Sam Welden gave the Grandview group a military-style acronym, "Operation BRAT,

Sam Welden gave the Grandview group a military-style acronym,
"Operation BRAT,

(EXCERPT) Soldier meets his Boca 'Angel Team', by Lona O'Connor, Palm
Beach Post Staff Writer Thursday, March 18, 2004

BOCA RATON -- Army Staff Sgt. Sam Welden, just back from Iraq, got a
family homecoming celebration Wednesday night.

But it was in a town he'd never been to and with people he had never
met.

Welden, 31, a tank commander whose unit was one of the first to roll
into Iraq when the war began a year ago, was seeing for the first time
his adopted "family," which consists of students, teachers and
families from Grandview Preparatory School in Boca Raton.

The connection began last year in Nickerson, Kan., home of Welden's
best friend, Barry Stockington, who started a letter-writing campaign
there to keep up his friend's morale. Then he called his aunt, Connie
Tishman, a Boca Raton chiropractor, who in turn inspired her daughter.

In October, eighth-grader Marisa Tishman, 13, organized a campaign at
Grandview to send e-mails and c...

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---------------------------
Otis Willie
Associate Librarian
The American War Library
http://www.americanwarlibrary.com