"They just pounced on us," said Phil Parlock, who took
his 11-year-old son, Alex, and 3-year-old daughter, Sophia, to the Democratic rally at Tri-State Airport in Huntington, W.Va. Sophia became briefly famous yesterday when an Associated
Press photo showing her in tears after Democrats tore her sign to pieces was posted on Matt Drudge's Web site, www.drudgereport.com. "She was crying; they were pushing and shoving her," said Mr. Parlock, a Huntington real estate agent. "She was scared."
Sophia is the youngest of 10 children in a proudly patriotic family. The oldest two Parlock children, a 22-year-old daughter and a 21-year-old son, are members of the West Virginia Army National Guard, and a third Parlock who recently turned 18 will be sworn into the guard tomorrow, Mr. Parlock said.
Mystery solved.