Mom Trucks Thanksgiving Meal to GI Son
Wed Nov 24, 7:11 AM ET
AP
HARTLAND, Mich. - Yvette Boulton wants her son to get a home-cooked Thanksgiving meal before he's deployed to Iraq (news - web sites) — so she's trucking the feast 761 miles to Fort Bragg, N.C.
Boulton will be on the road 13 hours so she can feed her son, Army Cpl. Jordan Keilman, 22, and 14 of his friends.
The soldiers must remain within an hour of base so they could be called to Iraq, where many already have served once. Keilman fought in Iraq from September to February.
"I said `I'll cook, and you boys sit around and watch the football game. Just pretend you're at home,'" said Boulton, 47, who is an assistant for a law firm.
On Tuesday night, Boulton packed pots and pans, turkey-shaped plates and napkins, serving dishes, homemade ravioli, freshly baked breads and cookies into the bed of a red Ford F-150 pickup lent to her by a cousin.
Boulton and daughters Kristen Keilman, 20, and Charlene Boulton, 9, planned to be on their way before dawn Wednesday.
The Fort Bragg holiday dinner was conceived a few weeks ago when Boulton called her son to tell him she would be bringing him dinner. She suggested he "invite a few friends."
"He was so excited," Boulton said.
After word spread among his buddies in the 82nd Airborne Division, a "few" friends became 15 hungry soldiers. In all, Boulton plans to feed about 20 people.
She said she was taken aback when she first heard the dinner party had expanded, but then she was moved by the opportunity "to give the boys a touch of home."
"It's kind of like you're honored that he wants you to cook for all his friends," she said. "And it may be the last home-cooked meal they have for a long time."
He said he will have two turkeys waiting, and he and his friends have rounded up tables.
"We'll set it all up and make it nice," Boulton said
"Molon labe".
Leonidas, King of Sparta,
Thermopylae, 480 B.C.
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