Woman collects school supplies for Iraqi children

When Cindy Raines of Cape Girardeau adopted a soldier through the My Soldier program at Manhattanville College in New York, she simply typed in "troop support" on an Internet search and found that for a $10 donation she could receive the address of a soldier plus a commemorative bracelet. Two years later, she is requesting donations for notebooks, pencils, pens, scissors, glue, folders and filler paper -- basic school supplies -- for schoolchildren in Ramadi, Iraq. Items will be collected Saturday and Sunday and Sept. 8 and 9 at Trinity Lutheran Church, where members of the congregation can leave the school supplies on a table in the lobby of the church between services. Members of the community also can bring them to the church office during the day from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Raines took the initiative of making a presentation to the church council to promote the collection for "her soldier," Army Spc. Jeremy Petoskey, because he "touched her heart" in the e-mails the two exchanged for two years. Raines' contact with Petoskey through the My Soldier program included correspondence and a package from Raines once in a while until his deployment ended and he returned to Fort Carson, Colo., where he and his family were stationed. Their correspondence resumed in October 2006 when Petoskey was deployed again.

In the time the two have corresponded, Raines asked Petoskey for suggestions or requests of items he might need or want. She learned about other programs, including Soldiers' Angels, a group that supplies displaced, injured soldiers flown to Germany for treatment, with toiletries and something of their own to hold onto. Scared and without support, these soldiers sometimes arrive even without clothes, said Raines.

"He never asked for anything," she said.

Generally, the soldier support groups provide troops with personal-care items they are unable to purchase in Iraq. But the only request Petoskey made was for school supplies for children at a Ramadi school. Raines said she believed the request was important because he told her "the terrorists had targeted the schools with rocket fire in order to destroy the schools, but also to scare the parents into keeping their children away from learning centers."

Raines is committed to helping Petoskey with his request partly because she believes he is special. When she asked him what he was afraid of, the father of three replied, "That my children won't know me when I get home."

"A 29-year-old man serving in a war zone whose fear is for his children is a man I would like to meet someday," Raines said.

Ramadi is considered to be the southwest point of Iraq's Sunni triangle. To the north and west, Ramadi is bounded by the Euphrates River, while to the east and south it gradually disappears into suburbs. It has been a focal point of resistance to the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Because it hosts the main railway line into Syria, it has long been suspected by American commanders of being a staging area for insurgents.

cpagano@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 133