'Ft. Hood Hug Lady' Gives Love to the Troops

WOAI ^ | 3/30/10 | Jim Forsyth

[laotzu]

A 78 year old financial planner in Killeen has a second job in which she receives...and gives...a lot of love.

Laird, who stands 4' 11" tall, is on hand when every deployment of soldiers leaves Ft. Hood to Iraq or Afghanistan, and is there when every plane load of soldiers returns.

She hugs every one of them, sometimes having to stand on her tip-toes to do it.

"I'm out there because I love our soldiers and I want to support them," she told 1200 WOAI news. "This is how I can make sure they know somebody supports them."

Laird, who is the widow of a U.S. Marine and was in the Air Force herself, says her goal is to bring smiles to the faces of the men and women who are about to go into harm's way because of their love for their country.

She says she has no idea how many she has sent off since she began the hugging back in 2003.

"Whether its one or a million, it doesn't matter to me," she told Bud. "I wish everybody in America could see what I have seen."

She says with multiple deployments out of Ft. Hood becoming the norm, now the soldiers start looking for her at Robert Grey Army Airfield or at airports in Killeen, Dallas, or Austin, wherever Ft. Hood soldiers leave or return from war.

"When they come home, they're looking for me, and they're glad I'm there to welcome them home."

Laird says she loves her unofficial role at the Ft. Hood Hug Lady, and she has no plans to retire.

[brushcop]

Thank you for that link (USOGirls), I can’t say enough about the whole effort at DFW.

[El Gato]

I’d step forward, but the commute from Mid-Missouri is just a bit too much!

While it's not DFW, I'd bet a lot of troops go through STL. Check with the local USO, they'll know when troops are moving through to/from Ft. Leonard Wood.

[JustaVet]

Before you start handing out medals, let us look at the rest of the story. Even though as a disabled Vet I wouldn't stop her from raising morale, maybe we should take a good hard look at the woman. When her husband, Ray, died two years ago, she was made executer of the estate. Betty arranged the schedule to suit her meeting the planes. Never mind that family came from all over the country. Everyone had to abide by her timetable. She stretched it over several days, delaying services with only an hours warning. Then while everyone was in the process of mourning, she would quickly end it, because she had to go meet a plane. I think that she shone her true colors, as when everyone was leaving the coffin at the grave site, she stopped everyone and had them sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to her. She told everyone at the reading of the will, that we would have to wait because Ray had left thirty thousand dollars in debt that had to be paid before we could get what he had wanted us to have. That sounded reasonable. Two years later and the bills still haven’t been paid. She lied to us, saying everything had ben taken care of, and to come get what little was left. After driving over twenty-one hundred miles, she told me that the lawyer had told her to sell everything at auction, and everything that he had left to me in the will was gone to pay the thirty thousand dollar bill. What has she been doing for the last two years, in exclusion of doing her duty as the Matriarch of the Laird clan? She has been meeting planes. She has no sense of what Honor is. She has no comprehension of what Family is. She is just another insecure person that constantly needs to be in the limelight, to have her Ego stroked. To be the official ‘Hug Lady’ of Fort Hood and never miss a plane. But it is good for the solders moral. Yes, let the Have Pencil, Will Travel business go under because she doesn’t have time to work. Make her family wait for years, waiting for closure of the death of their father. Duty, Honor, Country. These words have no meaning for her. I can’t complain, after all, I became disabled in the military so pinheads like this could screw it up for the rest of us.