Life-sized likenesses of Guard members ease separation pains
at 11:11 AM
BANGOR — Lt. Col. Randall Holbrook travels just about everywhere with his wife Mary and their two sons, Justin, 14, and Logan, 5.
He’s quietly in the background on family outings to the grocery store, to restaurants, camping, even on Mary’s most recent visit to her gynecologist.
Randall has little to say because he’s a ‘‘Flat Daddy,’’ a two-dimensional foam board likeness from the waist up of the Maine Army National Guard officer from Hermon who was sent to Afghanistan in January with the 240th Engineer Group of Augusta.
The Guard has provided more than 100 of the cutouts to families of deployed service members as a way to ease the pain of separation.
‘‘It’s comforting,’’ Mary Holbrook told the Bangor Daily News. ‘‘It did help me adjust a lot.’’
The Flat Daddy - and Flat Mommy - program got started at the beginning of the year with the deployment of the Brewer-based B Company, 3rd Battalion of the 172nd Mountain Infantry.
The Guard pays to have a photo of the troop member blown up and provides supplies to families to attach the photo to foam board. Cutouts also are provided to parents and family members of childless service members.
2 comments:
is this serious?!!? sounds like something from the onion.
Click the link, it's a real as it gets.
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