Posted on 11/26/2004 1:48:27 PM PST by SandRat
SIERRA VISTA - Karen and Wally Sumby were facing Thanksgiving Day without family Thursday.
So were Pfc. Tony Wilkinson and Pvt. David Cooksey.
Thanks to Fort Huachuca's Adopt a Soldier Program, the two 18-year-olds got a home-cooked dinner, and the Sumbys got some company.
The Sumbys' two children are grown, and the couple has two grandchildren the age of the soldiers they adopted for a day. All of them live outside Arizona.
Having moved to their Winterhaven home just two years ago from the San Francisco Bay area, the Sumbys are relative newcomers. They shared Thanksgiving dinner with neighbors last year, but none of them were around this year.
So, when Karen heard of the Adopt-A-Soldier Program from a friend at work, she became excited about the idea.
"I needed company," she said. "I needed somebody to cook for."
Sitting in the Sumbys' spacious living room Thursday afternoon with a table of appetizers in front of them and the Colts-Lions game on a big-screen TV, the young men appeared right at home.
Sort of.
"Home, for me, is my brothers running around the house in their shorts," said Wilkinson, a native of Suwanee, Fla.
Aside from a trip to Georgia, this was his first venture away from Florida. It took awhile to adjust to reduced humidity in Arizona.
"I couldn't breathe very well at first," Wilkinson said.
Thanksgiving and Christmas are big events in Wilkinson's home with 30 to 40 relatives from several Southern states showing up at "granny's" for a huge feed.
The feast is generally held outdoors, because of the number of people.
So, the invitation from the Sumbys sounded appealing and was working out fine. It turns out that his hosts were born in Florida and went to high school together there, so they shared that heritage.
The Sumbys also found plenty to talk about with Cooksey, because they had also lived in California. Wilkinson grew up in Yreka, near the Oregon state line, before enlisting in the Army.
Cooksey left home at 16 and lived in Nevada and South Dakota before enlisting, so he's no stranger to low-key Thanksgivings. He's interested in meeting new people, so that was actually more appealing than the idea of a family setting for dinner.
"I wanted to meet people in the community," Cooksey said. "I thought it would be a lot of young people and loud music. It's a real nice community."
Neither soldier has been far from the fort during their stay here for training with 96 Bravo Military Intelligence, so the planned community of Winterhaven, surrounded by a brick wall and containing a golf course, was definitely a big change of scene for them.
Both soldiers also appreciated a change of food.
"It's better than (Fort) Leonard Wood," Wilkinson said of meals at Fort Huachuca. But it is not like granny's.
"I need more greens, more vegetables," Cooksey said.
The soldiers got plenty of vegetables, pie, cake and a 20-pound turkey for dinner Thursday. The Sumbys were hoping for four soldiers and prepared enough food for six people.
There were actually more families volunteering than needed, said Chaplain David Scharff, who helped organize the program.
Eighty families volunteered, 46 families participated and 108 soldiers got off the post for the day.
The soldiers met their host families Wednesday night, during a party on the post.
The soldiers were free from 11 a.m. Thursday, when they were picked up, until 9 p.m.
This is the 16th year the fort has asked Sierra Vista families to adopt soldiers ages 18 to 21 on Thanksgiving Day.
The 111th Military Intelligence Brigade sponsors the program for new soldiers.
The Thanksgiving holiday period is not generally long enough for soldiers to travel home, so the fort's program gives them a home-cooked feast, rather than a mess hall meal.
Scharff, who was in Kuwait for Thanksgiving a year ago, said he understood that more families volunteered this year than last.
Wally and the soldiers had more to talk about than where they'd lived in the past. Wally served with the Army's 537th Engineering Company in Germany, from 1964 to 1976. He's glad he wasn't called to serve in Vietnam.
Cooksey and Wilkinson are itching for action overseas.
Cooksey was motivated to enlist because of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and was looking forward to carrying a weapon.
"I want to defend my country," he said.
The Army thought he was better suited for intelligence work, and he's surprised to find he agrees with that assessment.
"I didn't know I'd be good at this," he said of the training he's receiving, which will enable him to brief officers.
Wilkinson was also looking forward to combat and was hoping to join two of his friends, who are serving in the same unit in Iraq.
"I was looking forward to a little more excitement in my life," Wilkinson said.
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