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Joanie Thresher welcomes an average of 7,000 troops and family members each month to the USO in Columbia Metropolitan Airport.
Photo by Mary Ann Chastain
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With basic training behind him, Pfc. Corey Neal of Aiken can relax with a book before traveling to AIT in military intelligence. (Neal was a 2010 Washington Youth Tour student from Aiken Electric Cooperative.) A flight arrivals-and-departures monitor inside the USO center provides convenient updates.
Photo by Mary Ann Chastain
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At the USO center’s game room, soldiers find exactly what they need during their down time at the airport. They can play video games, check Facebook, send email or charge cell phones, with plenty of nearby snacks.
Photo by Mary Ann Chastain
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After long days in combat skills training at Fort Jackson’s Camp McCrady, soldiers decompress at the USO’s on-site day room—playing pool, ping pong or card games and watching movies or ball games on a big-screen TV.
Photo by Mary Ann Chastain
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The USO's on-site day room at Fort Jackson's Camp McCrady hosts regular dinners for soldiers who are being deployed. Capt. Michael Hassien, officer in charge, the USO’s Katie Kennedy and volunteer Michelle McClain of Gilbert set up a barbecue buffet, courtesy of Hudson’s Smokehouse.
Photo by Mary Ann Chastain
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Navy reservist Cmdr. Karl Diederich of Fort Worth, Texas, prepares to read books for his three children through the United Through Reading program. “I could sit there and share with my kids, not just the reading, but also some thoughts afterwards—that I love them and know they will do well while I’m gone,” says Diederich, who was heading to active duty in Afghanistan.
Photo by Mary Ann Chastain
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Thresher makes sure Pfc. Cassandra Swedlund of Springfield, Mo., is well fed and relaxed before the next leg of her journey. Swedlund hopes to work for the USO one day.
Photo by Milton Morris
Foul weather raged across the Midlands, severe enough to shut down flights out of Columbia Metropolitan Airport. Joanie Thresher vividly recalls that day in 2012 and the 19-year-old soldier with a story to tell.
Thresher was on duty at the airport, as usual, as director of USO South Carolina. She saw a quiet, nice-looking young man come in and settle himself. Hours passed, and he declined repeated offers of food or help, just glad for a comfy place to pass the time. He’d just completed training at Fort Jackson and was headed to his next assignment. But his flight had been canceled; short on funds, he was stranded there for at least a day, maybe two.
“So I told him, not a problem, we’d get him a hotel room,” Thresher remembers. She packed a goody bag with snacks and toiletries and escorted the anxious but grateful soldier to his hotel shuttle.
“I gave him a hug and said, ‘We want to wish you luck—I know you’re going to do great things.’ He’d been quiet the whole time pretty much, and he said, ‘Ma’am, there’s something I have to tell you.’
“ ‘I just turned 19 yesterday. And 19 years ago, I was born in the USO Houston. My mom delivered me in the USO Houston and always told me one day I’d meet an angel at the USO, and I just met you.’ ”
Thresher fights back tears at the memory. But this, she says, is what the USO does best—providing small comforts that make a huge difference to service members who are away from home, and to their families.
“What you have to understand is, it’s not about me, or the volunteers,” she says. “It’s about the troops that we’re helping—these little, little things that mean so much to them. And he’s never going to forget that.”
72 years, one mission
Say “USO” and most folks picture Bob Hope and his overseas camp shows, entertaining the troops, from World War II through the Gulf War. Celebrities still visit military bases around the world on USO tours, but much of what today’s USO delivers happens in centers like the one at the Columbia airport.
The cozy USO center in the main lobby of Columbia’s airport is stocked with snack foods, soft drinks and coffee, all free to military personnel and their families. They can watch TV, use computers to send email, Skype or surf the Web, play Xbox games, or call home. Volunteers answer questions, calm nerves and point them in the right direction when it’s time to go.
“Does the bus to Fort Jackson get here at 5? ” a new recruit, freshly arrived from Missouri, asks Thresher mid-afternoon one day.
“The drill sergeant comes at 5; the bus will come around 6,” Thresher says. “Did you get a sandwich? Everything’s free, honey, help yourself. And if y’all want to play Xbox you can check out games out front, or we’ve got computers. So really make yourselves at home, okay? ”
“Is he going to be on our case as soon as he gets here?” the young man persists, more concerned about the drill sergeant.
“Oh, no, he’s awesome!” Thresher reassures him. “As long as you’re not sitting on the planters out there. Just don’t sit on the planters.”
Thousands of military personnel funnel through the Columbia airport every month on their way to and from Fort Jackson, the U.S. Army’s largest basic training site. Many more are traveling to and from Sumter Air Force Base and McEntire Joint National Guard Base in the Midlands or other military installations stretched from Charleston to Greenville. Some are journeying to deployment in Afghanistan, Kuwait or far-flung parts of the world. Others are on the way to specialized training schools.
