several tables. A large cake and plates of chocolate cookies and pumpkin whoopie pies needed their own table.
“This is the way Americans are supposed to treat their soldiers,” said Vietnam veteran Delwin Wilson. “I had comrades that never made it back because they didn’t have family support.
“This town has the most fantastic small-town come-together (attitude),” Wilson said. “There’s an awful lot of town pride here.”
West Paris is one of the eight towns that comprise the Oxford Hills region of Maine, the gateway to ski country and the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The town, surrounded on three sides by mountains, is home to 1,700 people.
Five of the six soldiers served a year in Iraq with the Army National Guard’s 133rd Engineer Battalion, which lost two members in conflict and a third shortly after returning to the United States.
The five are Sgt. Shawn Coffin, Spc. Travis Coffman, Spc. Vernon Inman, Sgt. Randy Jones and Spc. Jonathan Stevens.
The sixth man, 23-year-old Sgt. Buddy Robinson, is a radar operator with the Army’s 25th Infantry. After spending the past 15 months in Iraq, he’ll report back to duty on April 1 at his home base in Hawaii.
“There were fun times and bad times,” Robinson said of the war. “But mostly, it’s the help of the families back home” that he will remember most.
Perham and others noted that Inman’s younger brother, Walter, will leave soon for Iraq, along with another West Paris soldier, Richard Smith.
Pastor Bruce Tinor opened the get-together by telling the soldiers the town had never forgotten them and ended with a prayer of thanks for their safe return.
More than 1,500 American soldiers have died in the two-year Iraq War and more than 10,000 have been wounded.
“We remembered your names every Sunday in church,” Tinor said. “I don’t know if you saw any angels, but we prayed to the angels to watch over you.”
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