Down East plans welcome for returning soldiers

PERRY – She wants to light their way.

Patti Craig of Eastport hopes that everyone will place candles in their windows this weekend to honor those soldiers who recently returned from serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The soldiers will be honored Saturday night with a motorcade and dinner. For Craig the motorcade is personal. Her nephew Spc. Theodore Cummings of Perry will be there along with his mother, Barbara Hicks.

The other men who will be honored are: Spc. Michael Barnard, Pfc. Jordan Bishop and Spc. Benjamin Maloney, all of Perry; Pfc. Jesse Brown of Lubec; Spc. Troy Gardner of Ellsworth; Spc. Adam Hall of Whiting; and Spc. Mitch Russell of Calais. They are with the Army National Guard 172nd Mountain Infantry based in Brewer. They recently returned from Iraq.

Also honored will be Staff Sgt. David Boone of Eastport, who recently returned after serving in Afghanistan.

Hicks said the event begins at 4:30 p.m. Saturday with a motorcade forming at the Eastport Fire Department. It will travel along Route 190 to the Perry Elementary School.

There will be photographs on display at the school depicting the soldiers’ experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. Once at the school, the soldiers, friends and family will feast on a spaghetti supper served by the Calais Family Support Group. A short program will follow at 6:30 p.m.

Brittany Jamieson of Pembroke will sing the national anthem, and chaplain Capt. David Sivret of St. Anne’s Episcopal Church in Calais, who also served in Afghanistan, will offer the invocation. There will be speeches and lots of praise for the young men as well as all of the men and women serving in a foreign country.

Craig started her campaign nearly 16 years ago to get people to put a single light in their windows to honor the troops.

She began the tradition for those U.S. troops who were in the Persian Gulf. Now, the United States is in a different war under a different president, and the light in Craig’s window burns strong. “Even though my nephew is home, the light will be burning, and a lot of people’s will,” she said Monday.

She asks people, especially along Routes 190 and 1, and in all of Washington County, to put candles in their windows in honor of the soldiers.