Most, though, are new recruits arriving for basic training at Fort Jackson, clutching large kraft envelopes with all their paperwork, some traveling outside their hometowns for the first time.
“These young recruits come in, and they have just raised their hand to swear to defend our country, and then they come here, and they have no idea where to go,” says Katie Kennedy, programs manager for USO South Carolina.
Recognizing a need, in 2009 the airport donated space for these service members in transit, and Midlands leaders hired Thresher to run it. Together they petitioned the national USO in Arlington, Va., to open a permanent location in Columbia. Since 2010, it has been serving some 7,000 military personnel and their families each month.
“The USO was formed in 1941 to lift the spirits of American troops and their families, and that’s been our mission ever since,” Kennedy says. “This is just the community’s way of saying, ‘Thanks for what you do.’ ”
Heart and soul
Kennedy and Thresher are the only paid staffers at the nonprofit USO South Carolina. The “heart and soul” of the organization, they insist, is the center’s 130-plus volunteers—veterans, family members of active-duty military, offspring of military families, grateful citizens. All understand the impact of those “little, little things” the USO does.
When new recruits arrive at the airport, volunteers meet them with a smile, a snack and answers to questions. When trained troops prepare to deploy, volunteers applaud them on their way, providing snacks or personal care items for the journey. When soldiers come home for R&R, volunteers equip their family members with “welcome home” signs to greet them. When active-duty service members, veterans or their families need a respite in their travels, the USO’s doors are open.
“Basically, we provide a home away from home, whether that’s in a war zone, at training or just passing through an airport,” Kennedy says. “They recognize our logo, and they know they will be treated like family.”
Pfc. Corey Neal, 20, found a quiet space at a USO table to enjoy a book on his way to advanced individual training (AIT) in Pensacola, Fla. It was Neal’s first visit to a USO, but he had heard good things about the Columbia center. He savored his cinnamon roll and Coke—an enjoyable change after weeks of the DFAC (dining facilities) and MREs (meals ready-to-eat).
“It’s very welcoming,” says Neal, an Aiken Electric Cooperative member and a recent graduate from basic training. “They kind of realize what we’ve been through and they’re here to serve us.”
Spc. Maria Haynesworth of Sumter had an important question to ask the first USO volunteer who greeted her, after 10 weeks of basic training: Where in the airport could she get her nails done? No such luck at this airport—she’d have to find a place in San Antonio, where she was heading for AIT. But the USO did provide an outlet for recharging her phone and, she says, her “first real cup of coffee in 10 weeks.”
Connecting with home
The biggest difference in today’s USO and the USO of the Bob Hope era can be summed up in three words, Thresher says: “technology, technology, technology.”
The airport center is the only staffed and permanent USO location in the state, but the USO also maintains a day room and a portable “USO in a Box” at McCrady Training Center, a S.C. Army National Guard training site at Fort Jackson. Both locations deliver what most personnel are anxious for—computer access, DVDs, video games, outlets to recharge electronic devices, voice-over-Internet phone service.
“Where back in Vietnam and before, our families and loved ones had to wait on the mailman to get that letter—they had to write that letter and make sure that letter got home or got to their soldiers or to their troops overseas—now they’re able to communicate via Skype, computers, voice-over phones,” Thresher says.
One favorite mode of communication is a national USO partnership called United Through Reading. Deploying soldiers choose from a selection of children’s books, and USO volunteers record a DVD of the soldier reading that story for his or her family back home. USO South Carolina offers this program at the Camp McCrady day room for every group of soldiers deploying from Columbia, and they take the service to other parts of the state as needed.
“It’s a way for them to stay connected to their families,” Kennedy says. “It’s the last thing the family has of that person, and it has Mom or Dad’s voice and face and mannerisms.”
Nationally, the USO provides a range of programs to support active military personnel, the families who wait for them to come home, those who return with illness or injuries, veterans seeking jobs, and other needs. A 2012 TellUSO survey showed that 95 percent of service members believe the USO lets them know their country supports them.
Locally, the focus is on providing a respite from duty—“a cup of coffee, a taste of home, a friendly face,” Kennedy says. The USO South Carolina invests every donation into caring for the troops that pass through the Columbia airport or train at a South Carolina installation. They do it 365 days a year, until, as the USO motto says, every one comes home.
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How to help
To volunteer: Anyone 18 or older may submit an application at usovolunteer.org
To donate funds: 100 percent tax deductible; send check to USO South Carolina, 3250 Airport Blvd., Suite 7, West Columbia, SC 29170
To donate items: Deliver prepackaged, individually wrapped food items (no homemade foods); travel-size toiletries (e.g., razors, shaving cream, toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, sunscreen); Ziploc bags; phone cards
To learn more: www.facebook.com/USOSouthCarolina
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