In honor of the holiday season, fourteen area military families received the opportunity to exchange a gift with loved ones serving overseas in Iraq. The gifts were not wrapped, but nonetheless came from the heart. Each family took their turn in thirty-minute blocks of time to talk with their family member over the live connection from Iraq to The Center for Rural Development’s third floor boardroom. Families ranging in groups of four to twelve members each waited their turn with nervous anticipation. Each time a family exited their private conference – with broad smiles and happy tears – the mood of the whole room lifted noticeably.
The schedule for the day included family videoconferences from 8:30 a.m. through 12:30 p.m. and was followed by a special program in The Center Theater emceed by Cloyd Bumgardner, public relations director for Somerset Independent Schools. Joining the families in the theater were 120-plus students from Meece Middle School in Somerset, Fifth District Congressman Hal Rogers, Senator Vernie McGaha, Somerset Independent Schools Superintendent Wilson Sears, and several veterans from the area.
During the theater program, the live video-feed of the soldiers in Iraq was projected onto a large screen on the theater stage. The soldiers were able to watch from Iraq as the student choir sang several holiday and patriotic classics while other members recited “Red Skelton’s Pledge” and “Twas the Night Before Christmas.” After the final performance, Lonnie Lawson, Center president and CEO, provided the introduction of Congressman Rogers, the keynote speaker for the program, who opened with a heartfelt “thank you” to the soldiers and their comrades, and closed with a soldier-by-soldier acknowledgement of veterans in the audience and their service to our country. After the speaker’s presentations, Congressman Rogers moved to the boardroom where he took the opportunity to express his appreciation for and admiration of the soldiers and the job they are doing on our behalf in Iraq. Joining Rogers were seven Meece Middle School students who were selected to have the opportunity to ask the soldiers questions. Both the Congressman’s comments and the student’s questions were projected on the theater screen for the audience to see and hear. At the close of the theater program, family videoconferences resumed in the board room at 2:30 p.m. and continued through 5:30 p.m.
Meece Middle School was instrumental in the organization of the videoconference, just as they were with a similar Veterans’ Day conference at The Center in 2005. The 2005 event proved to be the first connection in the nation between a live school audience and overseas military personnel. As with the 2005 Veterans’ Day conference, the connection was made possible in part by the Freedom Call Foundation, a public charity organization which has built a satellite network to support state-of-the-art communications to military personnel overseas. To date, the Foundation has three facilities in Iraq – one of which is located at Camp Taji, located north of Baghdad in the Sunni triangle, which hosted this conference. More than 30,000 troops in these camps have around-the-clock access to Freedom Calls service free of charge.
The Center for Rural Development, headquartered in Somerset, Ky., was a key partner in the videoconference. The Center’s CenterNET2 program is the largest provider of videoconferencing services in the state with more than 140 videoconferencing sites across Kentucky and has received national recognition for its leading-edge work in the field. The program received a National Association of Development Organizations award in 2007 for its work in the area of education technology and is currently using its technology to distribute Homeland Security training services across the country.
For more information on The Center for Rural Development, visit www.centertech.com. For more information on the Freedom Calls Foundation, visit www.freedomcalls.org.
